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Back in the late 1950's and early 1960's, Jaguar ruled the automotive racing world with some of the fastest automobiles on the planet. Limited in their production, there is a global fraternity of collectors and enthusiasts. Car thieves also target these automobiles,sometimes acquiring these rare vehicles for some unscrupulous collector.
With the popularity of social media such as Facebook and Twitter, and a location based gallery application built by my company, stealing someone's baby without the rest of the planet knowing just got a whole lot harder.
Here's how it works. Global car owners connect via Facebook and join a group only open to car owners. With the owner's permission, the group owner places a picture of their car on a Google Fused gallery in ThemeGreen.com. The gallery integrated with Google Maps has a number of collaborative and messaging features including being integrated into the
ThemeGreen Social Networking platform.
As new images are added to the gallery, emails are automatically sent to interested parties, RSS feeds update various sites or widget
code updates web sites or blogs carrying the content. No doubt all the global Jaguar owners like to see what else is going on so we all know the instant something is happening image wise via the gallery's collaboration features.Last month just outside of Amsterdam thieves stole a beautiful black XK 150. A full description of the car including a picture was loaded on the location based gallery. In an instant an army of Jaguar collectors around the planet know about this vehicle with full details of it's unique characteristics.
I found the notice 2 ways. The mini gallery I have on one of my web sites popped up with an image of the stolen car plus I received a Facebook notice.
If I were a car thief, I'd think twice before I drove this stolen vehicle anywhere on the planet. XK owners know when there is a new cat in town. Everyone in the owner's club being on the lookout for the stolen black XK 150, it won't be too long until a friend
of a friend spots it. The gallery image of the stolen car is linked to full details plus another site dealing strictly with stolen property around the globe.
http://www.themegreen.com/imgy/xkworld/327
It's interesting how social media and the ease of communicating is affecting our daily lives and spreading information far and wide.
I am using my own Blog to update this note. Once I press the button my social tools will again spread this message even further. The social tools update my Facebook, all of my Twitter accounts, news feeds active on about a dozen web sites and blogs, RSS feeds connect my Linkedin, Plaxo and other social accounts to this post, plus certain people that follow my posts via email receive an immediate notification.
Although I am sure that car thieves have all the modern gadgets and networks to dispose of their cars, life must be getting more difficult for classic car thieves if an army of enthusiasts take up the cause against them on a global basis.