In India as a direct reaction to the increasing level of female harrassment and sexual assault four women have created the site Safecity.in. It empowers women with smartphones to update any harassment to the site that they have encountered and all in real-time. Each incident gets updated on a Google map to inform others about potentional trouble spots. The site uses the line “pin the creeps”. With the horrifying gang rape case from December still taking place this topic is red hot in India. We think this is a powerful use of real-time tools to help others. Gizmodo reports that critics point out that many Indian women don’t yet have access to a smartphone, so they question how effective it will be. We reckon any initiative that gets the issue front of mind has to be a step in the right direction.
The Bronx Zoo’s V-Day offer was epic. They’ve got 58,000 Madagascar roaches that don’t have names. Name your admirer (or ex-lover more likely) after this disgusting pest and donate a tenner to save the bugger.
Best GPS App For Dates With Strangers Nearby
I’m so far removed from the dating world but this seems uber-crazy to me: OK Cupid’s Crazy Blind Date sets you up with a complete stranger in real-time who just happens to be in your general vicinity.
Funniest Coupon Offer Related To V-Day Baby-Making Shenanigans
Ikea Australia has done the math (or has it?) and come up with an amusing Valentine’s Day offer—a free crib for babies born nine months from today. Clip out the voucher and keep it safe. A ridiculous but very PR-able idea.
Most Insightful V-Day Offer Despite V-Day Double-Priced Menus
Heineken is running a Twitter-based Valentine’s Day program that will hook up procrastinators with restaurant reservations last night. Nice idea for people who aren’t cynical of V-Day “special menus.”
Best Social Media Powered Iteration of Cilla Black’s Blind Date Franchise
One of our UG friends Damon Collins created this massive partnership and explained it best to me over email as he was 25 hours of continuous footage in an Urgent Genius manner in LA: “Blind Gate is a live event, a social video campaign and a competition… based on the premise that Air New Zealand’s Economy Skycouch makes long haul flights so good you could even fly to LA for a long weekend.
It’s snowing in London right now and I’ve got a new sled/sledge. Any takers? Sorry, kids asleep and I’m too busy looking at hundreds of pictures from a proper blizzard happening now in the States. As a huge snowstorm slammed the east coast of the US this weekend, NBC was delivering pics of it in real-time thanks to a partnership with Chute. NBC News created a“Stormgrams” map with photos of the storm submitted by users from around the country. The map draws in photos from users who submit them on Twitter with the hashtag #NBCNewsPics. Of course, many of the photos are of people having fun in the snow, but as this storm has killed 9 people so far, this tool can be a seriously helpful lifesaver in an emergency as well.
I love photo mashups like this and Chute seems to be the perfect platform for them. Why report the news when you can let the people paint a better picture of it for you with a bit of real-time Urgent Genius.
Seen any other weather-related bits of Urgent Genius? Let us know in the comments.
This is incredibly ambitious. It uses text-to-speech and avatar technology to turn your web sources into TV style News reports. It’s obviously in its infancy so the Newsreader characters look a little fake but it’s doing it all in real-time and that in itself is amazing. The platform is only now being opened up to beta testers so we’re excited to see where it will go. In our minds it’s a video version of Flipboard and has an element of NMA in terms of the CGI Newscasters. Check out the video below:
