Japanese and Singaporean devs battle over gamified crowdsourced telco maintenance app

Tokyo Electric Power Company Holdings (TEPCO) – which manages infrastructure including the Fukushima nuclear power plant – is reportedly involved in an IP dispute over an app that gamifies the crowdsourced identification of faulty power poles. Earlier this month, TEPCO launched "PicTrée - Grid Grab: Capture the Current-" which …

[Throatwarbler Mangrove]

Sigh

"Earn cryptocurrency"

Well, I guess it makes sense that the utility company is trying to drive up electricity usage.

[Bebu]

I would have thought the Uber model might have been a better?

The utility company places a list of areas with infrastructure requiring visual inspection and photographs uploaded on their app and user's can put their hand up, or volunteer, for the task and get paid in real ¥ for their exertions.

Plenty of people deliver leaflets and catalogues in these parts for extra beer money and a bit of exercise.

In JP they could pay me with slabs of 500ml cans of Asahai Super Dry. ;)

[Alan Brown]

Both of them seem like gamified versions of FixMyStreet