i-Neighbors Offers New Technologies for Hometown Security

By Nathesh
TMCnet Contributor

i-Neighbors is free social networking service for neighborhoods and local groups and it includes all necessary tools for a community to meet, organize and communicate. As of now the service is providing a free, private website and e-mail discussion forum to over 9,000 neighborhoods.

Now, i-Neighbors wants every neighborhood to have a phone number in order to connect communities offline. The service has been integrated with new tools that can help local groups and neighborhoods connect with local residents when it is very important. As part of the newly launched EX Service, every neighborhood will be provided with a local phone number that can be used by community leaders to broadcast text alerts to cell phones and send prerecorded voice messages using the i-Neighbors’ website.

EX Service provides more options to organize and share information quickly: phone, fax, text message, and postal mail. The service’s powerful features are stated to be ideal for community groups, home owners associations, and emergency management. Access to i-Neighbors EX Service is available through a monthly subscription and a single subscription is for one group of an unlimited number of users.

Some of the notable features of the EX Service are: Phone (News - Alert) Blast and SMS Blast – ability to broadcast prerecorded voice and text messages; Postal Blast – communities can deliver messages through postal mail by the United States Postal Service; Virtual Phone and Virtual Fax – by availing two, permanent local phone numbers for a group, members and outside organizations can always reach community leaders; Conference Calls – for simplifying local meetings, a third dedicated local number for conference calls; Committee features – such as multiple group discussion forums, the ability to route files to committees and more; and more.

“When people use i-Neighbors, they meet new neighbors, they are more supportive of people who live nearby, and communities are safer and better able to react in an emergency. These new technologies are the next step in empowering communities to keep their citizens alert to emergencies and important information”, said Keith Hampton, founder and CEO of i-Neighbors, in a press release.