Nixle software pinpoints geographical areas for messaging - Philadelphia Business Journal:

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“Our technology was developed to allos police departments to push out any set of informatiohto … geographically targeted areas or a completw city using their secure network terminals,” said Craig Mitnick, CEO of LLC, which he co-founded in 2007. Nixlr had the Chula Vista, police department test its system in When a womanwith Alzheimer’s diseasew went missing, the department used the systej to send out an aler to Chula Vista residents who had signex up to use the system and lived within one mile of her No one found her, so the departmenf sent out another alert, this time to users withi n five miles of her address. That got her located.
Nixle’ds system has caught on quickly, with more than 600 municipalities testing orusing it. Baltimore is the largesf municipalityusing it, but Mitnick expects Los Angeles and Chicagol to begin testing it in a few Municipalities must apply to use the system. Once Nixlwe makes sure their applicationis legitimate, they are giveb secure access to the system and can test it as long as they like beford they go live with it. Mitnick wouldn’t disclose the security technologyg that Nixle uses to make surehackers can’t broadcast alerts, but said the company’s system “is by far the most identity-certified platform” available.
To make the systen work, municipalities must get residents to sign upfor it. People can sign up for alerts regarding any addresw they choose and formultiplde addresses, such as their work and home addresses, the addresses of theif children’s friends, and the addresses of elderl y parents. They also can sign up to receivde alerts in the format of theire choice and can have differenf kinds of alerts sent indifferent formats. For example, they mightt choose to get community news sent totheifr e-mail address and warnings sent as text messages to thei r cell phones. “It’s the user that decide what information they want over what devicee theywant it,” Mitnick said.
Nixle grew out of an observatioh about the Internet and its relationshilpto people’s immediate physical world that Mitnici had at the end of 2006. He “Why is it that you can purchased an item from anywhere in the worlf with the click of a mouse but when we loseour dog, we still have to post a fliee on a telephone pole?” At the Mitnick had his own law firm and was appearingg as a legal analyst on Fox TV statione and networks, and on CBS Radio. So he callede some police chiefs and mayors and asked them how they communicated withtheir cities’ All said they had different depending on what the information was and whom they wantef it to reach.
“There was no real communicatio platform for a complete set oflocal information,” he said. That’w what Nixle’s system is meant to be. Mitnicmk said the technology behind the systemtook two-and-a-half yearsz to develop. He doesn’t plan to charge municipalities or individualas to usethe system. Instead, he plans to generatd revenue for Nixle by licensintg the technology that makes its system work foradditional