SitOrSquat is a handy service that helps you find the nearest public bathroom. Unlike MizPee, which has been doing this since October of last year, SitOrSquat has gotten its act together enough to put out two great apps for iPhones and Blackberry phones. The key benefit of these being the inclusion of GPS, which narrows down where you are with just one click. If you're in a hurry--which is inevitable when using a service like this, this feature is immensely helpful.
In addition to its GPS locating, the mobile application lets you take photos of the facilities from your phone's camera, which go into a central library others can eyeball before they go. You can also add new locations right from your device, which will get pushed up live to the service's network of bathrooms.
SitOrSquat throws in all the bells and whistles you'd expect for a bathroom-rating social network. Registered users can rate each location on a five-star scale. This meta-rating gets translated into a recommendation of whether your should sit or squat, with the latter being undesirable.
One thing that's missing from the mobile app, and present on the actual site is information on whether or not the bathroom has any sort of prerequisites to get in, such as a purchase or a key. It's also missing the hours of operation, something which can be helpful if you're trying to use the application at night or on the weekends when a business might be closed. Mizpee has both of these features, and they can be total deal breakers in your hunt for porcelain.
If you're an iPhone user you can pick up the app here (iTunes warning). BlackBerry users have the option to either download the app or run it as a WAP version over the air.
Related: Diaroogle helps you find clean public bathrooms
Find nearby bathrooms to do your business, either on the Web or on your phone with some smart little mobile apps.
(Credit: CNET Networks)
When you've gotta go you've gotta go. Unfortunately, finding a place to do that when you're in New York, one of the largest cities in the world, can be difficult unless you've got some local knowledge.
Human-powered search engine Diaroogle is up to the task. It'll help you find the nearest toilet based off its user-generated database. Like Mizpee, which does the same thing but with a much cuter pretense, it's got user ratings for general cleanliness, the rules of gaining entrance, and occasionally even pictures snapped by users to show how good or bad the porcelain sanctuary is.
All toilets are rated on a scale of 1 to 5, and are done so by the submitter. If you disagree with someone's review, or policies have changed that would keep you from being able to access said bathroom, you have the option to rebuke it with your own review. Going forward, it would be smart to add user ratings and comments to pre-existing entries.
Of course, because this is a mobile toilet finder, all of this hinges on the experience you'd get accessing the site from your phone. Since it's running through your mobile device's browser, it can't take advantage of any of that newfangled GPS or Wi-Fi positioning business. Instead, you'll need to feed in a street address, neighborhood, or ZIP code. There's no map, so you'll need to use something like Google Maps, or to ask a stranger so you can get going--err get to a place where you can go.
Diaroogle is off to a promising start, although compared with perennial all-star Mizpee, it's missing the other 49 states and all of Europe, along with some helpful items like hours of operation, mobile maps, and the business model of including coupons from local retailers.
[via BuzzFeed]
Looking for a toilet in NYC? Diaroogle will help you out, although it's less helpful on the phone than it is from a laptop.
(Credit: CNET Networks)
I have cruelly mocked the restroom rating and locating service MizPee in the past. But I'm here now to atone for my meanness, lock my inner 12-year-old in his room, and give this service, which was recently updated, a fair shake.
Not that kind of shake.
Seriously: this is a service that helps you find a clean restroom when you need it. There's a mobile version of the site, which has more cities than it used to (16 total), as well as a new full-screen version, where users can more easily type in reviews of the restrooms they've used.
When you gotta go, go 2.0.
The site, unlike other restroom locators (yes, there are others), is time-sensitive. It won't direct you to a bar or business that it knows is closed. Users enter the open hours for establishments when they create new restroom records.
The site now also lists of best and worst bathrooms by city, as well as a trivia game. There will soon be a MizPee widget you can embed on your site or profile. Frankly, if I was running this company, I'd put resources into adding more cities rather than bathroom widgets or trivia.
On the other hand, an SMS-based version of MizPee is coming, and that will be useful for users who don't have good mobile Web browsers on their phones.
There's a solid business behind it MizPee. Peter Olfe, CEO of Yojo Mobile, which runs MizPee, says that while his company created the service for young women (young because young people use mobile online services, and women because he thought they'd care more about finding clean restrooms than men), in fact there are surprising demographics using it, in particular senior citizens and--I love this--Harley-Davidson riders, which makes perfect sense.
The company makes money by selling geotargeted ads. If you're using the mobile service and you locate a restroom, you might get a small ad from a nearby business. Yojo is selling its own ads at the moment, but Olfe hopes someday to hook up with a mobile advertising network.
Local advertising.
He also hopes that he'll be able to tap into Google's new mobile-based geolocation service, so users don't have to manually enter their location to find a loo. The alternative, he said, was to work with each of the carriers to get access to phones' geolocation data, which he said would be a tedious negotiation.
Olfe feels that women are underserved by the mobile Web and is creating other services, like YojoMama, which will find kid-friendly restaurants and playgrounds (as a dada I'd like to see the name changed); and YojoGirl, a local clothing and accessories deal finder.
At CTIA this week, you'll see lots of cool new gadgets and hear about plenty of enterprise successes in the world of wireless.
But sometimes what you don't see is the best part of the show. One thing MizPee.com users don't have to see is a filthy restroom.
Why not finish reading this one? First of all, yuck. Second, to my horror, we've already covered it.
Two start-ups that caught our eye at last night's SFbeta here in San Francisco were MizPee and DateMyPet.com. Not so much for their services, which to be honest, aren't the most necessary we've seen, but rather their ingenuity for finding some interesting ways to direct people towards something they're looking for.
In the case of MizPee, that direction comes in the way of bathrooms. Yes, MizPee helps you find and rate public bathrooms. Like HotSpotr, another SFbeta demonstrator of the past, users can login to the service on their mobile devices and hunt for available toilets by plugging in their city and street address. It will then track down a list of the nearest toilets, along with cleanliness ratings (on a scale of one to five toilet paper rolls), and a quick note about whether or not a purchase is required for use. Users can also give the toilet their own rating.
The service is also linked up to a coupon-and-deals-finding service that will let you know if there are any discounts or specials at nearby businesses.
DateMyPet.com is kind of like Dogster and Catster, although not limited to a certain breed of pet. In fact, users can search from nearly a dozen types of common pets, including fish and exotic animals. The creators made the site after several failed relationships where their partner's incompatibility spurred from dislike for their pets. The site takes a social networking approach, with combined profiles for both users and their pets.
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