I was working in my office yesterday when I heard the familiar emergency alert dual tones coming from another room. It didn’t fully register with my conscious mind until it happened again. I found on my Verizon Droid X2 device notification of potential flash floods in the desert and mountain areas. An app called Emergency Alerts had been triggered.
Media sources reported 700 lightning flashes, and the rains did fall by the inch in the desert east of San Diego County, creating dangerous driving conditions and flash flood danger in desert gullies.
Of course, the problem is that the information wasn’t properly regionalized. This is a great step toward enlarging the alert system beyond broadcasting to personal communication devices and desktop computers, but users are likely to block notifications if are irrelevant. That crying wolf thing.
Verizon says it knows of the problem and will work to do a better job of matching location of the emergency to the location of its customers.
The National Weather Service provides the alerts and maintains an information page on the subject. They don’t detail how they are handling CAP location data.
The National Football League (NFL) has assigned the Game Day Coordinator job in San Diego to Gary Stigall, Chapter 36 Certification and Program Chair, and owner of SignalWiz Consulting. Work begins immediately, preparing for the home preseason game against the Green Bay Packers Thursday evening, August 9th. Gary will be assisted by Phil Wells, owner of Giant Step Communications.
The job of the Game Day Coordinator is to assure lack of RF interference to field and media wireless communications during local NFL football games.
The San Diego field office of the Federal Communications Commission June 14 issued a Notice of Unlicensed Operation to Lewis A. Parks of Fallbrook. notice claimed that FCC agents found a signal on 106.1 MHz transmitting from his residence at over 10 times the maximum amount permitted by unlicensed Part 15 rules. Their letter ordered Parks to cease operating on the frequency immediately.
Michael Uhl has become an associate with Storyleaders.com, a sales training organization. He leaves a long broadcast sales career, most recently at Telos Omnia Axia. Before Telos, he sold routers at Sierra Automated Systems and audio equipment at Pacific Recorders and Engineering (now Harris).
