I recently attended a talk by David Hume, a BC government expert in civic engagement. He gave the Apps 4 Climate Action contest as an interesting form of civic engagement. The contest submissions are in and people’s choice voting has started. I’ve reviewed the apps:

The Climate Reports

Given that the Net is now full of data visualization toys like Gapminder, visualizing single datasets in a PDF is fail.

MathTappers

Your app demo is a video?! Fail.

The Dictionary of the Climate Debate

Why is this an app? Fail.

Rain Caddy

I love that the app loudly recommends using a tin can instead of this fail.

Save the Rain

Cool trick to calculate roof area, but this app doesn’t really do much.

GreenMoney

First fail for requiring sign-up. Second fail for not understanding anything about economics.

Etho App

Vaporware. I hope they failed their course.

Smoggy

This game sucks and just has some data bolted on. Fail.

Waterly

Looked pretty good until it told me I should consider watering my lawn today even though it’s illegal. Fail.

Canadian Greenhouse Gas Emissions by Industrial Sector

This isn’t an app. Fail.

ShowMeBC

Requires Microsoft Silverfail.

Vancouver Bike Routes

Useful until Google Maps rolls out biking directions for Vancouver. Fails to use climate change data as per contest rules.

BCEmissions.ca

They don’t use the best visualization for some of the data, but the real fail here is the lack of comparison to other municipalities.

VELO

This commercial app was launched in fall of 2009, which is allowed by the contest but lame. The app also fails to make sense.

The Effects of Rising Sea Levels on Vancouver due to Global Warming

An amaturely low amount of effort went into this failapp.

VanTrash

Wonderful app and receiving lots of great press, but it clearly violates the terms of the contest by not using climate change data.

My #1 pick goes to Save the Rain followed by BCEmissions.ca. No other apps deserve anything. Given that the top prize is $5500, I’m surprised that the competition was so weak. (I was ineligible to participate.)