Grappettite, a Karachi based software company, has brought home the South Asian mBillionth award for their initiative, Halaat-O-Meter.
A crowd sourced platform for sharing real time information during times of unrest, which is pretty much every day in some part of Pakistan these days, it allows citizens to update everyone else about the conditions in their neighbourhoods.
So if an area is cordoned off due to protests, roads are blocked because of the countless VIP movements or somebody has decided to go on a shooting spree or blow themselves up, you can update others and warn them off. The contributions of users show up on a map which is visible to anyone.
The social impact of the platform was recognized at the mBillionth Awards, which are a dedicated platform to explore the latent potential of mobile and telecom sectors in 8 countries across South Asia. In the 2014 edition of the event, there were over 300 nominations across 11 categories.
Halaat-O-Meter won in the m-Inclusion category along with ‘BhashaHelakuru’ from Sri Lanka and ‘Accessible Places’ from India. Other winners from Pakistan at the event included ‘Pashto Multi-Purpose Directory’ in the m-Culture & Heritage category and ToffeeTV in the m-Entertainment category.
Halaat-O-Meter has an Android app on the Play Store accompanied with a site, both of which can be used to post and receive updates. An iPhone version is in the works. Just use your Facebook account to login and start using the platform. Usually we’d be critical of only using Facebook as authentication but in this case it might cut down the bogus reports.
The team behind Halaat-O-Meter is currently working on a reputation system for users, experts reporting and the ability to advise on security trends.
Very good! It can help and save time for thousands of people. We always check route before we leave home for office. Unfortunately there is always disturbance in some part of Karachi.
Authentication only via FB ID? That’s a potential deal-breaker.
Given the naughty vibes that our public is genetically endowed with, I think its a nice check
The website is dead. No use.
Hi I’m Amjad and working in Grappetite as Operations Manager. Right now we are working on it and come up with version 2 soon. If you have any idea or any feedback, you can just send us at [email protected]
Was thinking there should be an app to notify us about “Dharnas” and “Rallys” before we go out and and stuck in one, and here it is, No doubt developers especially Pakistanis hardly miss an idea.