 They're not exactly the tricorders of Star Trek fame, but the latest
generation of smartphones offer computing possibilities that would've
been discarded as high fantasy only a decade or two ago. One of them is
the ability to learn more about your present geographical location,
whether it's an old church building in Victoria or a trashy bar in
Halifax. Urban romantics are often drawn to the feeling of getting
slightly lost, but the rest of us just want to know where the good
shopping spots are, how to get to the subway, or even – when the urge
strikes – the location of the nearest toilet.
Websites collecting the locations of publicly accessible bathrooms have
been around for years, but it's only with the surge in smartphone use
that they've become truly useful. SitOrSquat can determine your
location via GPS (if available) and show you a map of nearby toilets,
drawn from an online global database of bathrooms maintained by other
users. Selecting individual bathrooms brings up hours of availability,
a basic rating for the discriminating type, and even user-submitted
photos.
SitOrSquat is a very capable application and the iPhone app's interface
is very slick, but the whole thing relies on user data, meaning
coverage is spotty. Downtown Vancouver has decent coverage, but Toronto
feels a little barren given its size, and the whole of Edmonton seems
to have only five or six public toilets. But as more people use the
app, more toilets should make it to the database, meaning relief will
be easier to find as time goes on. |
