AboutOne.com Offers Support to Australian Flood Victims

PHILADELPHIA, Jan. 28, 2011 /PRNewswire/ -- Earlier this month, as Australians in Queensland, Victoria and three other states suffered the worst flooding in decades, Joanne Lang, founder and CEO of Philadelphia-based web startup AboutOne.com (http://www.AboutOne.com), received an email from Sandra High, a young Australian mother interested in signing up for AboutOne's service. "You may be aware of the terrible floods happening in Australia over the last couple of weeks. Whole towns have been totally submerged, houses destroyed, and sadly people have been lost and thousands are living in evacuation shelters," wrote High. "I've been thinking about how terrible for them, not only to have endured the trauma they have, but that their memories and documents are gone, right when they need them for insurance claims. This is why I'm interested in AboutOne. I want to be able to access all of my family's information anywhere, anytime." Lang, whose online service has not yet been released in Australia, immediately asked her developers to modify the system so that it would be available to High and other Australian customers. Lang also launched plans to make free AboutOne subscriptions available to victims of the disaster through the company's new AboutOne Helps program.

Lang is committed to making life easier for others, both through her company's online family information management service and now through its AboutOne Helps charity program. She says this new program is a good fit with AboutOne's stated mission to provide a service that prepares people to respond effectively in an emergency and to promote positive change in the community. "We believe that businesses must take an active role in social and environmental issues, and AboutOne's philanthropic programs are a means of meeting this expectation," states Lang. "I was very grateful that Sandra took the time to contact me about how well AboutOne addresses the need for emergency preparedness."

AboutOne's designers worked closely with professional organizers and emergency preparedness experts to ensure that the service would provide customers with ready access to information necessary for making informed decisions and responding quickly to emergencies. AboutOne's ability to provide a highly secure location where customers can quickly and easily access household information, from any computer or cell phone with Internet access, holds great appeal to professional organizers like Laura Lawrence, host of The Organized Woman Show (http://thewinonline.com/shows/organized-woman-show), who stresses the importance of emergency preparedness: "Do something to prepare! It doesn't have to be perfect and it will bring you one step closer to being prepared!"

NAPO Board Member Regina Lark (http://www.AClearPath.net) shared, "I live in Los Angeles, and I am fully aware that the 'big one' can hit at any time. Although I don't mean to scare my clients when I talk about preparedness, being organized also means being ready for disaster. AboutOne gives you everything you need to preserve family memories and important household information."

AboutOne makes it easy to digitally preserve and protect family photos, videos, and written memories in the cloud. According to Cathi Nelson, founder of the Association of Personal Photo Organizers (http://www.personal-photo-organizer.com), "Family photos are irreplaceable, yet too often, people postpone organizing. If you take the time to store them safely in a secure location like AboutOne, you don't have to worry that those memories will be lost forever if disaster strikes."

Lang, who will launch her product at Venturebeat DEMO and her company at SXSW, is hard at work, finalizing details of the AboutOne Helps program. Right now, anyone interested in participating may contact her directly at [email protected].

About AboutOne.com

AboutOne (http://www.AboutOne.com) is a secure online service that makes it easier to manage family life by providing one convenient location to quickly and easily store and manage family memories (text, photos and videos) and household information (health, possession, and education records, contacts and more) and providing the ability to access this data, at home or away, with a computer, cell phone, or other web-enabled device.

For more information, contact Katrine Kubis at [email protected] or 1.801.797.9333.

This press release was issued through eReleases(R).  For more information, visit eReleases Press Release Distribution at http://www.ereleases.com.

SOURCE AboutOne.com