[UCIMC-Tech] Cool new social justice apps

Fri Dec 16 07:46:26 CST 2011

Some great apps came out of this Knight/FCC challenge. Consider submitting
or pitching your own in the future. - Danielle

http://appsforcommunities.challenge.gov/updates/119

Last April, Knight Foundation and the Federal Communications Commission
challenged developers and citizens from across the country to develop apps
that deliver personalized, actionable information for the Apps for
Communities Challenge <http://appsforcommunities.challenge.gov/>. As a
result, we received almost 70 entries from around the U.S., from California
to Pennsylvania.

The challenge awards $100,000 in prizes to winning application developers
and is intended to bring together providers of public data, developers, and
traditionally underserved populations through a national contest.

Today, the FCC and the Knight Foundation are proud to announce the winners
of the Apps for Communities
Challenge<http://appsforcommunities.challenge.gov/>,
developers who answered the call to make local public information more
usable and more actionable, making the benefits of broadband more tangible
for all Americans. They’ve created creating apps that directly connect
citizens to public information, like social services, job listings, fresh
food locations, resources for the homeless and education training. Our
winners inspired us with their creativity and commitment to helping
communities in need across our country.

The wait is over, and the winners of the Apps for Communities
Challenge<http://appsforcommunities.challenge.gov/>include:

*$30,000 — Grand Prize:*

*Yak.bus** www.yakb.us by Ryan Resella, San Francisco, California.
*YAKB.us is a real time bus notification system that uses voice and SMS.
YAKB.us currently supports 3 different transit agencies: Arlington Transit
in Arlington County in Virginia, Charlottesville Area Transit in
Charlottesville, VA and Santa Clarita Transit in Santa Clarita, CA.

*$20,000 — Second Prize:*

*Homeless-SCC** http://homeless-scc.org/ by Curtis Chang, Consulting Within
Reach, California
*Homeless-SCC (Homeless - Santa Clara County) is a web based app that
connects homeless individuals with services according to specific needs and
eligibility. The app empowers local government, nonprofit agencies, and the
general public to collaborate around accurate and actionable information.
The app has been adopted by the largest county government in Northern
California, which includes the city of San Jose, and the leading local
agencies serving the homeless. It is currently in the rollout process. The
app was designed by Consulting Within Reach and funded by a local church
committed to serving the homeless.

*$10,000 — Third Prize*

*txt2wrk** http://www.txt2wrk.net by Dave Chiu, Roger Ly, Lawson Kight, and
Elise Ackerman, Oakland, California
*Txt2wrk helps parolees, homeless, and other job seekers compete on a more
level playing field by providing text-to-speech delivery of job postings on
any mobile phone. With txt2wrk, job seekers are alerted to new job
postings, can listen to job descriptions, and apply for jobs, 24 hours a
day, all without a connection to the internet.

*$1,000 X5 - RUNNERS UP:*

*PREPPED Kids** http://www.preppedkids.org/ by Damien Leri, Ian Bennett,
and Stanton Wortham, Pennsylvania
*PREPPED Kids is a web and mobile application designed to help low income
families more easily access preschool and pediatric (hence PREPPED)
services in their local communities. They chose these specific domains
because together they support the healthy development of children and both
have similar types of administrative hurdles for under-resourced families —
particularly if parents have low literacy and/or low English proficiency.
This web app is interactive and makes use of publicly available information
from education, health and social service agencies.

*PlacesKidsGo http://www.placeskidsgo.com** by Ningning Lin, Jerry Lin,
Andrew Chen
*PlacesKidsGo simplifies searches for appropriate children’s activities.
Currently, the site draws on hyper-local San Jose data, including program
information from nearby municipal recreation centers. After specifying an
activity category (e.g. tutoring, soccer, arts) and a location, users can
refine the list of choices by selecting the child’s age or the time of
interest.

*Access Together** http://www.accesstogether.org/ by John Schimmel, New
York City
*Access Together will enable people with disabilities, their family,
friends, and neighbors to crowd-source a community’s accessibility
information. Similar to a Foursquare check-in, a user will open Access
Together on their mobile phone’s web browser, find their location, and
supply answers to accessibility questions. For example “Is the entrance
wheelchair accessible?”

*PhillySNAP http://www.phillysnap.com* by Katey Metzroth, Mark Headd,
Deng-Shun Chang, Tim Wisniewski, New York City and PennsylvaniaSMS-based
PhillySNAP seeks to connect low-income, technologically isolated
Philadelphia residents with fresh local food sources. How it works:
PhillySNAP users text their address (house number and street) from a basic
cell phone to a local phone number 267-293-9387 and users receive the
following informative texts: 1. Address, hours, days, and distance to the
closest Farmer’s Market accepting SNAP benefits, 2. Address and distance to
the two nearest retail stores accepting SNAP benefits using the USDA API,
3. A randomized text about one of several programs to maximize SNAP
benefits through affordable fresh local food programs.

*Talk with Sam http://www.talkwithsam.com/** by Vikram Pant, Maryland
*Talk with Sam provides citizens the ability to see legislative bills near
them based on their location. It allows citizens to add comments around the
bill and use social media to share the bill to their social network(s).  It
provides a vote up / vote down ability and computes an approval rate based
on votes. Through community development many more features can be added to
improve end-user experience. Talk with Sam uses open data sets from
Sunlight Labs Open States and the 2010 Census to provide a location-based
lookup of bills (open, passed, failed ... in addition via subjects) in the
citizen's area based on geolocation.

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