Oil Recovery Effort Gets An App

With news this past weekend that British Petroleum has failed once again in its efforts to stop the massive oil leak spewing into the Gulf of Mexico and the company’s disclosure that a new plan could, in the short term, cause even more oil to leak, discontent continues to ferment across the gulf region. Locals, environmentalists, and members of the media have complained that BP has no clue how to stop the leak. They believe BP is effectively limiting access to the affected area in an effort to control the spin on what has been termed the greatest natural disaster in this country’s history. But in an age of Twitter and Facebook the general consensus is that information wants to be free and no man, corporation, or government controls that flow. Sure enough in the wake of this disaster internet savvy entrepreneurs are stepping forward with crowd sourcing solutions to hold BP accountable. In response to these events, Appcelerator today launched a free app called Oil Reporter that allows users to provide eyewitness accounts to assist response organizations in tracking and responding to the ongoing crisis. With a couple of simple taps, iPhone and Android smartphone users can use Oil Reporter to describe what they see in front of them; the levels and density of the oil, and whether they see injured or dead wildlife. They can even attach photos or video, which are geo-tagged and time/date stamped for accurate reporting. Lastly, the app allows a user to share what they've found via Twitter. The company says that crowd sourced data collected from the app will be shared in accessible data feeds.

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