Fighting bike theft 140 characters at a time

This weekend I sat down and integrated a half-dozen city-specific Twitter accounts into StolenBicycleRegistry.com.

I wrote a quick post about using Twitter to find stolen bikes a while ago, but I thought I'd integrate the idea into the SBR and light up a bunch of my own. I've also had a few more chances to poke at the Twitter and Bit.ly APIs lately and, man, they are a pleasure to work with.

So, what does all this mean? It means that when stolen bikes from certain cities are listed in the SBR, these bike details are also tweeted to a city-specific Twitter accounts for greater exposure. People in those cities can follow those stolen bike tweets - and this greatly increases the chance of recovery.

Here's the current list of cities with stolen bike Twitter accounts:

stolenbikesBRK - lists bikes stolen in Berkeley, CA.
stolenbikesTUC - lists bikes stolen in Tucson, AZ.
stolenbikesCHI - lists bikes stolen in Chicago, IL.
stolenbikesPHL - lists bikes stolen in Philadelphia, PA.
stolenbikesSFO - lists bikes stolen in San Francisco, CA.
stolenbikesSAN - lists bikes stolen in San Diego, CA.
stolenbikesSEA - lists bikes stolen in Seattle, WA.

It's easy to add in new cities, so after I give these a bit of of testing I'll likely light up many, many more. If you're interested in having one for your city, drop me a line.

Please help fight bike theft and follow these Twitter accounts! Please help spread the word!

"Bike thief arrested, was carrying a .357"

Here's a great reason not to try and recover a stolen bike on your own.

See: Bike thief arrested, was carrying a .357:

UPDATE: I found my stolen bike posted on Craigslist. I reported it to the LAPD. They set up a sting. A week later, I’m picking up my bike at the LAPD Property Dept. Amazing. The seller was arrested. He was armed with a 357. If you ever see your bike on Craigslist, don’t even think of getting it yourself.

Yikes. If you find your bike on Craigslist, folks, call the cops.

Innovative bike lock design is made of win

I got to see this lock up close and in person at the Oregon Handmade Bicycle Show and I was kicking myself for only having my horrible Blackberry camera on me at the time.

Fortunately, someone has a video of this fantastic lock on Vimeo. (Thanks J.Dunn @ embrocationcyclingjournal.com!)

Meet Tony Pereira's integrated bike lock, which absolutely nails a lot of the things I wrote about in "Building a better bike lock", a post I wrote back in 2008.

It's simple: it's in a great location - almost better than the traditional U-lock.

It's functional: the heavy mass of the traditional U-lock is eliminated, making it lightweight.

It's integrated: to destroy this lock would be to destroy part of the bike itself, thus reducing its value to a thief.

Beautiful. Brilliant. Functional. WIN!

Tony Pereira's Magical Locking Bicycle from j. dunn on Vimeo.

Localized stolen bike listings popping up all over Twitter

I'll admit it, I don't really get the Twitter.

I say this in the crotchety, get-off-my-lawn voice of an old-school computer nerd who used to rock the 300 baud modem back in the 90's. As someone who took to the internet very early, it's a little weird to watch the masses fall in love with every new technology that comes along. For me, Twitter is no exception.

I will admit, though, I've come to respect a few applications that Twitter does well: Taco trucks, lost FOUND friends, and finding stolen bikes.

All the localized stolen bike Twitter feeds popping up lately are awesome. Twitter is a great free way to alert lots of people about your stolen bike, for free, and very fast.

Here's a quick overview of all the local stolen bike Twitter accounts I'm aware of:

The Boston/HUB Twitter is a byproduct of the Boston, MA putting some real thought and manpower into making their city more bike-friendly. I'm amazed and happy that they have someone on staff to run this, and dozens of other cities should be jealous.
Boston, MA : http://twitter.com/Stolenbikesbos has 329 followers.

The Portland stolen bikes Twitter is a byproduct of the code I wrote for bikeportland.org, run by Jonathan Maus, czar of all things bike-y in the great town of Portland, OR.
Portland, OR: http://twitter.com/Stolenbikespdx has 191 followers.

The Austin Stolen bikes Twitter is courtesy of the ever-awesome ATXBS.com, who take their anti-bike theft duties very seriously.
Austin, TX: http://twitter.com/atxstolenbikes has 50 followers.

And StolenbikesLA? I have no idea who runs this, but good on them. StolenbikesLA, if you're reading this, drop me a line.
Los Angeles, CA : http://twitter.com/stolenbikesla has 154 followers.

Did I miss any other stolen bikes Twitter folks? Please let me know.

As for stolenbicycleregistry.com, I'll be tying the SBR's per-city stolen bike feeds into Twitter once I get a few spare hours to sit down and bang out the code. Because I really, really like where all these hyper-local registries are going.

-bhance