Microsoft India on Thursday said it has introduced Guardian, a new
safety application, available exclusively for Windows Phone users in
India.
Incidents such as 'Nirbhaya' prompted the global IT giant
to come out with an app aiming at protecting women, Microsoft IT India
Managing Director Raj Biyani said.
Explaining its features, Biyani
said Guardian enables users to switch on a 'track me' feature in the
app that lets friends and family track them in real-time using Microsoft
Windows Azure cloud services and Bing Map APIs.
Guardian users
can call for help through an 'SOS' alert button and also connect to
security agencies, police and hospitals easily via this app in times of
distress.
The app was developed over six months by a group of
enthusiastic Microsoft employees in India, within the Microsoft Garage.
Microsoft Garage is a global employee innovation initiative that gives
Microsoft employees an outlet to explore ideas in their free time,
Biyani said.
"Our employees wanted to do something to enable
people to feel safer in our cities. So they used their spare time to
develop Guardian. It is a robust personal security app with more safety
features and capabilities than any other comparable app available to
Indian smartphone users today," Biyani told reporters after launching
the App.
To use Guardian effectively, users need to add the names
of friends, family members and security groups to the settings and in an
emergency situation, the app can be used to alert them, via the SOS
button. All the user has to do is tap the SOS button, a Microsoft
official said.
"The phone then sends a distress SMS to all buddy
mobiles, notifying them of the emergency along with location details. At
the same time the SOS button also sends emails to buddy email IDs and
posts to private Facebook groups, if registered," the press release
said.
Guardian uses Microsoft Windows Azure cloud services and
Bing Map APIs extensively and can help security authorities and medical
teams track the user. The phone can be traced even if it is broken. The
application is capable of one touch video recording that may be used
later as evidence, the press release added.
The Guardian app is available exclusively for Windows Phone users. It can be downloaded at here.
