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February 11, 2013

Ping4, Inc. Lands $4M Investment for ping4alerts!

By Steve Anderson, Contributing TMCnet Writer

When it comes to disasters in the making, most users want to know about them as quickly as possible, and maybe even get some idea about what to do in the face of similar incidents in the future. Ping4 Inc., meanwhile, announced today that it might have just the solution to disasters, and has raised fully $4 million to that end in private placement capital.



Over the last two years, Ping4 has raised $7 million in private placement, and intends to put that cash to work in product development, as well as into intellectual property and the development of its sales and marketing apparatus into a fully global, world-class environment.

One of these products is its ping4alerts! system, a communications system that allows for emergency alert messages to be rapidly disseminated through smartphones. It's a hyperlocal system, meaning that the alerts dispatched via the app are specific to a certain geographical area, and landlocked areas won't receive information about flooding happening several miles away.

There are already several police departments, educational institutions and emergency management apparatuses that are using ping4alerts! to disseminate information about emergency conditions and what users should do in response to these conditions.

The app is largely self-contained, so those interested in spreading alerts through the app can get in contact with the people using the app without having to know a lot of personal details about the user. Street address, phone number, e-mail address...none of it is necessary to get out information through ping4alerts!, making it a very popular method of releasing emergency information.

What's more, ping4alerts! can even go so far as to wake a smartphone up from sleep mode to spread information quickly, regardless of the hour, and works with several different types of media, allowing text alerts, audio messages, photos and even video to be sent as part of the alert system.

This combination of extreme specificity, coupled with versatility, gives ping4alerts! a lot of extra value in the marketplace, and as such, is likely a reason that Ping4 could raise so much capital behind its development.

It's a great idea; most current emergency alert systems depend on methods that require a user to be near the source. Television alerts need to have the television on and radio alerts need someone near a radio – but smartphone alerts can be activated as needed, and chances are, users will see that alert as they have their phones on hand.

ping4alerts! is likely to mean a new era in public safety, and hopefully, it’ll save a few lives.




Edited by Braden Becker
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