If your cell phone ever gets recalled, you could get the news from the federal government — on your cell phone. Yes, there’s an app for that.
The Consumer Product Safety Commission is one of the agencies now offering downloads of applications for Android or Mobile Web devices from the official government site, USA.gov. When you’re done perusing dangerous products, you can browse dangerous people on your smartphone via the FBI’s America’s Most Wanted app, or learn about the Postal Service or the Federal Emergency Management Agency through their apps.
There’s also a body-mass index calculator, which reflects First Lady Michelle Obama’s emphasis on fighting obesity, particularly in children, and apps for calculating calories and browsing health information.
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The downloads are part of a refurbishment of the site that was launched Sept. 22, 2000, under President Bill Clinton to make it more user-friendly and contemporary. The improvements, which include search results provided by Microsoft’s Bing search engine, went online just before the Independence Day weekend.
All the 20 applications currently featured appear to be free — but the site, evidently in anticipation of future third-party offerings, warns visitors to check for any prices.
Planned offerings, contained on an appended spreadsheet, include Found In Haiti, an iPhone app that includes information on locating victims of the deadly January earthquake on that Caribbean island; Are You Safe, which helps people determine the safety of the neighborhood they are in (ostensibly based on crime statistics); a National Gravesite Locater; and the official iPhone app for the U.S. Army.
“The apps invention has made it much easier for folks to use meaningful services while mobile,” said Kirk Parsons, a wireless industry analyst for J.D. Power and Associates. “The next phase will be to manage all the apps that are offered into usable folders where one can easily…