100,000 crimes and counting!

This month we passed a major milestone, we now have well over 100,000 crimes in our database from all over the United States. And guess what? We're not slowing down either.

We have several partnerships with police departments currently in the works and plan to continue to roll out POSTACRIME to law enforcement, businesses, and people like you all across the country. If you haven't done so already, make sure and invite your police department to participate in the POSTACRIME network by filling out this form. Our service is completely free for the departments, why wouldn't they participate?

Keep posting, keep participating, and we'll promise to keep rolling our more information, more features, and continue to make POSTACRIME a better tool for you.

Loss Prevention for Small Business

Joe Hughes over at www.joesbunker.net (great loss prevention resource) has published an eBook outlining several strategies that small business owners can use to reduce losses and increase their bottom line and it offering it as a free download for a limited time. His advice could save you thousands, so download it quickly before he decides to start charging for it!

Interesting strategies that he has included in his book:

• Customer Service – The Number One Way To Prevent Losses
• Control Your Exits
• Inspect What You Expect
• Network With Other Retailers

Mr. Hughes notes PostaCrime.com as a great way for small business owners to network and share information about theft and crime in their stores, "every small business should be using this service, and advertising it to their customers."

Invite your local police department!

In addition to users posting crimes, PostaCrime also relies on local police department report information to populate our database. Many of you have emailed us asking us to send an invitation to your local police departments asking them to participate in PostaCrime.com, which has been successful (Thank you!). We're working with several as we speak to begin providing data.

We've created a simple form making this process a bit more automated, we invite you to fill it out and we'll contact your local departments and get them involved. The result is a win win, the department is able to communicate information to the citizens they represent at no cost and you benefit by having the information made available to you!

Did you know that MyAlarmMonitoring.com has alarm monitoring for $12.95 monthly? Have a Blackberry and are you tired of telemarketing calls? Download Call Control, the super Blacklist Application for Blackberry.

PostaCrime.com Google Mapplet Released

It's official, we've released the PostaCrime.com mapplet for Google Maps. After following the steps below to add the PAC mapplet to your Google Maps, you can type in any zip code or address and see the crime results within the Google Map interface. You can also couple the PAC crime results with other useful mapplets like:

• Web Cams


• Real Estate (Check the neighborhood for crime before you buy)


• Gas Prices

Here's how to add the PostaCrime mapplet into your Google Maps account:

1. Log into your Google account.
2. Go to Google Maps and click on the My Maps tab.
3. Then click browse the directory.
4. Type in Crime in the search box and you'll see the PostaCrime.com mapplet.
5. Click on PostaCrime.com.
6. Click Add it to Maps.
7. You have now successfully added the PostaCrime mapplet to your Google maps. You can now search for crime by typing in an address or zip code and see the results on the left hand side and on the Google map.

If you type a zip code and nothing comes up, don't worry, we don't have information in our database yet for that location. In addition to you and our users uploading crime information, we're working with Police Departments to add their information to PostaCrime.com. If you want to help us please send a letter or email to your local police department and ask them to participate in PostaCrime.com!

Have fun with the mapplet!

Postacrime and Jamie Colby of Fox News

Wow. The last few weeks have seemed like a blur. First, the Seattle Times did a story on us. That resulted in Fox National News calling us to appear on the show Fox Online on Saturday morning hosted by Jamie Colby. I drew the short straw and was elected the one to be interviewed by Jamie. Actually I wanted to do the interview because I love talking about Postacrime. It is only through generating such attention that we will achieve our objective of being the largest crime prevention related site on the Internet.

Doing a national interview was exciting as well as nerve wracking. The people at the Fox Studio were extremely nice and supportive. The day started with me meeting up with Krista Koster, a PR rep who is a friend of fellow Co-founder, Ben Sharpe. She generously donated her time to assist me in my preparations in addition to being our representative with Fox. She was extremely helpful and it put me at ease for her to interact with the producer so there would be no surprises. Getting my makeup on was painless and I had a great view of Lake Union from the 30th floor. After makeup, I took a seat and got wired up. There was a large background mural showing the Seattle skyline. There was a TV monitor in front of me below the camera that I was able to look at while I was being interviewed. They informed me that I would hear Jamie in my earpiece but that there would be a two second delay between what I saw on the floor monitor and what I heard in my ear. That was a bit unnerving because this was "live" and there was no chance to edit or redo it if I screwed up. The floor monitor was very distracting so I just sat there looking into a camera listening to Jamie and trying to do my best to explain what we're trying to accomplish with Postacrime to a national TV audience.

All in all it was a blast and something I hope to repeat many times in the future. We are very grateful to Fox News and Jamie Colby for the exposure.

Postacrime on Fox News

One of the benefits of being in a major paper is you get lots of interested and interesting readers. We had one especially interested reader: Jamie Colby. If you're familiar with Fox News, you'll know that Jamie is the host of Fox Online. A show "where the news meets the net."
So, we got a call from the producer who wanted to put Postacrime on Fox Online. We put David Stone on there to talk with Jamie. They had also invited Officer Grannis of the Bellevue Police Department. Officer Grannis raised some valid points, and I think David did a good job addressing them. Please remember this: If you're the victim of a crime, please please please report it to the proper authorities first.
David did an awesome job on the show and really conveyed what we're trying to accomplish with the site. I'm going to see if I can convince David to write about what its like to be on national television. I'm also going to see if I can find a video of the interview so I can post it here, check back.

-- Edit by Adam --
I found the clip on YouTube

Postacrime.com in the Seattle Times

We've just wrapped a really exciting week: we've had two definite major events (and we'll have two blog posts)
The first thing is that Postacrime was written up in the Seattle Times. This was really exciting for us because it involved some new stuff for all of us:

• The coolest thing that happened was the 30 minute photo shoot for the picture in the paper. Erika took about 200 pictures. And I know I speak for all of us... we really like the picture that got published in the newspaper.
• We actually heard someone who wasn't so keen on our little idea. (read the article, and you'll see)
  
• We found out that our site can handle a decent amount of traffic. We had our biggest day ever: 1400 unique visitors

The cool thing about Postacrime being written about the Seattle Times, is that it has a pretty large readership... so we've been getting a pretty good attention from all over the US.