KABOOM

With four car bombs in one month, one tends to get a little worried. Especially about unfamiliar parked vehicles in your street. It is now clear that ‘the forces that be’ have parked vehicles in town packed with explosive materials’, and are planning to detonate them at irregular intervals.

 

“How do you solve that problem?”  was the discussion over dinner at my house the other day. We came up with an idea.

 

 The 'Bomb Dowsing Rods’  - those funny little things that they use at the entrance of shopping malls - is something we do not believe in. I has been adequately proven they’re a fraud.
 

 Bomb sniffing dogs is an option, but they’re expensive. The cost of training a bomb sniffing dog ‘far exceeds a college tuition’ (some 15,000) and then costs about $218,000 a year for maintenance.  I don’t think we have that kind of money.
 

 But what about an app that can tell you if the car parked in your street is stolen? We understand that in view of privacy laws you cannot get the name and address of the car owner from a license plate, but all you need to now if the car is stolen or not. If it is a stolen car, you call the police, and they do the rest. What would we call the app?

‘KABOOM’, suggested a colleague at work.

 But now I read we’re not the only ones thinking of ways to get through these uncertain days. Sandra Hasan, a Lebanese developer, made an app called ‘I am Alive’.

As everyone in Lebanon knows, after an explosion, the phone network jams up within in matter of minutes, making it impossible for you to call family to let them know you are all right, or to check on others. Now, with the “I Am Alive’ app, with one touch of a button, it lets your family and relatives know that you – in fact – have survived a bomb explosion.

 Within every calamity, there’s an opportunity