Amber Alert Ticker

[Lyra]

Our hobby frequently takes us to out-of-the-way places not regularly visited by many other people. I live in the same community where Jennifer Marie Short's mother and father were murdered in their home and Jennifer abducted, only to have her remains discovered about 30 miles away a month later. During the time that Jennifer's whereabouts were unknown until she was found murdered, an Amber Alert had been issued. I came across an Amber Alert ticker that can be easily added to any webpage and thought that it might be a useful addition to the main GC page to alert cachers to be on the lookout for missing children while caching. If you're interested in making this addition, the URL for ticker code is: http://www.codeamber.org/?tck1

 

Just a suggestion. At the very least, it may generate some donations to this worthy undertaking.

 

Thanks!

 

Lyra

Edited December 11, 2003 by Lyra

[the 5 little bears]

now thats got to be one of the best sugestions i have seen around here.I hope you guys consider it.It can only bring good things.

[+Lazyboy & Mitey Mite]

I wonder if we can add that to our own personal cache pages? If it's html I'm sure we can. I'll have to check.

 

I do think the Amber Alert is one of the best things going. Here in souther oregon a very young girl was kidnapped last week. She was found within a couple of hours and the authorities give the Amber Alert credit.

[+Lazyboy & Mitey Mite]

I tried to add it to a cache page where I've hidden an urban in a skateboard board. No luck, it won't accept the website listed.

[+Halden]

Is this a US only project? Do you know of anything similar in Canada?

[+GrizzlyJohn]

My guess is that JavaScript is turned off on the cache pages so people can't add any code that would do something bad on the web site. The code they had posted requires JavaScript so it may not run.

 

Like I said just a guess. Others here may have more knowledge on this.

 

But I do think it is a great idea to add to the main web site page.

[+GrizzlyJohn]

Is this a US only project? Do you know of anything similar in Canada?

Yes.

 

Go to the above link. Click on Get a Ticker. It will walk you through the steps where you can select US and Canada.

[+Kitch]

this really is a great idea!! I hope those in the "know" can do something like this!!!!

[+Stunod]

I think it's a great idea.

 

Here's the code (in case you don't want to navigate all over that site):

<!-- Begin Code Amber Ticker code. -->
<P ALIGN=CENTER>
<script LANGUAGE="JavaScript1.2" src="http://www.codeamber.org/js/codea.js">
</script>
</P>
<!-- end of Code Amber Ticker code (c)Copyright codeamber.org 2002, 2003-->

[+Kitch]

<A HREF=http://codeamber.org/?cabu1><IMG SRC="http://codeamber.org/images/amberbanner.gif" WIDTH=40 HEIGHT=40 BORDER=0></a>

 

better ....but can we even do this in the first place????

 

i might have to take them off my cachepages!!!

[+Brenin Tegeingl]

Is this a US only project? Do you know of anything similar in Canada?

Here in the UK, this is just starting to appear, with one police force acting as the leading force in trials. If you don't have anything similar, now's the time to be chasing your local or national police force about the idea, send letters and emails. You never know they might not know about the Idea, get friends and family to do the same, get the press involved that should work wonders! Dave.

[2oldfarts (the rockhounders)]

I vote no. I'm into looking for caches not dead bodies. I'm not ex law enforcement so I don't go out of my way to pry into what others are doing when they are out in the back country. If you want to have a site for 'Amber alerts' fine , but maybe you should set up your own site for that purpose. I feel 'Amber alerts' get enough air time on the radio and tv that we don't need to take up space here. Thanks, but No Thanks.

 

John

[+Sparky-Watts]

I respect your opinion, John, but feel I must disagree. We have had two Amber Alerts issued in my area in the past month, and I didn't know about either one of them, because I just don't really listen much to the radio, and very seldom watch TV. I think the more places you put up an Amber Alert, the better off we all are. This doesn't require you to go look for "dead bodies", and I certainly hope you never find one. As a retired paramedic, I think this is a great idea. If you don't want to bother with reading the Amber Alert, then just skip over it. No personal attack is intended, and again, I do respect your opinions and the reasons you gave for your opinion.

[+Theseus]

I'm going to echo 2oldfarts' sentiments, albeit a bit mutedly. I think the Amber Alert is a very valuable system that has and will save children. That said, I don't think this is an appropriate place to "force" it on all users. I wouldn't be against a link to Amber information but would prefer not to have it display automatically.

[Lyra]

It would not, of course, be mandatory. It's simply a one-line ticker that gives a link to relevant information if there's an active Amber Alert issued. If you don't like it, it's pretty simple to ignore.

[+webscouter.]

My opinion is that worldwide amber alerts are detrimental to the amber alert system in general. If a amber alert is set up on a site that is not regional you recieve a high number of alerts. After a short period of time people start to ignore the alerts because so many of them have been out of area. Then when an alert is issued that pertains to you it goes unnoticed.

[+Stunod]

My opinion is that worldwide amber alerts are detrimental to the amber alert system in general. If a amber alert is set up on a site that is not regional you recieve a high number of alerts. After a short period of time people start to ignore the alerts because so many of them have been out of area. Then when an alert is issued that pertains to you it goes unnoticed.

Good point...the alerts are designed to be location-specific.

[+parkrrrr]

My opinion is that worldwide amber alerts are detrimental to the amber alert system in general.

I agree. Too bad they don't have banner code that can be set to only display active alerts within a given distance of a given ZIP code. Then anyone who was logged in could have a banner that showed only relevant alerts.

[+Renegade Knight]

I don't mind helping where I can, but I don't want the worlds problems crowding out the fun in my life either.

 

To do something is has to be local or we would just turn it off because the 99.99999 percent of these things we see just don't apply. Amber alert blockers would get invented and installed alongside pop up blockers.

[+ShaneN4Girls]

Caches might be placed placed not only where children may be found, but where they may be taken from. Here is a memorial cache at the actual spot Amber was taken from. The spot is just a strip of grass between some houses and a small group of stores. You can tell that an one time many children played there. Now it looks very empty.

 

My point is this: Take in your surroundings and what is going on around you wherever you cache. You never know when just being in the area might stop something like this from happening again.

[+Lazyboy & Mitey Mite]

It doesn't have to be on gc.com. It can be placed as a banner on everyones desktop if you want. So if you want to keep track of such things just put the info on your desktop.

[+Brian - Team A.I.]

It's a good idea in theory, but as others have said, if the alerts weren't region-specific, people would begin to regard them as annoying 'scrolling spam' and ignore what they said.

 

The current AMBER alert system (at least in Arizona) is pretty saturating as far as information goes. It's repeated by dispatchers at the various police departments every 15 minutes for the first few hours, and hourly after that. The media broadcasts the information every few minutes, and a 'ticker' appears on most of the news stations around. The Department of Transportation also has their hands in the mix with the VMS boards everywhere being activated with the vehicle information. Until getting in to a rural area, and unless you listen to satellite radio/CD, odds are you're going to hear or see something pertaining to the alert, and may end up going to a radio station to listen for more information.

[+Mopar]

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