Microsoft is launching a new product into private beta on Tuesday morning with the aim of keeping friends and family in touch during emergencies. The idea for product, called Microsoft Vine, came to Microsoft GM Public Safety Initiatives Tammy Savage four and half years ago during Hurricane Katrina. Development started a year and a half ago.
Vine is designed to keep family and friends in touch when other communication methods are either broken or not particularly efficient. Times of crisis usually involve a breakdown in mobile phone or other key communication infrastructures, and Vine is designed to be as hardy as possible to keep people connected. Vine can be accessed via a desktop client (Windows only for now), text message or email.
So what is it? Vine is a tool keep people connected during a crisis, but it’s also used to for more mundane, everyday tasks. My guess is it will hit a sweet spot with the masses. My parents, for example, are going to love this.
It will gather local news (you tell it where you live or are at the moment). News items are gathered from 20,000 local and national news sources, plus public safety announcements from the United States National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). The tool shows you news items on a local map. You can choose to filter out certain types of news (sports, entertainment, etc.).
Vine also gives you status updates from Facebook for close friends and family. Twitter and other social network news feeds will also be added over time. This lets you see what people are up to, as well as their location on a map if they share it.
Users view and post alerts to some or all friends/family. These can be quick messages to family in the case of emergency, or a church or sports club for meetings or practice. Each person defines how they want to receive alerts – the client, email and/or text message.
Users can also post more lengthy reports which are sent to the dashboards of those you share it with. There are four types of reports at launch: check in safe and well, report upcoming plans, report a situation or general information.
The product is very early and Microsoft is stressing that this is an early beta, designed to get feedback from a small number of users. Eventually the client will have some limited functionality even when offline (which is a likely scenario in a crisis), and new interfaces will be built on other platforms like Mac and Silverlight.
People tend to like stuff like this, and it may eventually turn into the place that you keep your true friends list – the people you absolutely want to be in touch with when things go badly.
More screen shots below:
It looks like google latitude to me.
What if my subscription expires in the middle of a crises?… [:O]
cheers,
shyam
http://yousuggest.us
Easy guess, latitude. But social networks fb is best positioned to do this, where they can locate city by login ip and their iphone app is top downloaded.
Cool. Let’s see if it really fares well like Microsoft’s other products.
Well basically this looks like it just takes news and contacts/email and sends it out to you on other platforms like facebook. I guess it’s cool, sorta like mobilizing communication.
Sorry but I don’t want Microsoft in my life telling me how to live.
“Oh my God! It’s an emergency and I don’t know what to do….quick! does anyone have access to Microsoft?? Is anyone there? Hello? Are there any experts out there to tell me what to do?”
you’re a moron. if there’s an emergency you still have fanboyism in your vein. get out of here!
+1
Is is just me or does the smiling lady icon not indicate crisis? Things like that always strike me as odd — the notion of a personalized badge or avatar that is one dimensional in emotion.
She looks pretty chipper so, as you said, I’m thinking mundane vs. a screen shot indicating she is in any real trouble.
it actually would be awesome if the picture was of someone freaking the hell out.
Maybe those whiz kids at Microsoft can apply some Chernov faces style mad skillz a la
http://agents.m...s/emotusponens/
perhaps with burning buildings behind her.
That would completely and utterly rule. Let’s hope the folks in Redmond are monitoring this thread closely.
Additional ideas for different disasters:
flood == water rising over her photo
swine flu == pig eating her photo
earthquake == photo ripped apart
That picture is likely a profile picture of someone’s Windows Live profile, rather than something that comes with the program. At least that’s what I think.
-Rahul
they could still add burning buildings behind the profile pictures. to set the mood.
Michael — start a campaign to have them name it after Jim Gray!
@facebook user – that was totally uncalled for and out of line…
@facebook user – after rereading and thinking about your comment, I now see the intent in which you were trying to convey. At first glance, I thought you were trying to be disrespectful and now see it in the opposite light….great idea…
my apologies for the hasty reply
No offense taken — he was a great mind, and a great man.
Microsoft has already named WorldWide Telescope after him.
<a href=”http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WorldWide_Telescope”
@ JamesMM : Sorry, forgot about linking.
With the exception of being tied into NOAA, and Amber Alerts, this looks like the same functionality damned 2 year old “Fire Eagle” API which services the open source community (See BriteKite, http://www.britekite.com) have been running on for a few years since Yahoo opened it up.
Are there any other, new, or fancy functional differences besides it having the “Yay Team Redmond” logo on it? Seems like a copycat app with no new innovation.
Well it’s microsoft. Since when does Microsoft have any originality?
Their PR is utter bs too. So, major comms infrastructures go down.. how exactly will they be online to ping their loved ones and whatnot to see if they’re OK or get news?
*chuckle*
Beware:
I signed up for the beta, and upon installation, “Windows Genuine Advantage” wanted to “Validate my license of Microsoft Windows”
I canceled out, because the last thing I want is for the BSA to meet me or my daughter in a dark parking lot somewhere to confiscate my or my family’s k-rad “super ‘puters”.
Then, half way through the installation, it told me that the “Target Diskette is Full” and suggested replacing the target disk to continue installation. It did this after it downloaded SP3, the latest .NET release and various other patches, Cornflicker remover, some Plug & Play display, and I think I saw a warning message to install a “unsigned audio driver” fly across screen too.
I’m running Windows XP on my iPhone 16GB, virtualized XP with VMWare. I don’t know what to do. Anyone else run into this error?
**sigh**
Pretty cool app. Another one of those location, social, search, what are you doing? and gps apps. Wonder if these kinds of things will catch on. I never found any interest in social, gps, what are you doing? products. Maybe it is just me.
take a look at the similar service Wi2Geo htttp://www.wi2geo.ru it works as web service and also they have clients for mobile platform
take a look at the similar service Wi2Geo htttp://www.wi2geo.ru it works as web service and also they have clients for mobile platforms
A good pretext to compete with Latitude, especially in these times of swine flu
help spread the contaminated location? well twitter did that nicely.
Er…. http://vine.nokia.com/
I wonder… Does this program require electricity or a connection to the internet to work?
If so it might be a tad useless in a real crisis like Katrina…
I think with things like Katrina, there would only be a blackout for a few hours while the storm is moving through. Before you are oviously fine, but after ATT (SBC) and Verizon now have mobile cell sites that would be positioned to turn on right after the storm passes, greatly diminish the downtime of the network.
i live in new orleans, and i was here for katrina. there was no electricity, but we did have phones. the problem was that everyone was using them, so we couldn’t make calls. however, texts went out pretty well. since this receives updates from mobiles via text, that would solve that issue.
that isn’t to say that this would be better than twitter or something like that. it’s just to say that that particular issue could be resolved in that way.
Re: Cj. That’s what I thought too. In times of emergency though, this would probably be useful for loved ones who want to know what’s going on in a particular area where their loved one may be trapped etc. But it might be more difficult to track the situation of each individual if the individual is unable to update his status.
Can’t wait, looks good.
Google latitude, Nokia Vine, Loopt, Whrrl, …. ?
Hell no !!!
http://u.nu/2wi
and dont forget to vote for them at the Webby Awards if you like what you see via http://blog.bliin.com/
There’s just so much to mock here…
The main marketing hook is “good for disasters?” What, they couldn’t think of anything more depressing? How are users supposed to recruit friends for that?
“Hey, Mom & Dad, here’s a fun service we can use next time there’s an earthquake!”
“Gosh, Timmy, thanks! That does look like fun! Let’s tell Grandma, so she can let us know next time she breaks her hip!”
Morons. Probably going to fill up with messages about swine flu, anyway.
Also, it took Microsoft FOUR AND A HALF YEARS to get from “idea” to “beta in one city?” Nice to see they’re still not capable of working at Internet speed.
Wow, you have to admit that is a brilliant Idea!
RT
http://www.anonymity.ru.tc
Seriously?… I enjoy MS innovations, but during a real emergency… you mean when the internet is unavailable, and when there’s no power… That is why we have Amateur (HAM) radio!!
Think about it… Hmmm… no complex infrastructure required, just a radio, some metal, and a car battery!!
Great service..
We at TringAll also help people during emergency with free service.
Emergency Notifier – TringAll
http://tringall...ncyMessage.aspx
wRadr is also aimed at the same emergency warnings and community-based critical communication but with a greater emphasis on mobile phones and a different approach to ‘robustness’: device-resident data. We have not seen any product using this approach yet – everything else in this space (Vine, Google Latitude, Brightkite, etc.) turns into a brick when cell networks are down. Still in closed Beta, we have couple of intros here: http://wradr.com/news/
Facebook application
Emergency Notifier
http://apps.fac...ergencynotifier
This seems pretty close to what life360 did on android
http://ventureb...-android-phone/
Any word on how life360 is doing? They have a big box of tricks that draw on alot of technologies that exist.
Interested to say how they can handle a sustained roll out…
Are they funded? Will they be charging for the “tools”
Hi Pete,
I’m one of Life360’s cofounders. We are moving along well and are testing our initial consumer products (after about 9 months of heavy infrastructure development). Send me an email at chris at life360.com and I’ll get you a beta invite.
We are experimenting with a pricing model, but some tools will likely be free and others included as part of a subscription plan.
Although we built something very similar to Vine as part of the Android Developer Challenge, for our real launch product we are shying away from anything that puts us in the social networking realm. The main focus of our service is on your family’s internal safety, security, and preparedness and we thought launching with our community network feature would dilute/distract from our main value prop. But it is still part of our longer term roadmap.
Chris
Those screenshots are a little perplexing… Looks like ole Gary Smith was ready to pack up the car and flee with the kids on April 3rd, even though the flood warning didn’t crop up until April 4th. Either Jane is behind on the times, or they have a lot of stuff to pack…..
MSFT Vine is the perfect example of this…
It’s a mantra that always pops into my head when I’m looking at new startups. A lot of them seem to want to do a million different things because other companies have been successful at one of those things in the past.
:
http://www.tech...-simple-stupid/
It’s Twisaster except with more bloat.
http://www.inqu...dog-on-twitter/
look like Nokia was first.
vine.nokia.com
Alas! – FEMA BUS numbers will be so much easier to find now!! – Geez, i can’t wait to visit their interment camps… maybe if i use vine the federalies can zero in on my position quicker too!
I think Appriss had them beat by about 15 years with their victim notification system called VINE(tm):
http://www.appr...s.com/VINE.html
in the event of a disaster, a stuffed animal peripheral, wireless, no batteries required, or maybe some kind of diety to save us? Perhaps we have grown too used to pressing buttons or touching screens and expecting something to happen. If you were using the same provider as me, that would never even enter your mind.
Most people will never experience an emergency like Katrina, and the poor guys on the rooftops were certainly not online and certainly couldn’t count on all their family members hanging onto Vine. This has got to be a belated April Fools joke. I have a suggestion for Microsoft – patch Outlook 2007 which on average restarts itself once a day on my PC.
which is fairly often. Seriously…how many times has all that that gone down for you?
It is planned to be developed for Mac eventually, though just Windows now since it is an early beta. Hopefully Wine can run it on Linux
ya apa caranya register di vine
But what about those who used Linux and Mac
Best wisses microsoftvine