I am very proud to announce
Meet Me Here, the first charity application released from
Apps 4 Good!
Meet Me Here allows you to quickly schedule and send a meetup to your friends via email and Twitter! It's as easy as:
- Where - find your current location, choose from bookmarks or search for an address
- Who - select one or multiple contacts from your Address Book and Twitter
- What - enter meetup information
- When - pick meetup date and time
- Send!
Download Meet Me Here:
meetmehere.apps4good.caSo what exactly is
Apps 4 Good? Well let me take a step back and explain...
Back in July I organized an event called
iPhone Hackathon for Charity, which brought together talented software developers with the common goal to build as many iPhone applications as possible. However unlike other
hackathons,
iHackHFX was unique because the proceeds from the applications developed are donated to local charities.
The idea of building apps for charity came following
Mobile Tech 4 Social Change Halifax, which allowed me to share a number of conversations with local nonprofit organizations. During these discussions, a common theme emerged: a down-turn economy with high unemployment rates has increased the demand for non-profit services, however with limited resources non-profits are forced to choose between cutting services or cutting staff.
Dharma states that everyone has a special gift or talent, and it is your life purpose to discover that talent, and use it to help others. So in the spirit of Dharma, the
iHackHFX weekend arose as an attempt to help support these local charities by applying our talents as software developers.
The
weekend turned out to be an overwhelming success. Fifteen participants helping develop three applications, each of which reached various stages of completion. The weekend proved that a lot can be accomplished in a short amount of time. However, before we could publish our applications a legal entity needed to be formed, thus
Apps 4 Good Inc was born.
"Never underestimate the power of a small group of committed people to change the world. In fact, it is the only thing that ever has." - Margaret Mead
Since that weekend, we have been busy laying the foundation for
Apps 4 Good, as well as adding the finishing touches to our applications. After a lot of hard work and many volunteer hours from the entire team, we are very proud to release our first application,
Meet Me Here, which is now available for sale on the
Apple App Store.
The proceeds from
Meet Me Here will benefit
Phoenix Youth, who offer ten programs and services that support at-risk and homeless youth, ages 12-24. The organization helps youth transition from a place of need, to a place of happy and healthy independence. Their mission is to break the cycle of poverty and homelessness. To learn more about how you can help, please visit their website
www.phoenixyouth.ca.
None of this would have been possible without the incredible support of the entire team. I am very fortunate to have Tracy Boyer, Joanne Maccrea, Bill Wilson, Chris Weisenburger, Ryan Deschamps and Shaun Johansen among our board of directors. We are forever indebted to
The Hub Halifax for hosting our hacking sessions throughout the fall. Huge thanks to Nick Brunt and Ian Conrad of
Say Hi There for amazing graphic design on
iHackHFX,
Apps 4 Good and
Meet Me Here websites. Major thanks to all participants for their volunteer hours especially Bill Wilson and Dmitri Dolguikh of
Mindsea, Jesse Rusak of
North Knight, Hatem Nassrat and Craig Oldford of
Keane, Andrew Burke of
Shindig, Jessy Ouellette of
Yonen Labs, Matthew Jewkes, Anthony Myers and Shaun Johansen
. Big thanks to the
iHackHFX sponsors;
InNOVAcorp,
Broadband for Rural Nova Scotia,
Splice Apple Experts,
The Coast and
Be Massage for helping make that weekend possible.
What's next? Expect our second application to be published in the coming days, and our third application to be released before Christmas.
To learn more about
Apps 4 Good mission to improve our community, please visit our website
www.apps4good.ca.
