Well, it is a smart-phone application used in combating crime and is available for free on all major smart-phone platforms. It allows the public to request assistance from the police during an emergency with just a touch of a button.
When you are in an emergency situation, the last thing you want to do is to spend precious time calling the police, explaining the situation and trying to figure out and explain your exact location.
Add panic, stress and trauma to the equation and you have a chaotic phone call in a situation where you need to remain calm and focused. Anyone who has made a 999 call will appreciate the wisdom behind this.
For the record, 999 calls are administered by Telekom Malaysia, and not the police as is popularly misconstrued.
Thus precious time is wasted while they elicit your personal details and then re-route your call to the Police, Ambulance, Fire Rescue or Civil Defense, where you go through the whole frustrating process of giving your personal details and explaining your particular emergency all over again.
MyDistress eliminates all that unnecessary hassle, as with just the click of a button, a distress message is sent to the police with your location details and officers will be dispatched immediately to your location.
MyDistress is also useful in life-threatening situations like kidnapping, break-ins and robbery where you might not be able to speak on the phone due to panic or being in a dangerous situation.
As with all public support services, users are advised to use MyDistress responsibly. Any abuse and/or misuse of this free app will divert crucial resources of the police which can be better utilized for situations of real emergencies.
Understandably, MyDistress requires GPS functionality and data connectivity on your mobile phone to work.
It should only be used when a crime is happening, someone suspected of a crime is nearby, someone is injured, being threatened or in real danger.
An SOS call on MyDistress allows automatic real-time location updates to the PDRM command centre on the exact GPS coordinates retrieved from your phone.
You firstly need to register online by filling up your personal details: Name, MyKad number, mobile number and email. Optionally, you can also attach a photo of yourself for easier identification. This data will be sent to the police in moments of distress.
You can preset a number of locations into your phone, such as your home, your office or places that you frequent.
If you live or work inside a high rise building, it helps to preset the location with details such as floor number, unit number or any other relevant details. This helps the police to come directly to you instead of searching for you in the whole building.
When in distress outdoors, you hit “Personal Alert” and your details with the current GPS location is sent to the police.
When you are in any of your preset locations hit the “SOS” button and then choose your present location.
If you are kidnapped and being moved in a vehicle, your MyDistress application will continue sending your GPS location information so that the police will be able to track and rescue you.
Besides the above services, MyDistress also provides you with the location details of all police stations in Selangor complete with routes to get to your selected station. It also comes complete with a list of all the important contact numbers for the Selangor PDRM.
It should be noted that the app respects your privacy and only releases your data and tracks your location when you activate it during an emergency. Otherwise it remains dormant until needed.
Yoav told me that when they started they were focusing on hardware to manage energy consumption (like a thermostat). I’ve personally gone down that road and I can tell you it’s not fun. You get the energy monitor, hook it up, watch the kWh increase and decrease, make a few small changes, get bored and abandon it. The guys at Simple Energy realized that the ”the real problem was not the hardware; but rather, that people just didn’t care.” And why would they? Who’s interested in counting kiloWatts per hour?
To solve this problem they have created a platform that makes saving energy engaging. You can win prizes, compete with friends, post achievements and get boasting rights. In return you also save energy and see your bills go down. As for the impact on the environment? If they could deploy the platform across the US they would be able to take 100 coal-fired power plants completely off the grid!
Of course this solution comes with its challenges. Although the energy companies have all the data, relationships and motives they still have the strongest requirements and a lot of checks in place to mitigate risk. This sometimes can ruin the user experience. Although the users cannot initiate the implementation of the tool, if you work for an energy supplier you should send out an internal memo.
“We’re solving the problem of lack of access to affordable, easily accessible capital for entrepreneurs in developing counties – namely, Kenya to start, and eventually all over the world.”
To achieve this they’ve of course tapped into gaming and use metrics in order to send money directly to the cell phones of borrowers in and around Nairobi. While gaming is usually seen as a leisure activity and sometimes even as a waste of time, Seeds is using the 3 billion hours spent per week playing games worldwide toward a highly productive end that will help people. Whether you are playing their game or a game that uses their API, every in-game purchase you make provides capital to micro loans.
Rachel got interested in micro loans when she read about the effects they’ve had with women around the world while working as a Stock Trader. Working in a sexist environment and having seen what opportunities are available to improve the world she left and went on a global expedition to identify what she could do to help. When she later found out that the average social gamer was a 43-year-old woman, and the biggest purchasers of virtual gold in World of Warcraft are women over 35, she clearly made a connection. The result was Seeds, a startup helping women in a for-profit context.
We’ve all read how micro loans can turn around people’s lives, so start playing and help get people out of poverty.
Imagine being a doctor in an operating theatre. While operating and staying completely sterile, you realize that you need to go over some notes. You now have two options. Option 1, go out of the room, access the information, memorize it, clean up and go back to the room (a process that can take 20 minutes each time you need to look something up!!). Option 2, put touch screens inside the room and risk sterilization. Neither sounds like a good solution to an important problem. Here’s the solution that TedCas has created.
Caitria explained to me that the problem they are solving is three-fold. First of all, large aid organizations can’t manage spontaneous volunteers, accept unsolicited donation items or stay there forever. It’s down to the local organizers to step up and match the resources to the needs, without having any training or tools. They solve this problem by providing a tool-kit specifically for local mutual aid that does not require training.
Secondly, ”all disaster interest is front loaded. People are interested in helping for about a week, then interest declines, and the area has only the resources people dropped off to meet the next five years of recovery needs.”
They solve this problem by putting the system in place ahead of a disaster. This way if an unfortunate disaster happens, everything is set to meet the needs. Lastly, people don’t like to think of and prepare for disasters. The solution this time is the creation of a platform for residents that helps them reduce risk and give clear instructions in an emergency situation.
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