Apps Category Archive

Citizens connect!

1 Reply Jonny Hankins

This week I would like to take a look at a couple of technological and social systems that use Apps and are designed to improve urban living in cities. If you have ever asked yourself how technology can improve our lives then the following might be of interest to you.

The first thing I would like to look at is called Citizens Connect, a system that operates in Boston in the USA (where I currently live). According to the website “Citizens Connect enables real-time collaboration with citizens, “deputizing” mobile users to become the city’s eyes and ears. Citizens report potholes, graffiti, and other issues from anywhere in the city using their mobile phone”

And this is how it works, and it is a simple system if you have a reasonably good mobile phone. While walking or driving through the city you see something that you feel should be reported to the City Council, an abandoned car, vomit on the pavement, water gushing from a hole in the road, cat stuck up a tree, that kind of thing. You take a photo of it, upload it on the City of Boston website, they show it on a public map and (hopefully) send somebody out to fix the problem.

A map showing reported problems on Citizens Connect

I personally believe that a person is much more likely to report something if they can take a photo and send it off in real time than if they have to go home, look up a phone number and make a call. Could this be a fist step in making the citizen and the state more communicative and more responsible?

The City of Boston also offers another App called Street Bump. This is even simpler to use, you download it into your phone and it monitors your movement as you drive round the city. When you near a hole in the road you slow down, as does everyone else passing that spot, and this information is used to determine the quality of the road surface.

If you think your local council should try such a scheme, you can direct them towards Click Fix, a commercial system that is currently on sale and operated by several cities and other organizations. This is not a recommendation however, but their work does look very interesting.

Next week I will continue this theme with a look at an interesting university course all about “Urban Cybernetics” that is run at Harvard University. Some of the projects may offer great things for the future.

MetaTrader 5 – Android App Review

3 Replies Steve August

Most people consider Forex trading as a new way to make some easy money. However, it is a high risk investment. Forex market is very volatile and highly speculative. A 3% change in the value of the currency will make you rich or break you. MetaTrader 5 is one of the popular Forex trading applications available across various platforms. As I had been using its iOS and PC counterparts, I gave a try to MetaTrader 5 for Android.

MetaTrader 5 allows users to connect to a broker, receive quotes, make deals, and check trading history all inside the app and works just like the PC version – only now users can trade on the go and be informed on how all of their trades are going. A good thing about this free app is, it allows users to do all kinds of things and make money and don’t charge anything for them to do it.

A screenshot of MetaTrader 5

It can tell when you are using a tablet rather than a phone and will adjust its size and charts to fit the needs of the device. Many apps on iOS do this thing seamlessly, but only a few on Android care to do. Everything is set up in a way that everyone can understand and make the best decisions on what they want to buy or sell.

A screenshot of MetaTrader 5 trading stats

Users can connect to their account or create a demo account to run the app. They can also connect multiple accounts to the application at once so that they can buy and sell on different accounts without the need to sign out and sign in to another. The charts are real time and interactive with a zoom and a scroll. Metatrader 5 comes with the 14 most popular indicators to let users keep a watch on markets. On the downside, this app cannot be moved to SD card, so it uses the device memory space. It also consumes a lot of battery life for real time updating.

MetaTrader 5 requires Android 2.2 or up. As I said, this application is also available for Windows PCs and iOS devices. MetaTrader 4 is another interesting option to mobile Forex trading. If time permits I will come up with the review for the same.

Texting While Driving

9 Replies Jonny Hankins

Communication, communication, communication, but at what cost? In many countries it is illegal to use the phone while driving the car, but many people still do so. Maybe using the phone doesn’t seem such a risky thing to do, but texting?

Figures suggest that many accidents are caused by texting drivers, and many companies are offering possible solutions to the problem. Some Apps block phones that are moving through their GPS systems, but this also blocks passenger phones and cannot tell when the owner is on a bus or train, so have override options. Maybe this override option would be attempted while driving however, and that might be dangerous.

A somewhat typical sight?

Other systems make it so difficult to access the texting facility that it would be impossible to use while driving. Well this is all well and good but a teenager that NEEDS to send a text will find a way, and persistence might not be a good thing at this point. The more difficult it is to enter then the more concentration required, and probably more accidents and deaths caused.

Many of the systems available today also require downloading, so they only work in the phone that carries the App. These systems only work if somebody has downloaded it into a phone (typically their teenage son or daughter’s) and the user cannot work out how to disable it, or doesn’t have another phone or friends for just such emergencies.

More sophisticated systems plug directly into the car and broadcast directly to the driver’s seat, but here hardware is required and other problems of system compatibility are raised.

Although I make light of the situation we are addressing an extremely serious issue. If behaviour does not change than these systems may actually put more people at risk, and that is obviously not to anyone’s advantage.

Many other systems that read out text messages or allow you to dictate them are also available, but I am raising a finger at systems that aim to prohibit rather than adapt behaviour, sold to worried parents that think they might be able to stop their children doing something, and not at those that are aimed at responsible drivers.

So does anybody have experience either as a parent or teenage user that they would like to share with the community?

For a few references and more discussion see this article on NBC News.