iPothole

So ADB's doppelganger The Surly Inebriated Manager sent a quick little note this morning:

Hey, check out the new iBurgh App for the iPhone. Pretty sweet!

Tim McNulty has the non-fanboi story:

An application called iBurgh became available via Apple's iTunes store Saturday night that allows residents to snap iPhone photos of problems such as potholes and graffiti and send them to the city's 311 complaint system, embedded with Global Positioning System data with the problem's exact location. The free application, designed by YinzCam Inc. of Squirrel Hill, will issue the reports to city departments for review, just as the city's current 311 complaint phone line does...

Checking out SIM's screenshots, it does in fact seem to be pretty sweet, if simplistic as far as iPhone apps go. It's good start to be sure, although a more useful app would be a PDA, streamlined version of the City's webpage, without all the needless flashing and blinking and Darlene Harris.

The real test, of course, is going to be how well the human end of this experiment performs, and whether 311 will be as responsive as it is to telephone, web, or friend-of-councilperson submissions.

Actually, what I'd really like to know (and what would be fascinating to find out) is where these iPhone generated complaints are coming from. This could be a perfect tool for the migration patterns of the elusive Yinzer-Hipster Douchebag (or "Yipzter-bag"). It'll sure beat setting traps of PBR out on Penn Avenue during the Unblurred events.