City Using Nixle to Reach Residents Instantly by Text and Email

CITY OF LOS ALTOS UTILIZING NEW TECHNOLOGY TO REACH RESIDENTS INSTANTLY BY TEXT MESSAGE AND EMAIL

Los Altos, Calif. – August 1, 2013 – The City of Los Altos is now using a new communication service called Nixle to reach residents quickly. Utilizing the technology sources citizens are most connected to, Nixle allows the City to send alerts directly to registered users via text message, email and the web.

Nixle has been used around the country to help find missing children, evacuate flooded areas, and capture dangerous criminals shortly after a crime has been committed. The power in the system is also its diversity of content, allowing not only those emergency alerts, but informing residents of road closures, city events, government meetings, and other helpful information.

Nixle enables the City to provide relevant and geo-targeted information to residents in a timely and effective fashion. Messages can be transmitted anywhere in a radius from .25-miles to 10 miles, allowing neighborhood-level, time-sensitive information to be sent only to affected citizens.

Residents can register at www.nixle.com where they will be asked to provide their address or an intersection near them, a cell phone number and an email address by which to receive notifications.  Citizens then select which messages they wish to receive on which devices. Nixle builds on the foundations of other public-to-public communication services, such as Twitter and Facebook, but adds a key component: security. When citizens receive information via Nixle, they know it can be trusted. 

For more information, contact Tuck Younis, Police Chief, at (650) 947-2770.

 

The mission of the City of Los Altos staff, council, commissions, committees and volunteers is to foster and maintain the City of Los Altos as a great place to live and to raise a family. For more information about the City of Los Altos, please visit www.losaltosca.gov.

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