A pair of Tucson brothers aim to render police scanners obsolete.

Information from: Arizona Daily Star (http://www.azstarnet.com/ ) and the SCAN-L newsgroup (James Richardson).

Parker and Marshall Minardo, owners of a software company called EdgeRift, created a $1 iPhone application called Emergency Radio that gives users ccess to more than 1,200 radio feeds from police, fire and emergency frequencies around the country.

Within days of its launch in early May, the application shot up to No. 2 on Apple's list of paid applications. As of Friday, Emergency Radio was still ranked in the top 40.9

More than 180,000 iPhone and iPod Touch owners have downloaded Emergency Radio, and the application is currently averaging between 1,000 and 1,200 downloads per day, said 20-year-old Parker, Edgerift's CEO.

The Minardos who run the business out of their Tucson home keep 70 cents from each sale, so the application is making the brothers flush with cash.

"Maybe we'll go out to breakfast," deadpanned Marshall, 26, the company president. "We haven't made any plans to celebrate. We're just trying to keep it going."

A free version of the application, which lets you listen to emergency feeds in a few big cities, has been downloaded 80,000 times.

The application taps into the groundwork laid by ScanAmerica part of the RadioReference.com network which streams the scanner feeds. Emergency Radio makes the feeds easy to access on the iPhone and also lists the police, fire and rescue squads' codes and their definitions so you can understand what the emergency workers are talking about.

EdgeRift was not exactly an overnight success.

It all started in 2001, when Parker started developing applications for personal digital assistants.

He and Marshall formed a business called PDA Performance that found limited success selling applications that organized contacts and streamlined the user interface.

In 2004, the company moved to Tucson so Marshall could earn a political science degree from the University of Arizona. The brothers relaunched the company as EdgeRift in February 2008 and shifted the focus to developing software for the burgeoning iPhone.

"All the top apps were entertainment and games, and we were thinking of what would be fun and exciting on the iPhone," Parker said. "It kind of occurred to us that with all the online feeds from emergency and police scanners, there was no easy way to access them and play them on the iPhone.

We thought it would be great if we could do that."

It took the duo four weeks to put the application together, with Parker handling programming while Marshall worked on logistics, such as customer support and day-to-day operations. Apple approved the application on April 18 and released it in early May.

Emergency Radio caught fire, picking up 50 sales the first day, then doubling for the next several days.

"It appeals to so many different people out there," Parker said. "Policemen and firemen are e-mailing us, and they're so excited they love it. It really worked out well."

The Minardos will release a free update to the program next month and are considering working on a version for the BlackBerry. The brothers say they work 80 hours a week and are considering renting out an office and hiring one or more employees to help with the workload.

"It's very strange," Marshall said. "We worked very hard for this one. We never expected anything like this. It's just unbelievable."

CHM Scanning the 56th Presidential Inauguration

If you plan on attending the Prez Inaug next week (personally I wouldn't be within 500 miles of that mess), here is an online PDF guide for scanner radio hobbyist courtesy of the Capitol Hill Monitor group that you might want to bring along.

http://henney.com/chm/0109/chm0109.pdf

Gustav Now a Cat 4 Hurricane

Hurricane Gustav is now a Cat 4 hurricane of the Safir-Simpsom scale with top winds at 145 mph.

Scanner enthusiasts and others who are interest:

There is a scanner audio stream for Lafourche/Terrebonne Parish covers about 30-40 miles west of NOL LA so basically INB has coverage from NOL area to Lafayette LA with a small area not covered.

If you would like to listen here is the INB Team speak addy.

70.87.174.165:8796

You will have to have the Teamspeak audio software package.

WWL-AM 870 the official emergency radio station for the NOLA area is streaming audio.

Go to reciva.com and search for WWL. It is a Windows media player stream.

More as we receive it here in the Monitor Post.

New Scanner Audio Feeds Now Available on Reciva

I'm the new Internet audio columnist for Monitoring Times magazine. Our GlobalNet column is the only column in any radio hobby magazine devoted to monitoring various services on the Internet. It made it's first appearance in the April 2008 issue of MT. Part of my Internet audio tool box is my favorite receiver in my shack - the Tangent Quattro WiFi Internet Radio that I purchased from our good friends at C.CRANE (http://www.ccrane.com/radios/wifi-radios/tangent-quattro-wifi-internet-radio.aspx). You can see my full review on the Quattro that appeared in the April 2008 issue of MT online at http://www.monitoringtimes.com/mtfirstlook-quattro.pdf.

So what can you hear on Internet radio? It is much more than just radio and TV video and audio streams. For instance, below is a late breaking Internet audio story that was just posted to the Live Scanner Audio newsgroup by Edmonton Fire Radio. Yes, you can monitor scanner services, aircraft services, ham radio, shortwave radio, television video and even signals from space.

"For those of you that have a Reciva based WiFi internet radio, here are links to the database for our Icecast feeds:"

Alamance Live Scanner -
https://www.reciva.com/index.php?option=com_cloud&action=station&stationid=20326

Cache Valley -
https://www.reciva.com/index.php?option=com_cloud&action=station&stationid=20327

Chester County -
https://www.reciva.com/index.php?option=com_cloud&action=station&stationid=20328

Chicago Fire -
https://www.reciva.com/index.php?option=com_cloud&action=station&stationid=20329

Edmonton Fire Department -
https://www.reciva.com/index.php?option=com_cloud&action=station&stationid=19317

Flagstaff Police -
https://www.reciva.com/index.php?option=com_cloud&action=station&stationid=20331

Guilford -
https://www.reciva.com/index.php?option=com_cloud&action=station&stationid=20330

Las Vegas Police and Fire -
https://www.reciva.com/index.php?option=com_cloud&action=station&stationid=18324

Los Angeles -
https://www.reciva.com/index.php?option=com_cloud&action=station&stationid=20333

Williamsport & Lycoming County -
https://www.reciva.com/index.php?option=com_cloud&action=station&stationid=20332

Northampton County PA Fire -
https://www.reciva.com/index.php?option=com_cloud&action=station&stationid=20334

Northampton County Police -
https://www.reciva.com/index.php?option=com_cloud&action=station&stationid=20335

Ottawa Valley -
https://www.reciva.com/index.php?option=com_cloud&action=station&stationid=20337

Quincy IL -
https://www.reciva.com/index.php?option=com_cloud&action=station&stationid=20336

Rochester Metro Fire -
https://www.reciva.com/index.php?option=com_cloud&action=station&stationid=20020

Snohimish County WA -
https://www.reciva.com/index.php?option=com_cloud&action=station&stationid=20339

Stone & Taney County, Missouri -
https://www.reciva.com/index.php?option=com_cloud&action=station&stationid=19402

W3AHS Repeater -
https://www.reciva.com/index.php?option=com_cloud&action=station&stationid=20340

Clay County IL -
https://www.reciva.com/index.php?option=com_cloud&action=station&stationid=20338

So, if you would like to learn more about what you can hear on Internet audio, check out the latest issue of Monitoring Times magazine and the new GlobalNet column from the world's leader in radio hobby information.

New SoCal Freq Guide Available Next Month

Dan Rollman at Scannerstuff has announced that a new Southern California Frequency Directory (3rd edition) should be available sometime around the first week of February.

Scannerstuff Guides are the best I have seen available for the areas they cover and are worth picking up. So check out his website at http://www.californiascanner.com/ and tell Dan that the Btown Monitoring Post sent ya.