Tag Archives: crowdsource

Public Eye Bangalore Traffic Police.png

Bangalore Police launches Public Eye, Crowdsourced traffic violation reporting

Public Eye Bangalore Traffic Police.png

Crowdsourcing has been the buzzword from last few years and there are range of services varying from software testing to funding and it does seem to fuel a lot of things. Not to be left behind, Bangalore Traffic Police(BTP) have now launched a crowd sourced policing wherein the public can bring to their notice the traffic violations taking place in Bengaluru/Bangalore city!

Called as Public Eye, this service has been launched today and is hosted at their website.

Users will need to enter details like Vehicle number, type of violation, violation time and date, location. To curb misuse those reporting the violations will need to enter their details like mobile number, email address and optional remarks and there is a facility to upload images as well.

BTP already has a good number of camera installations at various junctions in the Bengaluru city and they regularly use the footings to identify offenders apart from uploading some of these at their Facebook page for educating public. Recently they have equipped their staff with digital cameras for recording offences. Notices would then be sent to the offender’s addresses later.

BTP were also the first in the country to use Blackberry phones (with a Bluetooth enabled portable printing) for delivering challans on the spot, for violations. A lot of this digital initiative enabled users to view their vehicle details online, for any violations.

We will have to wait and see how much of this Public Eye will aid in bringing control and reducing chaos on roads.

Related:

Open Signal Map Web

An App To Check Signal Strength Right From Your Phone

Open Signal Map Web

Ever come across a situation when you just want to have a quick chat with your family, friends or colleagues but dismayed to see no or very less signal strength? Or is it only for you that signal strength is less ?

Fortunately there are apps that you can now use to check the strength of your carrier before thinking of number portability. Open Signal map is one such app that is available for Android phones. It can not only measure the signal strength of GSM/EDGE/3G connections but also Wi-Fi signals at your office or homes. You also have the option to upload these data to their servers so that the database is updated and help in mapping of towers. The web version of this tool is platform independent and can be accessed from PC etc. Its a crowd-sourced portal that tells you about the density of the towers, type of technologies like 2g/3g, operator coverage and more in around you and these are sourced from users, in other words crowdsourced.

I had this situation where the GSM signal strength on my phone was drastically down at my home, and what I thought to be a temporary issue dragged on for days. From my previous readings I could make the tower (based on cell id) to which my phone was connected and also its location using the integration with google maps. With this data in hand I could better explain and demand the action from my service provider. Strangely, after everything was set right the service provider’s field engineer came to check on the problem!

Open Signals Map Open Signal Map

 Here is what this app is capable of:

– Signal direction
– Signal graph
– Map and radar views of cell towers & WiFi routers
– Detailed signal strength
– Save data to SD card
– Widgets (in beta)
– Save wifi access points and maps of their locations by running the speed test
– History of signal readings