Developed by the makers of Trapster, AwareSpot is a new location based service for mobile phone users with a variety of applications. The free service is designed so that police, public safety and community service organizations, media, clubs, businesses, and more can quickly and easily set up community alert broadcast channels that deliver location based, relevant, timely information to their audiences.
The AwareSpot service works by allowing different groups to register distribution lists on the website. Users can then subscribe to those lists and also specify areas, routes, days, and times that are relevant to them. The service can then be used to deliver a range of information to users - including help in avoiding traffic jams. Text messages are a great way to alert drivers of an accident or traffic problem and drivers will only get messages relating to the areas they frequent. The information can be as specific as to only provide information for a certain road or highway on a specific day at a specific time.
The alerts provided can also be “sticky”, so they can be downloaded to navigation devices and used to flag areas such as construction zones. Any time that the data changes in those areas or routes of interest, an e-mail notification is sent to the user alerting them that new data should be downloaded to their navigation device. AwareSpot works on any mobile phone that can receive text messages, and most personal navigation devices.
The service is free but standard text messaging rates do apply.
