Littergram: Cleaning Britain one picture at a time | Hacker News Reader

Littergram: Cleaning Britain one picture at a time

littergram.co.uk

43 pointsspecialdragon28 comments

I've just read about this service on the BBC News website[1] where it's reported than Instagram have a problem with the name of this app.

There is also a well known and well established (with many local councils) service called Fix My Street[2] the aims to solve the same problems.

[1] http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-kent-36148093 [2] https://www.fixmystreet.com

I wasn't aware of Fix My Street, thank you for that.

The reason for bringing it to HN's attention was because I too read about the service on the BBC News website and their plight with Instagram.

I was a little perplexed - it's a British company, operating entirely within the UK - why is Instagram getting involved? The 'gram' prefix has been around for quite a while [citation needed], is it an infringement of trademark? Then again, the company is posting pictures with captions, which is very Instagram-y, so I can see a certain level of cross over.

I can see why Instagram want to defend their brand identity but hope they in turn are sued by a collective of kissograms.

The 'gram' prefix has been around for quite a while

So has "Apple", yet Apple was still sued by Apple and had to settle. A generic term may be trademarked as long as it doesn't describe the particular goods or services being sold.

But "gram" does describe service of sending pictures.

Not really. "gram" just means "written record". Mammogram, echocardiogram, sonogram, monogram - none have anything to do with "sending" or "pictures".

There is a messaging app called Telegram and they never went after that. This smacks of bullying.

Apple Computers were rightly sued by Apple (the music company, Apple Records?) as the computer company was getting in to the area of music.

The suffix -gram is already well known from "telegram" and adopted in to other 'message sharing via different media' situations: cookiegram, kissogram, etc..

The Apple case is a million miles from Littergram vs. Instagram. If they'd tried to create "Binstagram" there would be a case to answer ...

I consider the chance of actual confusion (which FWIW isn't actually the measure normally used to judge infringement) to be practically zero.

> The 'gram' prefix has been around for quite a while [citation needed]

I lately heard about that newfangled thing called tele-gram.

(Nitpick: it's a suffix, not a prefix ;)

The nitpick is entirely fair. What's worse, is that I know the word is suffix, I just didn't use it. :(

Fix My Street and Report That Pothole were black holes for me. Reports that I would usually send directly to my local authority (East Hants DC / Hampshire CC) were never followed-up. They always are when reported directly.

Love Clean Streets didn't use HTTPS so I deleted my account after noticing. I did get some authority replies from that service, but also about half of the reports were ignored.

The web site reporting pages for both the authorities are easy to use and I always get a reply so I won't waste my time with third-party apps again.

To an extent it depends on the local council, I straddle the border between Hull City Council (Hilariously bad) and East Riding of Yorkshire (pretty good).

I report potholes to both councils because I cycle a lot in and around Hull.

Quick example of how bad Hull City Council are, when I signed up online for dealing with council tax, it took them 7 weeks to post me my password..

FixMyStreet do lots of other cool stuff that may be of interest to HN-types.

They have Open311 compatability, which is an open project for standardizing systems like this so they can talk to each other and import/export data directly into council systems (apparently 311 is the standard number you phone in the US to report issues like this).

https://www.fixmystreet.com/open311

And it's a project of MySociety, which builds various other web tools to improve finding information about your local goverment representatives, filing Freedom of Information Act requests etc.

https://www.mysociety.org/about/

"We make websites that empower citizens worldwide"

Why would I go to the trouble of downloading an app and creating an account for this? I can do the whole thing in a couple of clicks and report a range of other problems on fixmystreet. Is there a way to check if my council is signed up to this? Given the current budgetary constraints councils are under, is signing up for a bunch of apps like this a good use of their time and resources?

I'd also be pretty reluctant to report rubbish close to my house and have it marked as a "grot spot"

Thanks - I had no idea that existed:

https://www.fixmystreet.com/

I agree. It's better to just sit here and sulk. Hopefully the problem of litter will just go away.

> I can do the whole thing in a couple of clicks and report a range of other problems on fixmystreet.

This bit, where parent poster talks about using existing well known council operated sites to report litter doesn't feel like sitting there and sulking.

Not in the UK, but I've indeed considered taking photos of every piece of litter I see on my walk.

But my next step is to think, if I'm taking a photo, I might as well pick it up instead of complain.

My next step of logic is I can't conceivably help to change the behaviour of people that live around me in the city to not throw litter, so don't occupy myself with it.

That said, humans love to copy, so if enough people see you picking up random litter, as I often do too, then they may do the same, as you said, some won't change, but if the 99% of us who don't litter just spend a tiny bit of time picking up the 1%'s trash we all get to live in a clean world! Here's hoping...

Ever since I learned about the Broken Window Theory of urban decay in The Pragmatic Programmer I try to pick up litter and tidy things up where I can. Worst case, someone laughs at you for wasting your time, but even then you're making the world a better place by making people laugh. It's all good :)

Hey - can you expand on what was said about the broken window theory of urban decay in the pragmatic programmer - I'd formulated a similar hypothesis just based on my limited experience collaborating with others in programming projects. I didn't know some academic had come up with a term for it..

In the Pragmatic Programmer book [1], to help make the point that if you keep your code clean, it is more likely to stay that way, the authors cite the "broken windows" theory [2]. They mention a case where police observed an abandoned car lying untouched on a dark street for days, but once a window was smashed, vandals destroyed the car within hours [3]. I don't know much beyond that, but the theory rings true to me and I try to do my bit to stop it, in code and in real life.

[1] https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/4099.The_Pragmatic_Progr...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Broken_windows_theory

[3] http://www.artima.com/intv/fixit2.html

Thanks for the links. The theory rings true to me as well. I've coerced sloppy colleagues into writing cleaner code when working on my sections of the project. Conversely I find that I relax my normally high standards when I work on spaghetti code.

Where I live in the UK the issue is rarely a single piece of litter. It's things like lay-bys or roadsides strewn with thousands of pieces of litter (and human faeces, used sanitary/contraceptive products etc). The logistics industry is the biggest offender: lay-bys are used as ad-hoc lorry parks and the local council would have to send out a team several times a week to keep them clean (they do clear them every now and again when enough people complain, but it never takes long for the mess to return since HGVs are parked in these lay-bys 20+ hours a day). They claim to be unable to afford to do this, and seem unwilling to demand that the companies responsible clean up their act.

The second biggest issue is verges and field gates full of old tyres, rubble, old appliances, asbestos and other rubbish that has been dumped. This has been exacerbated recently by the council only opening their waste disposal sites a few days a week, and charging to dispose of most things.