Walkie-Talkie App Tops the App Store as Hurricane Irma Approaches

Given the devastation caused by Category 4 hurricane Harvey in Houston, Texas, news of a new storm has people grappling with whatever means necessary to survive. Reports have indicated that evacuations have begun in the southern part of the U.S.

With emergency preparations well underway, a walkie-talkie app has suddenly claimed the top spot in Apple's App Store as people begin to consider how to contact their loved ones in the midst of the storm.

"It's centered on live voice. Our voice is how we most naturally communicate. A few seconds of voice has so much information on emotion, education, gender, what part of the country are they from," said Zello's chief executive officer Bill Moore, as reported by USA Today.

"Many of us have friends and family in Houston," said Moore. "More broadly, technology like Zello allows people to solve things closer to the problem, where it's so effective."

The main feature of Zello is that it lets people use their phones as a way to communicate like one would on a two-way radio. It simply needs a network or Wi-Fi connection. Furthermore, it seems that users can automatically utilize voice communication, which could save some precious time that making a phone call could waste.

Currently, Zello has reported that they were seeing about 7,000 new registrations as a side effect of the preparations being done over at the Caribbean and Florida. Although they have not seen this much activity since it was first released in the App Store, the developer team is working day and night to make sure that they too are prepared for the increased usage expected when Hurricane Irma hits the country.

Zello is a free app and it does not bother its users with advertisements. It lets its users record their voice messages to be transmitted, as well as use their cameras to take photos that they can share to everyone on the channel they are subscribed to.