New application to help find nearest water fountain

Feeling thirsty and don't want to buy a bottle of bottled water, or don't have enough to buy one. Need not despair.

Just turn on your new age phone and get to know where the nearest public water fountain is located. Of course, you would need to be in the United States. Or, to be more precise in Berkeley in the state of California. For now, at least.

One of the leading US-based think tanks, the Pacific Institute, is collaborating with Google to launch WeTap, what it says is a free smartphone application that could help address a major water challenge: finding, supporting, and expanding the nation’s public drinking water fountains.

With WeTap, smartphone users will be able to find a working water fountain when they want one – and they can quickly and easily add public drinking water fountains they encounter to a national database of fountains right from their smartphones, with information on the fountain’s location, condition, and quality, and even add comments and upload a photo. Berkeley will be the first city to crowd-source map its water fountains, the ppacific Institute said recently.

The test version of WeTap is ready and volunteers were being sought to show the world where Berkeley’s drinking fountains are. The Pacific Institute was at the time of releasing a statement, recruiting volunteers who own Android-capable phones and have gmail and Picasa photo accounts to test the application by finding water fountains and uploading them on their phones, and to provide feedback on the application.

WeTap makes the public water fountain a find – and helps you find one. Valuing tap water – both the quality and access – is an important step to ensure our water remains safe, tasty, and protected. For more information, visit www.wetap.org.

Now, for the application-driven people in the US -- during the visits there, I have often been amazed at the dependence on technology to reach from point A to point B while in India, more than a few people are always around on highways, state roads or even on dirt tracks, to guide you to the destination -- this would come in handy. No doubt about it.

Also, because, unlike in India, where even the potable water supplied by municipal water utilities has to be treated at home, in the US, one can safely drink water from any public water fountain. Well, almost anywhere.

Once the application has been tested in continental US (knowing Google, the day would not be far), would this application find favour overseas? As far as developed countries with clean potable water that can be drunk right from the tap are concerned, it should logically be the case.

But, what about places like India? Or, rest of the developing world or the underdeveloped countries, where potable water suplied by public water utilities through age old pipelines does not have the same quality as in the US and West?

Would we get to see the application tweaked to find the nearest shop that stocks mineral water, or by the time we get to have this application ready for a global launch, we in India at least, would have managed to supply safe water in our refurbished water pipeline networks?

Here's the mapping on Google.