FlashBlog

8/11/10:

New 11-minute video tutorial is now available on your region's FlashAlert Newswire main page (left frame), or click here: www.flashalertnewswire.net/videotutorial.mov

7/15/10:

Summer 2010 enhancements! First off, the site that the public visits (www.FlashAlert.net) has been redesigned to be much easier to use.

2. On your side of the system, www.FlashAlertNewswire.net, you will find a new option for setting the delete time for emergency messages. A school district might want to have a message about morning bus snow routes disappear at noon rather than the normal 8 pm. A police agency might want to have a message about an accident delete after a couple of hours.

3. And the Quick Report menu has changed. Instead of a single menu with numerous permutations of messages, you will find three side-by-side menus where you can build your own message. Thus you could choose "2 hrs late" from the first menu, "Buses on snow routes" from the second and "No AM kind" from the third and it would post, "2 hrs late, Buses on snow routes, No AM kind". If no combination works for you, you still have the custom message field (although the goal is to use the Quick Report as much as possible.)

4. If you send meeting agendas to the media, you now do that through a revised News Conferences and Meeting Agendas channel. I want this to be the place the media goes to see what is coming up in news conferences and meetings.

5. Finally, for the third year in a row, the cost for FlashAlert Newswire (messaging to the media) will remain the same. The cost for the optional FlashAlert Texting (messaging to the public) will increase slightly, reflecting a higher cost to provide this service.

4/5/10:
FlashAlert Texting validation. The texting feature that allows parents, employees, etc., to self-register to receive your info via email or text message has been strengthened to better ensure that addresses are valid and messages get through. As registrants enter their accounts, they will be asked to go through a validation process in which they trigger a test message to themselves containing a three-letter code which they must type into their registration page. This ensures they have entered their address(es) correctly and that they are set up to receive messages. For example, many people register to get cell text messages but have turned off that function within their phone! Fewer bad addresses will help keep our messages from being seen as spam. To further help registrants, there now is a drop-down menu of cell text address suffixes (i.e. @txt.att.net) to further aid in accuracy. Look for a site redesign in the next few months along with more new features this summer!

10/22/09:
Translations! Today we integrated Google Translations into the FlashAlert public pages (i.e. flashalert.net/news.html?id=70 ) Your publics now can see what you post - emergency messages, news releases, etc. - in various languages. I can't testify as to the accuracy of the translation, but knowing Google...

8/5/09:
New feature summary. Here's a summary of tweaks and enhancements implemented over the summer.

7/21/09:
The Final Frontier. Captain Kirk has joined FlashAlert! That's right, Captain Darr Kirk, PIO for the Kelso Police Department, has joined the system. Wecome Captain, and everyone say it with me: live long and prosper!

7/1/09:
Annual FlashAlert Texting update. I am initiating email messages to the 42,000 FlashAlert Texting subscribers who have not logged into their account in the past year. To make sure our lists are clean and no one is getting messages they don't want, they will need to log in and launch a test message to stay active. A reminder will be sent first of August to those who still need to update, prior to the September 1 purge.

6/5/09:
More Twitter info. I am peppering my programmer, Josh, with all kinds of little tweaks and improvements, many based on clients' suggestions. We have added more information about using Twitter to receive FlashAlert Texting and changed orgs' FlashAlert pages to put the emergency messages at the top, in red.

5/22/09:
Picture captioning available. You now may attach up to 10 photos or documents and there is a space for including photo captions.

4/16/09:
Revised tutorial in place.

4/1/09:
FlashAlert Newswire in place. We made the rollover to the FlashAlert Newswire branding and websites on Friday. All current URLs will continue to work. All three client groups - subscribers, news media and the public, have their own URLs to enter, or anyone can go to the FlashAlert.net portal and go from there.
Medford zone: The Oregon zone has been split in two: Medford/Klamath Falls (Southwest Oregon) and Bend (Central/Southeastern Oregon). This will help organizations target their news better. A map showing the eight Northwest regions is available here.

3/23/09:
Twitter. Support for using the mass messaging system Twitter is now in place for FlashAlert Texting clients! This opens a whole new avenue to get their emergency messages to students, parents, staff, etc. Your publics now can register for emails, text messages, or "Tweets." Over the next few weeks, I will be working through FlashAlert Text accounts adding this feature. Twitter has special connections with the cell companies that enable their messages to go out fast and reliable, so I am going to be heavily encouraging people to use Twitter for FlashAlert text messages instead of registering their cell text address directly in their FlashAlert account.

3/6/09:
Tweaks and enhacements. FlashNews' genius programmer, Josh Hughes, started work today on 19 tweaks and enhacements to the FlashNews/FlashAlert system. There will be a new tool to alert a specific TV station if they have your closure info wrong and we are adding Twitter text messaging capability to the FlashAlert system, in addition to email and standard text messaging.

2/23/09:
New name. In March 2009, FlashNews (current site for posting news), FlashAlert (current site for the public to view news) and each city's news media pages (i.e. pdxinfo.net for Portland) will come together under the brand FlashAlert Newswire. All URLs you currently use will continue to work, but the system overall will be refered to as FlashAlert Newswire. (There is another news distributor that also uses FlashNews, so this was the easiest solution.)
Price freeze. As you build your budget for next year (Sept 2009-Aug 2010), you can expect your FlashNews/FlashAlert fees to remain the same as last year. :o)

1/2//09:
The Columbian. Nice story about FlashAlert in The Columbian newspaper.

12/22/08:
Major activity in multiple cities. System running wide open, no delays. New servers are running at Warp 10! New basic-service tier in Portland swells active membership to 1,900 schools and organizations.

12/16//08:
Hardware failure. System was down 1.5 hours this evening due to a failed hard drive. Backup drive kicked in, but was verrry slow. Sorry.

11/1//08:
Server migration. Last week, Flashalert's ISP, Solid Technology, moved server operations from Seattle to Portland, upgrading system response and capacity.
FlashAlert renewals: All FlashAlert self-registrants (parents, employees, public) who have not logged into their account since July 1, 2007, have received a message that they need to log in to keep their account alive. Old accounts will be deleted Nov. 15. Eliminating bad addresses reduces the email/text message spam score and thus ensures more messages make it across the Internet.

7/15/08:
First off, the FlashAlert email/text message service will continue this winter. With some messages being delayed or deleted by spam filters along the Internet, I considered dropping it. But I think it is manageable with a combination of reminding participants that messages are subject to the irregularities of the Internet, and each organization conducting a monthly test - so that people know what to expect under "battle conditions." I will send messages out to subscribers, directing them to log in to their account to renew it as a means to purge outdated addresses and ensure participants understand the limitations. I recommend that you choose a certain day of the month to send out a test.

As a means of offering additional ways for your publics to get your info, I have created two new "pull" tools.
1. Your FlashAlert.net page now is interactive. People can open the page and it will auto-reload every half hour, even if minimized. If it discovers new information when it reloads, it will trigger a popup, alerting them to new info (assuming that they tell their browser to allow popups for the FlashAlert.net page).
2. Your FlashAlert.net page now has an RSS (Real Simple Syndication) page version. There are RSS readers available, many at no cost, which run on your computer and can monitor your FlashAlert page and bring in information when it finds a new item. Many web browsers and even MS Outlook have RSS capabilities built in. You merely tell them the page you wish to monitor, which they normally do on a 30-minute basis.

FlashBite now available. Have you ever wished you could dial a number and leave a voice message that would be delivered to the news media within the next few minutes? "FlashBite" is an optional tool whereby you have a special phone number to call and leave information, or a sound bite for broadcast use. It is converted into an MP3 file and distributed to the media in the cities you have chosen as your defaults. The additional cost for this service is the same as your regular FlashNews fee. Contact Craig for more info about this really cool tool.