[February 17, 2010] Using technology to alert the town Tweet Feb 16, 2010 (Smyth County News and Messenger - McClatchy-Tribune Information Services via COMTEX) -- Multiple choice: Seven feet of snow are predicted by morning. Town officials need to alert the public, and pronto. Should they: Activate a siren? That's so last century. Go on television? How would you reach a public that has hundreds of channels to watch? If you said send an alert via Nixle, you're either Ken Heath or a subscriber to the service Marion adopted late last year. This may be the sentence of the week: "Nixle is an emerging technology-driven company at the forefront of rapidly growing demand among government agencies of all sizes for a secure and authenticated communication platform for location-based information." That's from Nixle's Web site and it says when Nixel speaks, what it says comes from sources that can be trusted and who need your attention for a good reason. It can almost personalize your alerts, telling you things you need to know about events across the street or across town, based on your location. Nixle is a free service Marion employs as a modern day combination of the emergency siren and digital text communications. It demands your attention and then says why. Heath, emergency services public information officer for the town, is behind the adoption of Nixle and its operation. There are other emergency communication services out there, but subscriptions to them cost localities $10,000 to $20,000 a year, he said. Nixle may be a rare free lunch. Heath said there's no cost to the town to use Nixle or to citizens who sign up to receive messages the town sends. Users see no advertising as they do with many free Web-based services. Neither does Heath when he logs in as an administrator. Nixle literature says only that it is a privately funded company. The service is a product of the media proliferation that made it useful. Heath said in "the old days," local residents had one television station and one radio station, and public officials could reach just about everybody. Now, Heath needs to put information on the town's public access TV channel and all of the local cable channels. Both leave out subscribers to satellite television distribution services. To activate a Nixle alert, Heath logs on to the service, types in his message, and sends it. He can do so from his office, his home, his mobile device and even by calling in to a Nixle operator. He's even posted an alert for Marion from the beach. Subscribers can receive Nixle alerts by e-mail or on text-enabled mobile devices. Currently all Marion subscribers get every notice Heath sends, but the service will let Heath direct notice of a water line break, for example, to only the Nixle subscribers affected by it. He said the system is capable of narrowing down a list of recipients to those within a quarter-mile. To register for the free service, go to http://www.nixle.com and its Sign Up Now box. There is a place where subscribers input their addresses to be sure of receiving notices that affect that location, should Heath issues notices to select areas in town. Subscribers can receive notices from any locality that uses the service. The Town of Chilhowie is in process of registering with Nixle, a process Kelly Spencer-Hill said takes about two weeks as Nixle verifies account holders, the step that makes Nixle secure and trustworthy. Spencer-Hill will let town residents know when the service is up and running in their town. To see more of the Smyth County News & Messenger or to subscribe to the newspaper, go to http://www.swvatoday.com/front_page/scn/. Copyright (c) 2010, Smyth County News and Messenger, Marion, Va. Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services. For reprints, email [email protected], call 800-374-7985 or 847-635-6550, send a fax to 847-635-6968, or write to The Permissions Group Inc., 1247 Milwaukee Ave., Suite 303, Glenview, IL 60025, USA. [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ]