Chicago State University has launched a wireless mobile safety tool that can turn cell phones into location-aware devices that instantly connect users with campus police. Chicago State University is the first school in Illinois to install Rave Guardian that enables campus police to keep tabs on students who have signed up for the program. CSU […]

Students and staff at Oakland University, Rochester, Mich., will now receive a text message and a voice mail under a new alert system that has gone into effect. The alerts are part of the school’s comprehensive emergency communications plan to notify students, faculty and staff as quickly as possible if an emergency situation occurs on […]

Attempting to keep its students notified in cases of emergencies or threats to their safety, Northwest Missouri State University, Maryville, Mo. has launched its “Bearcat Alert,” a text messaging system designed to get the word out quickly. While Bearcat Alert is open to those with a Northwest account, students still must sign up for the […]

Higher One, a financial services provider to colleges and universities, has signed up 15 more institutions for its OneDisburse Refund Management program. That brings to 109 the number of schools using the Higher One platform, a 15% growth since the beginning of 2008. Those signing up since January, representing 173,000 students, include: Austin Community College, […]

Text messaging to alert students about emergency events are great, provided they are delivered in a timely manner and aren’t truncated so much as to render the original message worthless. Or, as in the case recently at Florida State University, encompasses more than was originally intended. Recently, a text message sent out about a suspicious […]

Catcher Holdings, Inc. announced several organizations that supply products and integration services to the US Department of Defense and to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security have begun accepting shipments of Catcher’s recently introduced CATCHER® Grizzly (“Grizzly”) product line. The Grizzly, which was previously called by its internal product name of version 2.0, joins the […]

Colleges have other options for cell phone alerts, of course. They could go off campus and hire a company specializing in text messaging. That’s what Rave Wireless and Mobile Campus are offering to universities. Rave offers what its COO, Raju Rishi, calls “an alert solution, which basically gives the university the ability to get emergency […]

Visa is partnering with a Taiwan telephone company and bank along with mobile phone provider Nokia to launch a six-month trial of near field communication. Besides NFC, the program will also include over-the-air (OTA) personalization, Visa payWave contactless payments and merchant direct marketing offers sent directly to the phone. Taiwan, Singapore, San Francisco–Visa International is […]

Wells Fargo & Company and Visa USA plan to launch an extensive mobile pilot to test consumer mobile payments and services. The pilot has three phases. The first already occurred when a group of Wells Fargo employees tested the use of mobile banking applications in April of this year. The second phase is expected to […]

Wells Fargo & Company and Visa USA plan to launch an extensive mobile pilot to test consumer mobile payments and services. The pilot has three phases. The first already occurred when a group of Wells Fargo employees tested the use of mobile banking applications in April of this year. The second phase is expected to […]