Safe Night Out - City Camp Brighton - idea pitch

This idea evolved from a thought that teenagers and young people going for a night out could take many steps to keep themselves and their friends safe by planning ahead.

The combined use of a website and a smartphone app combined with an optional hardware panic button could achieve this.  The website would provide information about how to plan a safe night with endorsement from the local police and the Suzy Lamplugh Trust.  Included in the site would also be a range of useful online services designed to provide practical assistance with planning.  These may include access to local bus and train timetables, maps to check routes with data overlaid to provide local safe havens, toilets, police stations, chemists etc. Approved licensed taxi firms could be listed along with an alcohol units calculator. This would support a smartphone app that is available to download for free and which can incorporate all the information available on the website into a portable safety kit which can contain personal, localised and bespoke information.

Features of the smartphone app,

The app can be downloaded to the phone and used independently of the website or, with a registration to the website, it can work alongside the website.  The key feature is to make the product versatile and customisable to suit the person.  This means it can be used discreetly, covertly, socially, by young or old alike and in an emergency.  The app can be 'skinned' to suit a young person's night out, a junior school trip to the museum or a senior person's trip out for the day on a coach trip.

User data - will store name, sex, age, address, contact details.  The app will interface with the phone's address book to save re-keying information already available.

Friend data - same as above.

Trusted emergency contacts - same as above.  Could be Mum or Dad, Aunt, best friend or best friend's parents. A cascaded list could be set up - Contact John first, if that doesn't work, try Mum, then Dad, then Gran.  If that doesn't work send a general message to any app users in the area.

Planned schedule - start time, meeting times, home time.

Meeting points - stored locations like pubs, clubs, train stations, bus stops and meeting points.

Emergency credit - A system which saves £5 of PAYG credit for emergency use only.

Safe Havens - Known places in the local area which are accredited as being safe - shops, tourist information, council offices, 24 hour chemists, police stations.

Safe people - Known people who could be close by and trusted if in need of help - Street Pastors, Special Constables, Officers or Community Support Officers, door staff, ambulance staff.

(Safe Havens and Safe People show up on a map with the havens described by a green building symbol and people by a green person symbol.  The people could be real-time and displayed via GPS carried by the trusted safe people.)

Threatening situations - If in danger, the phone can be programmed to react as required to alert friends, family or other 'SafeNightOut' users.  Covert alerts could be activated by tapping or shaking the phone in a pocket or by activating an emergency button placed on the phone's home screen.  On activation in covert mode, the phone silently sends message alerts to pre-programmed friends, family or other SafeNightOut users, maybe in a timed cascaded process - trusted friends first, family a minute later and other users a minute after than.  Friends may receive a txt message, a pre-recorded call, a specially set-up ringtone or be alerted to a map on their phone showing the live location of the person in need of help.

A hardware bluetooth add-on to the app could be purchased which acts as a remote control panic button.  This can also be covert or overt and would work via Bluetooth to send a signal to the phone which would then transmit the alert to the user's choice. The bluetooth device would be a 'push/pull' alert device which is require to have a push button emergency alert.  There would be a minimum specification for this device - (pull cord, push button, audible shriek alarm and flashing LED light) but the design and size can vary.  This allows for manufactures to create many different styles of devices which people can buy to suit their individual tastes - Bart Simpson, Winnie-the-Pooh, Barbie, Action Man, SackBoy, lava lamp - the list could be endless.

Lost my Phone - The same types of alerts could also be used to locate a misplaced phone.  If it is moved far enough away from the bluetooth device, the device can activate its LED light or sound the siren.  As you go back to search for your phone, the LED light could blink more rapidly, the closer you get to your phone (based on the signal strength of the bluetooth signal).  If this doesn't work, you could use someone else's phone to access your online account and geo-locate your phone that way.

Absolute emergency - If the situation is so desperate that there is no time for any other action, the user could simply throw their phone as far away as they possibly could.  As the phone goes beyond the safe scope of the bluetooth device, it activates the siren/LED light.  If the phone survives the impact when it lands, it too can start sending emergency messages to trusted friends etc.

There are many other enhancements and small details to define for this project.  The next step would be to prioritise the features, scope the cost of development, define who should 'own' the project, investigate commercial potential of the bluetooth push/pull panic buttons, create marketing materials to further document the brief, decide upon a name, URL registration, sourced of further external funding etc. etc. etc.

http://www.thinkgeek.com/gadgets/cellphone/9913/

Is this the best a local newspaper can come up with?

From the Thurrock Gazzette website (Essex) Feb 16, 2011
"Crime mapping slammed as unfair as shops named a hotspot"
"A CONTROVERSIAL new crime mapping system has been slammed – after Lakeside shopping centre was named the most crime-ridden place in Thurrock.
The online map shows 143 reports of crime and anti-social behaviour were made at the centre last December.
This included two robberies, three burglaries, 13 violent offences, five cases of vehicle crime and 19 reports of antisocial behaviour.
The remaining 101 incidents fall into the “other” category which can include everything from shoplifting and theft to sex offences.
The category is so wide-ranging to prevent the identification of victims.
However, the nationwide crime map has been widely criticised as highlighting the country’s high streets and shopping centres as the worst-hit areas simply because of the number of people who visit them. . . .  "

---

What an unusual approach - who is slamming the crime maps? Who says it is controversial? I would have thought level headed people would be able to work out for themselves that a place which attracts so many visitors would naturally have higher crime than your average residential street. What would be more useful is to work out how many visitors the shopping centre attracts and divided it by the number of crimes. There is no wonder the newspapers are in decline if all they can do is stir up this kind of nonsense.  Read the comment at the end of the article to see a local resident who has clearly worked it out already.

Onkyo HT-S6305B AV Amplifier setup problems

I consider myself to be fairly confident with audio visual equipment and computers.  I am consistently amazed at how complicated modern home equipment is to set up and operate.  We have a TV, a disc player, a PS3 and all I wanted to do was to hear the surround sound than each is capable of producing via a set of 5 speakers and a sub-woofer.  I found the Onkyo HT-S6305B product that sounded perfect for the job and tried to set it up yesterday but although the actual sound was amazing, it made the equipment so difficult to use that I had to give up and put it all back in the box.

It is supposed to have a universal remote controller which can be programmed to operate the TV and the disc player as well as the amp itself as well as numerous other components too.  Sounds good but this universal remote means working out how to get from one thing to another which is impossible.  If I can't work out how to do it, how will anyone else in the family work it out?

It is also supposed to have a feature that works for late night viewing.  The main thing I was expecting was a reduction in output of the sub-woofer as it is this that thunders through the house and disturbs people who have already gone to bed.  I switched this feature on, turned down the volume and the bass was still blasting out!  The only way to get rid of it was to physically reach behind the sub-woofer and turn it down with the volume knob.  I don't consider this to be the most sophisticated solution to late night TV viewing.

All of these items have hundreds of settings within their respective set-up menus which makes for millions of different combinations of settings to get right.  I couldn't even just turn off the amp and rely on the TV volume for late night viewing because when you switch off the amp, it switches the TV off as well.

I'll probably end up having another stab at this another day but looks like having to leave printed instructions next to the TV so everyone can switch from one thing to another.  Surely not necessary.

Playstation 3 multiplayer features

I have finally started to take a closer look at the new PS3 we got at Christmas as a 'family' present. One aspect I'm not thrilled with is the way it handles multiple players.  I am new to this so shoot in a comment if I've got this all wrong . . .

To start with, the Playstation 3 allows us to all have our own logins.  We quickly got started by setting up each person with a login. We also have several games including Start the Party, Blur, Aragorn's Quest and Sports Champions.  All of these games allows more than one player to take part either at the same time or by taking turns.  They also support the 'trophies' feature which means that you are awarded bronze, silver and gold trophies as you progress through the games.

At this point, I am stupidly assuming that you can use the login accounts to play against one another in the multi-player games and because we have already named ourselves in these logins, the games should allow you to pick from a list.  When playing the games together, the trophies would be awarded to each player's login account as they earn them.  Well, the PS3 doesn't appear to do this.  You can only sign into one login at a time and the other logins/players/family members are nowhere to be seen once a game is started.  All the trophies that player 1 earns (i.e. the player who has logged in) are allocated to their account but all the other players, despite having an account on the console are referred to simply as Player 2, Player 3 etc. and do not have their hard earned trophies stored.  To make things more complicated, you also need to set up a login to the Playstation Network which requires an email address and numerous additional passwords and user IDs.  This allows people to play online with anyone in the world.  All this is very clever but we don't need to play with the rest of the world - we have the rest of our family to play with.  Short of buying a PS3 console for each of us and then connecting to the PSN, we cannot play and keep track of our scores, achievements and trophies when playing with each other at home.

I am told there are a few games which support an offline multiplayer feature but there aren't many.  So here is the scenario.  We all play 'Start the Party' as a family with 4 players.  Each time we start it, we have to register the user photo and voice ID when I feel we should be able to store this once as part of our named console login account.  All the data regarding the game should then be available; high scores, last level completed, trophies earned etc.

I expected more from a 3rd generation games console and foolishly assumed this kind of basic stuff was par for the course.  It seems that in the fight to offer ever impressive graphics, sound, levels, options and other stuff, the original point has been lost.  This seems to be a console designed for a lonely single person to own rather than a family of 6.  Have I got it wrong?  Let me know.  Maybe there are other consoles which actually work and I've bought into the wrong one (XBox360 or Wii??).

Police data test 1

Happy Christmas from the Web Team

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The new rules of Marketing and PR

I have been reading this book by David Meerman Scott a lot recently.  It explains how marketing and public relations used to be quite separate concepts but have blurred into a new set of rules which combine marketing and PR together in a new online world of communication.

Marketing - old rules

• Marketing simply means advertising (and branding)
• Advertising needed to appeal to the masses
• Advertising relied on interrupting people to get them to pay attention to a message
• Advertising was one-way: company to consumer.
• Advertising was exclusively about selling products
• Advertising was based on campaigns that has a limited life
• Creativity was deemed the most important component of advertising
• It was more important for the ad agency to win advertising awards than for the client to win new customers
• Advertising and PR were separate disciplines run by different people with separate goals, strategies and measurement criteria

Public Relations - old rules

• The only way to get ink and airtime was through the media
• Companies communicated to journalists via press releases
• Nobody saw the actual press release except a handful of reporters and editors
• Companies had to have significant news before they were allowed to write a press release
• Jargon was okay because the journalists all understood it
• You weren't supposed to send a release unless it included quotes from third parties, such as customers, analysts and experts
• The only way buyers would learn about the press release's content was if the media wrote a story about it
• The only way to measure the effectiveness of press releases was through 'clip books' which noted each time the media deigned to pick up a company's release
• PR and marketing were separate disciplines run by different people with separate goals, strategies and measurement techniques.

The new rules of marketing and PR

• Marketing is more than just advertising
• PR is for more than just a mainstream media audience
• You are what you publish
• People want authenticity, not spin
• People want participation, not propaganda
• Instead of causing one-way interruption, marketing is about delivering content at just the precise moment your audience needs it
• Marketers must shift their thinking from mainstream marketing to the masses to a strategy of reaching vast numbers of underserved audiences via the web
• PR is not about your boss seeing your company on TV. Its about your buyers seeing your company on the web
• Marketing is not about your agency winning awards. Its about your organisation winning business
• The Internet has made public relations public again, after years of almost exclusive focus on media
• Companies must drive people into the purchasing process with great online content
• Blogs, online video, e-books, news releases and other forms of online content let organisations communicate directly with buyers in a form they appreciate
• On the web, the lines between marketing and PR have blurred