Stereopublic is a particularly elegant crowdsourcing platform that seeks to map the locations of quiet spaces in cities around the world. The goal is to help us become better aware of the invasive noises that surround us and their effect on our being. The app is gorgeous and the following video presents a calm, insightful manifesto. I'm a member. 

"My name is Jason Sweeney. Stereopublic is a participatory art project that asks members of the public to go into their cities and find quiet places. I think about this project as a sonic health service for built environments; really encouraging people to think about how they listen in cities and to think about their own hearing, or hearing loss. How has the decibel levels, the frequency levels of traffic, and noise in cities affected their own listening?

What are the other ways in which we can look at our actual existing built environment and search for those quiet spaces that might already exist. So, in thinking about this project in terms of crowdsourcing the quiet, to pull people out of the crowd who feel a real passion and dedication to finding these quiet places; to join a community of quiet seekers. To be able to network with these people and share recordings and sounds of these places with other people and to start to see their locations appear on a map. To discover through the use of an iPhone application which will tell you when you're near an alleyway or a library room which is quiet so you can be walking down a busy street and suddenly a Stereopublic notification comes on and you're able to go into that building and experience that sense of quiet that that person who contributed maybe a year ago has chosen as a quiet place."

BleepBleeps is another iOS app-enabled IoT consumer-directed health play. Their devices masquerade as bright-colored "characters" each purpose-built to address some aspect of childcare from conception through adolescence. Yes, their post-modern design is particularly charming, but what is of great interest here is the go-to-market strategy.

Heading into crowdfunding soon, BleepBleeps gives you the plans and Bill of Materials to make their first device, Tony Tempa (an ear thermometer) yourself! They say they'll be posting meshes of his case soon. This extremely interesting blend of hacker/maker/DIY/open source meets crowdfunding is purely intentional. Once you engage, the app brings users ever-deeper into the BleepBleeps ecosystem. Brilliant!