By Michael Santo
Editor-in-Chief, RealTechNews

It’s not ready for prime time yet, but this would be the perfect sort of app to handle updates on the swine flu outbreak which is sweeping across the globe. Microsoft on Tuesday announced a new private beta, of a product called Vine. Vine is sort of social networking, but focused on keeping you, your friends, and family in touch during emergencies. The beta test starts in Seattle.

Further beta testing will begin soon in an unnamed rural Midwest community as well as an unnamed isolated island community.

As I’ve written previously, Twitter and SMS are great ways to communicate during an emergency as text messages piggyback on the signal and use very little bandwidth.

Microsoft’s Vine is aimed to help in such crises, as well, but it’s more than just an emergency system. Think of it as social networking with a twist.

Use the dashboard to know what’s happening. Information associated with the places you have chosen will appear on your map, including articles from 20,000 news and public safety sources. Information from people you care about, such as alerts and reports, will appear on the dashboard too.

Send and receive alerts. Organize people into groups – the sports team you coach, people who live nearby, family far away, special friends, and emergency contacts. Each person defines how they want to receive alerts – through e-mail, a text message, or on their computer. Reach them quickly using alerts.

Post reports. You decide what you want to share with whom, and then the information is sent directly to their personal dashboard. Check in safe and well to let your family know you are okay, let trusted neighbors know you’re headed out of town, keep people informed of situations that matter, or share general information like the team practice schedule for the week.

On your computer, you download the dashboard application, and login with your Windows Live ID (yes, you can’t get away from Windows Live). The UI is a map (as shown above); geo-tagged notifications pop-up if a news story or public safety announcement (PSA) happens in locations you specify.

Meanwhile, your contacts are on your dashboard as well, and you can view alerts that they’ve sent you. You specify how you want to receive alerts: via PC, text messages, or email. You can also “check in” yourself via the dashboard, text message, or email, to let people know you are OK in the event of some emergency.

It all sounds very useful, and according to the Seattle Times, came about as a reaction to Hurricane Katrina:

Inspiration for Vine came from the confusion during Hurricane Katrina. Tammy Savage, a Microsoft manager who has led experimental Web efforts for the company, spent two years researching technologies for communities to communicate and prepare for emergencies. That led to a concept Microsoft calls “societal networking.”