FBI widgets get upgraded

The FBI has recently upgraded its widgets - mini applications that can be added to a Web page or a PC's desktop and updated remotely by simply copying and pasting Web code - to help capture fugitives and find missing persons.

The widgets have interactive posters that bloggers, Facebook and MySpace users can embed on their pages to showcase the FBI's 10 Most Wanted and missing persons.

There are weekly podcasts, e-mail alerts and digital billboards posted across the country that have directly led to the capture of at least 70 fugitives.

Best of all, this new high-tech crimefighting costs nearly nothing.

The FBI's overall goal is to get information to the public in as many ways as possible. The FBI's 21st-century upgrades are all innovative, community-based technological advacements that get the word out in real time.

The 10 Most Wanted list first appeared on the FBI's Web site 13 years ago, and the Bureau has been working to upgrade their site ever since.

There are now over 400 cases on the FBI's Web site, including wanted fugitives, suspected terrorists and missing persons.

Since 1996, at least 50 people have been captured directly because of the information on the Internet. But it's hard to say exactly how many, say the FBI, because in order to get credit, "the tipster would need to tell us that he or she saw the information on the FBI Web site".

The first widgets were launched in 2007 and were fairly simple in design - small boxes that linked back to the FBI's Web site pages.

The new, sleeker designed widgets were launched in November and includes links to news, multimedia and photos of the 10 Most Wanted and missing persons. It still directs Web surfers back to the FBI Web site.

In a project that started in Philadelphia in December 2007, the FBI now uses free space on thousands of digital billboards in over 40 states across the U.S. That effort has directly led to the capture of at least 18 fugitives. FBI.gov

D. Brian Blackwell