iPhone owners to help clean up vomit

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By Chris Williams • Get more from this author

Posted in Government, 11th December 2008 11:42 GMT

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An army of busybodies wielding expensive portable telephones is set to be unleashed on Britain's streets from today, as part of a campaign to pester councils into fixing potholes and cleaning up vomit.

Digital democracy charity MySociety has launched an iPhone app version of its successful FixMyStreet website. FixMyStreet encourages users to upload pictures of graffiti, fly tipping, dog fouling and other eyesores and hazards. It passes the information on to authorities, and claims about half the reports result in action.

On iPhone the process has been simplified by combining the picture with GPS data to instantly report problems over the air, rather than having to visit the FixMyStreet website and pinpoint the location on a map. The relevant council will be alerted automatically.

A version of the app for Google Android phones is already in the works, but MySociety called for developers to help out porting FixMyStreet to other mobile operating systems. The charity's chief Tom Steinberg said: "We'd especially love to see Symbian, BlackBerry and Windows Mobile versions. It's a nice use of modern smartphones as it really needs camera, data and GPS, and converts all those toys into potentially cleaner streets."

He said MySociety expects to see the rate and range of reports to grow considerably now FixMyStreet is mobile. Some 30,000 have been submitted since the site's launch in February 2007.

Find out more or download the iPhone app here. ®

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