Plerts Blends Check-Ins With Medical And Personal Safety Alerts | Hacker News Reader

Plerts Blends Check-Ins With Medical And Personal Safety Alerts

techcrunch.com

23 pointspxlpshr22 comments

When I saw the "Most innovative life alert" slide on the root page, and the "One-Touch Emergency" in the Tour, I thought of this bit from Snowcrash:

And then the dark mass of Meltdown fans turns into a gyrating, orange-red galaxy as twenty-five hundred new stars appear. It's a mind-blowing sight, and at first they think it's a new visual effect put together by Vitaly and his imageers. It is like a mass flicking of Bics, except brighter and more organized; each Kourier looks down on his or her belt to see that a red light is flashing on their personal telephone. Looks like some poor skater called in a Code.

Hahaha. Well, the existing services are expensive ($400+ a year) and only work inside a person's home because they require land lines. My mom is 60, doesn't have a home phone (but has an iPhone), and she loves traveling so yeah... I did it for the moms. :)

Oh, it's a great idea. It's nice to see some actual utility from check-ins rather than just game mechanics. I wonder how much concern there has been about AT&T's spotty service playing into the reliability of this kind service.

The money may be in landing some university contracts. Get them to offer it free to students. They could then use it as a marketing ploy for how seriously they take safety.

That said, I think the big flaw in the whole thing is the burden it puts on the user to keep it up to date. I'm not terribly interested in having to think ahead about where I'm going, when I'll be back, and to "check in" when I get there. What I'd be more interested in is something like this:

It automatically tracks you via GPS at all times. This data is strictly off limits to anyone but you with the following exception. You setup a short list of people as your emergency contacts. In the event one of these people is concerned about your whereabouts. They can send an email to an address which distributes to your whole emergency contact list. If no one knows where you are, 2+ (configurable) people can choose to independently log-in to the service and once enough have used their "key" your GPS location becomes available to them.

Also there's no reason the service couldn't become pretty smart about your expected whereabouts (we're all creatures of habit after-all). If you strayed far from behavior it algorithmically expected, it could trigger an alert on the phone (probably best if it was obscure, so if you were kid-napped or something you couldn't be forced to dismiss it under duress). If you didn't dismiss the alert it would notify your emergency contact list.

My first thought: "Help! I've fallen and I can't get up!" for the 21st century.

I see some of the use cases on the site are things like medical and personal safety, but don't see anything about keeping tabs on kids. There's other solutions out there I think, but that seems like a good use for this. Ex. Kid walks to school, gets there and checks in. Then the kid walks home, and checks in when they're in the door. A parent's peace of mind is probably worth $5/mo if that's something they worry about.

I wonder how they make sure the location submitted is the actual location. Otherwise one could simply sniff the traffic and send any location you would like to be.

One thing I like about this service is that I would use it because we're not a GPS tracking service. It's a single-player game unless there's an emergency.

I did my fair share of wild stuff in college like trips to Mexico border towns. I'm fortunate to be here now but things could have turned a lot differently. This services protects my privacy, nobody has to know what I'm doing unless something bad happens.

except the kids tend to be lazy...so instead of a peace of mind, the parent goes nuts that the kid didn't check in.

my mom is facing this problem with my sister(she is 25). She is overseas, so they have a deal that she checks in at least once every two weeks. i.e. a basic email "mom I'm ok"...well she's been there for like 2 years, and I don't believe there's been a single month when she checked in on time.

Direct links:

info - http://plerts.com iphone - http://iphone.plerts.mobi web app - https://my.plerts.com/register/

So how did you end up in TechCrunch?

Well, besides sending them our pitch... we didn't do anything special. Just don't send them a generic press release or spammed via PRWeb. Relationships are important.

Many basics:

Do not use PNG for photo material. Those images are easily 5 times a good JPEG.

I have no idea what the site is about.

Does not degrade well if Javascript is disabled.

The grey serif text in the ribbon thing looks kinda pixely and tight. Might be the font or the css shadows (you do not have to use them just because it is possible)

I personally find the keyword spamming in the footer very immoral.

What does SSL encryption have to do with user data? Not too much. How do you secure the data you actually store? What is a GoDaddy certificate worth? PS: According to Opera there is a problem with TLS "renegotiation" on your site.

For some reason the PNG didn't retain color settings and yeah, they look really crappy on the TC article.

The keywords in the footer will eventually link to unique landing pages. Lots of startups do it, like Mint.com for example. I don't consider it immoral, I consider it marketing. I haven't had time to make the landing pages yet because we're a small team of 3 and have been swamped with other stuff.

If you have javascript disabled, you won't be able to use our web app or a lot of other web apps. This is largely a non-concern. The mobile application is by far the best experience.

I'll look into the SSL issue, I've had it happen to me in Chrome but sometimes it's completely fine.

Interesting. I think you are going to have to market this heavily to some very specific target groups (people with elderly parents, ...). Site and product look great. Now that you've launched, it'd be interesting to see from which niche you get the most interest/$, and the pivot and focus on those niches first. Right now, it feels like a specialized product trying to aim too broad (ie., it's a little hard to explain because you are aiming at too many usecases).

I agree, we've got a lot of marketing to do and some clarification as well.

Not to be a downer, because this is a great type of service, but I don't see any of the elderly I know using this because it requires an iphone or using the web. That is still just too complex for many of them and it is not the app, but rather all the other factors (browser or opening the app) that is the issue most of the time.

I agree, I don't see my grandmother using this service but my mom just turned 60 (I'm 28 btw) and she has an iPhone as do all her friends. There's a generation gap for my parents' parents when it comes to computing but I think it's coming to an end.

We are putting a lot of focus on accessibility and will continue to do so. For example, once a Pulse or Watchdog is created then you can check in via email. We've got some more stuff similar to this to make the barrier low and usability extremely simple.

I actually disagree, I showed my 82 yo g-mom the iPad yesterday and she loved it and got it right away. Instead of getting her a Lifelock or whatever I can get her an iPad, for cheaper, and she can watch videos etc. too -- and again, she totally "got it". Super surprising. She's not that sophisticated at all.

Hey, thats a great idea.

Have you thought about facilitating an interaction between the person with the service and the other party so that it is quite clear that someone will be notified if something happens to them? I'd think deterrent is more than half the benefit of something like this.

If an alert goes out on your behalf then you are CCed (SMS/email/push) that an alert was triggered.

We also have some plans to allow responders to communicate back to you that they've received the alert and are taking action. We'll probably roll this out in the next 30 days or so.

I guess what I'm talking about is the craig's list or blind date situation mentioned in the Techcrunch article. Can your service help prevent something bad from happening by making the other party aware that you use the service?

Aside from you informing that person, I can't think of another way off the top of my head but I'll give it some thought.

I do think that it could deter a potential issue if you communicated the basis of the service in regard to GPS breadcrumb and the alert if you don't checkin. The Natalie Holloway case comes to mind.

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