What NEED does this meet?
lost pets and people tracer.. could also be used for child rescue, missing persons and suspect searches.. poss. any police appeals.
What is the APPROACH?
unlike everything else out there along these lines based in the United kingdom, we make full use of syndicated tickers to distribute the headline online, linking through to the appeals own forum topic.. respondents may then use the forums pm system to safely contact the user conducting the appeal.. we are also 24/7/365 and are not constrained by time, editorial policies or space as all traditional print and media organisations in the UK are.
What are the BENEFITS to people?
it would make for a safer community, catching suspects quickly, finding missing persons faster, ensuring that the pets who are genuinely missing are located and returned to their hiomes safely, and fewer pets(cats in particular) are put through the stress of being treated as missing by well meaning but misguided individuals
What is the COMPETITION?
this is entirely unique. it is currently being tried and tested. it is based on our hands on experience working with the likes of codeamber.org and beyondmissing.com in relation to amber/child alerts, being on call 24/7/365 and aiding in the safe return of 36 children across the USA in the 12 months of our trial operation. for this to work, however, it needs to be properly recognised in the united kingdom -and to be used by police forces, social services departments and families themselves.
What BUDGETS & LOGISTICS are required?
it is very simple to build this, and add to it depending on requirements.. to run this professionally 24/7/365 (petfinder+ peoplefinder+ suspectsearch) would take a team of say 4, and cost £80,0000 per annum(including set up costs). we are also working to bring rss feeds, audio and video podcasts online for syndication.
RSS feed
April 6th, 2006 at 12:55pm
Sounds a good idea. With localisation and categorisation so websites and blogs could choose what alerts are relevant. Could email lists be integrated too?
April 6th, 2006 at 1:01pm
I can imagine one of the problems with this is the ongoing team. Is one of their roles to approve alerts submitted to the service before they go live? Perhaps a optional system would work where website owner could approve a message before it goes out. This has implications for timeliness which could be overcome by a proxy approval system whereby I agree to allow any messages to go out that have been approved by 3 other site owners. That way if an alert was relevant for 30 sites it only requires 10% of site owners to be available to approve it. Perhaps not as good as a dedicated team but if a team is not affordable then a good back-up solution.
April 6th, 2006 at 2:02pm
thankyou for your kind interest ShaneMcC.
in answer to your queries..
email lists can be incorporated..
for any appeal we can set up automatic appeal blasts to well over 5 million opted in internet users daily plus hundreds of weblogs until cancelled. moreover, traffic, banner, startpage and autosurf exchanges are all available to help generate traffic to any appeal.
we do not yet use localisation or categorisation..
the tickers may be included on any website/forum/blog anywhere in the world. thus someone in say new york who sees an appeal their friend in London might not have, yet knows it may be of import to their friend, can then forward the appeal to their friend in London by email.
however, should demand warrant either, localisation and categorisation are options we will consider.
we do not make judgement calls..
anyone who wishes to do so may place an alert.
the 4 on the team are purely to cover 24/7/365 between them in shifts. they would be there to moderate the forums, organise the ticker and active alert pages, produce updated podcasts, to ensure timely email/live support for users, and, of course, close down alerts when requested to do so by the user conducting the search.
kindest
adie close
co-founder carialert.com
April 15th, 2009 at 12:34pm
this project is now currently on hold due to financial constraints and lack of governmental support, and press, media interest at all levels within the United Kingdom and Europe.
various individuals working either as medium to high level police officers or civilians and officers working in certain police force press/media/web development departments and even council management and staff, Councillors, MP’s, Ministers and MEP’s have also contributed to the postponement of this project.
even maddie’s parents and those around them have not returned our requests for talks, despite the fact that we were not asking for any funds and they were asking in the press for the creation of a service we had available at the time maddie went missing.
this is despite encouragement from frontline police officers and those who have actually had cause to use our services.
(in 12 months operation, we helped in the safe return of 36 abducted children across the US, helped our local force in a murder enquiry and helped find a few missing persons in the UK)
April 15th, 2009 at 12:36pm
p.s: we have taken everything offline and released the domain. we are no longer using the domain and it is for sale on the open market where we will not see a penny of any proceeds of the sale. we thought this was best.