Speaking of cool mobile apps, students at the University of Amsterdam have won an award for HogeNood, a smartphone app that tells you where the nearest public toilet is. Appropriately, hoge nood means “desperate need”.

The app even distinguishes between openbaar (public) and semi-openbaar toilets. Public indicates a stand-alone facility that is available to everyone, and semi-public indicates a facility inside a place that is generally accessible (such as department store).

A beta version of the Android app is available at hogenood.nu; you can also test the functionality right in your browser (not sure how well that works if you’re not in the NL). An iPhone app is also on the horizon.

I see that they missed at least one openbaar toilet in Almere-Stad (it’s just across from Selexyz, if you ever find yourself in need). I found that interesting because the challenge of the contest was to develop an app that uses government-provided data, and you’d think the government would at least be aware of stand-alone facilities. HogeNood’s contest page says their data source is “Urinoirs Amsterdam Centrum”, which I guess is this dataset provided by Gemeente Amsterdam; however, they don’t seem to specify where they got the data for other cities.

Anyway, I think this is an excellent idea, especially for tourists! Americans—me included—tend to be amazed at how hard it is to find an accessible (and decent) toilet in the Netherlands, especially in central Amsterdam. And if you don’t have €0.50, well, you’re out of luck. I bet you could make a fair amount of money charging people $0.99 for an English version, or selling advertising on a free version.