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Safecity Crowdsources India's Sexual Assault Incidents To Highlight Danger Zones
Four Indians are exposing India’s sexual harassment hotspots via Safecity, a website for victims to anonymously report when and where they were abused. The founders hope that it could be the first step to address the cultural stigma of reporting assaults.
Social entrepreneurs Alsa D’Silva, Saloni Malhotra, Surya Velamuri, and Aditya Kapoor also launched a campaign to map 100 unsafe spots in the country’s two biggest cities — where a fatal gang-rape alerted the world to the dangers women may face travelling around the subcontinent’s most populated cities.
The team created the website for women to report any type of violation, including men who take their pictures, indecent exposure, and rape. They were prompted to take action by infamous events last December, when six men travelling on a bus abducted and raped a 23-year old physiotherapy intern, who ultimately died from injuries sustained during the attack.
Safecity asks women to disclose the type of incident that took place, the time and location. Since the site was launched earlier this year there have been 185 reports from all over India, including events dating back to 1991. The reports are listed on the site and also visually represented on a Google map.
There are eight reports of rape, and the majority of complaints detail groping, ogling and inappropriate comments.
D’Silva said technology has provided a way to break the cultural stigma attached to reporting crimes.
“Police reform, judicial reform, those are all great things but given the population of the country, I don’t think the system can handle it,” D’Silva said. “We need new and innovative ways to facilitate a cultural shift.”
The crowdsourced approach has achieved mixed results in other countries.
Egypt’s HarassMap has logged over 1,200 reports since the mobile app was launched in 2010. It has helped inform volunteer efforts to address the issue, as well as raise greater awareness, however, politicians have largely ignored the site. However, a New York City Council Speaker recently helped launch New York’s Hollaback! updated mobile app, where users can anonymously log cases of sexual harassment and report these directly to Council reps.
For Safecity’s D’Silva, crowdsourcing the information starts to solve one of the major obstacles to justice for sexual assault victims: the underreporting of the crime.
Official data in India shows that rape cases have jumped almost 875% over the past 40 years — from 2,487 in 1971 to 24,206 in 2011, according to a CNN report. Comparatively, in 2010 the United States — with a third of India’s population — reported 270,000 completed, attempted or threatened rape or sexual assaults. The 90% differential is due to India’s faulty statistics, campaigners contend.
D’Silva said rape in India is underreported for three main reasons: Women are often afraid; the data is manipulated by police, who usually downgrade complaints in order to protect their performance metrics; and victims are often deterred by delayed justice in India’s clogged court system.
Safecity’s anonymous reporting mechanism is necessary to cultivate a culture that encourages women to come out, she said.
“One is the systemic issue of this being a part of our culture. The men feel it’s their right to subject women and if we stop allowing them, or giving them the liberty to do this, that’s the first step to change.”
“Also we can freely crowdsource the information, so why not do it? People should start using data for their own protection and safety. It’s not possible to only rely on the government and police for solutions.”
D’Silva is also a director at Mumbai social organisation Haiyya!, which is developing a mobile app — using skills contributed by the codeforindia project — that will send an emergency signal to other app users in the vicinity of an attack.
While technology has proven its ability to deliver increasingly efficient computer products and online applications (as well as creating endless ways to completely waste our time), Safecity, codeforindia, and even Nextdoor, among a host of others, are using these democratic digital tools to start to address fundamental social and structural problems.
These efforts often complement the dedication of volunteers in the real world.
Safecity is now looking for ten volunteers to help map 100 unsafe spots in Mumbai and Delhi, the country’s capital.
It’s a timely campaign. Last week five men raped a 22-year old Indian photojournalist in Mumbai, the country’s commercial and entertainment capital which was previously declared safe for women. D’Silva said she works very close to the isolated Shakti Mills compound in Lower Parel, where the men bound and dragged the photographer, on an assignment with a male colleague. She said that people check TripAdvisor before they visit a particular hotel or resort, and that women should take the same precautions when visiting unknown areas in India.
“We check out restaurants, move reviews, holiday destinations, so why not check out the safety rating of a new neighbourhood we’re visiting?”
Apple Reportedly Acquires Swedish Firm AlgoTrim, A Company That Does Mobile Media And Data Compression
Apple has acquired AlgoTrim, a Swedish startup that builds codecs and designs solutions that maximize performance of data, mobile imaging, video and computer graphics while minimizing memory requirements, according to a new report by Swedish emerging industry news service Rapidus. The acquisition would help Apple in terms of allowing it to build more efficient media deliver for mobile devices, that use less bandwidth while preserving quality.
The last major news from AlgoTrim came out back in March 2012, when it announced that it would be powering a Photo Album app for Japanese carrier KDDI, via a JPEG processor it created that could improve JPEG processing up to six times vs. traditional LibJPEG standard processing tech used in Android devices. AlgoTrim has been around since 2005, and its flagship product, the Code Compression Library (designed to reduce the size of mobile device firmware) has been in use on mobile devices since 2006.
AlgoTrim deals in all kinds of data compression, and promised to deliver imaging solutions that would deliver “modern computational photography” to mobile devices. Computational photography essentially uses sensors, computing, actuators, intelligent lights and other components to go beyond the current limitations of digital photography, which is based primarily on its analog, film-based precedent. The basic idea is to provide much more accurate images, with sophisticated lighting and vastly improved rendering by straying away from a strictly 2D, pixel-based model of image representation.
The work that AlgoTrim is doing in digital imaging could be very useful to Apple as a means to help the camera powers of its mobile devices jump to the next level. Not to mention that the rest of the company’s tech is generally useful, if extremely technical, in terms of helping to improve the overall operating efficiency of mobile devices. In essence, AlgoTrim focuses on getting more out of mobile processors while also chasing ever-lower power demands.
Rapidus reports that AlgoTrim co-founder, CEO and head of software development Anders Holtsberg recently moved to Silicon Valley and is reachable via Apple’s own central telephone switchboard. Calls to AlgoTrim, as well as AlgoTrim incubator Minc, were met with the response that no one was allowed to discuss anything about an Apple acquisition at this time, a standard response for smaller companies snapped up by Apple. Apple itself hadn’t responded to request for comment as of this writing.
An AlgoTrim acquisition is very much in keeping with Apple’s acquisition strategy; the company has already acquired six companies this year according to reports, including a number of startups dealing with maps, transit and location, along with one semiconductor firm. Typically, Apple has pursued lower profile targets in deals that are seldom formally announced, opting to pick up smaller startups that have the expertise needed to accomplish one of its own goals, rather than purchasing larger companies that are extremely successful in their own right and trying to continue to run that product, as Facebook has done with Instagram, for instance.
Lime&Tonic Launches iOS Digital Concierge App To Help Affluent Users Fill Their Social Agendas
You live in London. You have bags of disposable income. But you just can’t find the time to work out how to spend your spare time. Don’t despair first-world problem-ers, Lime&Tonic, a new iOS app, has you covered. Described as a digital concierge service for the more affluent, the app provides personalised recommendations of “unforgettable” experiences to help users fill their social agendas.
The curated experiences — such as dining, afternoon tea and other affluent people’s activities – are provided by the premium merchants that Lime&Tonic works with, such as Michelin restaurants or 5-star hotel brands. These personalised offers are also how the UK startup generates revenue, of course.
Upon registering with the app, users fill out their personal profile with information such as any food requirements, or — and I kid you not — how they like their coffee, steak cooked, or any favourite cocktails. Lime&Tonic’s algorithm then kicks in to provide those personalised recommendations, once or twice per day, of things to do. In addition, Lime&Tonic shares elements of a user’s profile data with its partner merchants to ensure the best possible experience. The app also has a built-in calendar to help users plan upcoming events.
Competitor-wise, Lime&Tonic says it does’t see itself as competing with traditional concierge companies who are usually paid by the end consumer for a completely bespoke service. Instead, the startup is talking up itself as a “tech play” by providing a large marketplace of pre-vetted and curated experiences which can then be tailored and personalised utilising the data provided by the end user.
To that end, Sosh in the U.S., and UK startup Yplan could be considered as Lime&Tonic’s closest competitors. However, Lime&Tonic says it differentiates itself by focusing on unique and personalised experiences rather than mainstream offerings.
In addition, unlike say the Groupons of this world, Lime&Tonic does not require merchants to provide discounts to be listed by the service, but instead guns for unique value-adds or perks for its members that aren’t available to the general public.
It’s also powered by recurring rather than limited time inventory (e.g. event tickets), meaning that once an experience is added to Lime&Tonic, it’s typically available for 6-18 months, and for repeat purchase. The company says this means that Lime&Tonic functions more like a vetted market place of premium experiences where merchants have access to a dashboard and can turn seasonal experiences on/off, and run special promotions, rather than a flash sales site that requires a large sales force to continuously win over new merchants or offers. In other words, Lime&Tonic’s model is potentially a lot more scalable.
As well as London, Lime&Tonic is available in Dubai, Prague, Rio, Sydney, Amsterdam, and Melbourne. It claims 71,000 paying customers to date, and currently works with over 200 merchants, offering 850 experiences across the cities it targets. The startup plans to add another 3 cities by year’s end, and be in a total of 20 cities by the end of 2014.
Lime&Tonic’s revenue model is straightforward: It makes money by charging merchants a listing fee or taking a commission on any subsequent transactions.
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