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Crowdsourcing city issues - Street Bump and others...
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You're driving casually down a street and - BAM! - you hit a nasty pothole nature has gouged through the seasons. Sadly this happens too often, and too often they are not reported because it's just too bothersome to do so. However, what if you could have a digital recorder on your trips that would record these road issues?... Well, how about having your smartphone do this job for you? Connected Bits, a company in Boston has already published a Street Bump application in use in Boston and this information is being fed back to Boston's Mayor's Office of New Urban Mechanics. The Street Bump application records your trips around town, and reports any sudden changes through your smartphone's accelerometer. |
Privacy Matters...?
Of course, there will be some of us that will cry foul... the tool does record the location of the pothole, after all; if we extrapolate that, this means your overall trips are possibly recorded and your vehicle's location is tracked by prying eyes...
Be an everyday hero!
On the flipside, people are complaining that taxes are not being allocated properly (and city officials are lining their pockets... Detroit being a sad example) - so, why not do our part and report as accurately as possible issues we encounter in our city? By using the power of your smartphone, you actually leverage the technology at hand, similar to SETI or Folding programs running on 'empty' CPU time on personal computers.
Beyond that application, the Spot Reporters application does transform citizens into issue reporters. Go out and report these grafittis, pile of garbage or broken equipment...
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