RedFlag - A free pill safety app for Android

[cooklabs]

Dear Bluelight,

I am the sole developer behind RedFlag, a new pill safety app for Android. RedFlag was developed to be another means in which people can send and receive warnings about potentially dangerous pills.

Users can submit reports about pills that they've found to be fake or dangerous and the details of the pill will be stored in our report database. If you're in possession of pills that you're not sure about, you can submit a test with the details of the pills and RedFlag will search the report database to see if anyone has reported pills of that description. In theory, RedFlag should make it quicker and more convenient to disseminate potentially life-saving information about bad batches of pills.

This is the first release of RedFlag (and at time of writing I am waiting for the latest version to be published to the Play Store) so please bear with it if you find any bugs. A current known limitation is that there is no geographical limit in the matching engine. This means that if someone submits a report in Australia, RedFlag will still match it if you're in Europe. This is a priority fix but for now, it's intended to be used in the UK only. Please send me any bug reports/feature suggestions/etc. as it'd be great to push this project further.

You can get to the download page through www.cooklabs.co.uk and it'd be much appreciated if you could spread the word about this as much as possible because the more users we can get, the more effective it becomes.

Best,

H

 

[cooklabs]

Hi guys,

Updated the app to show the distance between the user and the nearest match so you can see how far away the report was.

H

 

[uncle_bud]

Hey there! Nice It was just about time something like this would pop up. However which regions of the world are targted? (sorry haven't yet downloaded it - maybe it's all evident in the app). Cause pills vary dramatically from continent to continent and for example in europe "red cherries" can be legit and in the states they can be some shit.

update

im having trouble accesing redflag on play store. It doesnt show up under red flag or cook labs. If i try to use the direct link from the webpage it somehow makes the URL unusable.. weird

 

[cooklabs]

Hi,

Thanks for let letting me know about that, I had to redeploy today so it might take a few hours for it to appear everywhere but then it should be visible. With regards to the location problem, the best solution I've come up with so far is for the app to tell you the rough (+-50 miles) distance to the nearest match, meaning that if there is a warning in the database for pills that are similar to yours, you can just ignore it if it's 1000 miles away.

I want to implement a better system but it'll have to wait a bit!

H

 

[uncle_bud]

Interesting project. I wish all the best. Such geo positioning surely is great however one would require an enormous database and quite a lot of users to provide optimal conditions. What is your main area of focus? U.K.? U.S.A.? Europe? other?

 

[cooklabs]

I agree, the real challenge for me is growing the userbase to the point that it becomes really effective. I'm UK-based so I suppose I'm focusing there (?) but I'm still trying to come up with a good way of getting the name out there. I figured that clubs and other music venues could be a good place to start but businesses are terrified to put their names on anything that could be interpreted as 'pro-drugs'. Our media are so vicious when it comes to drugs that I'd be surprised if I can find anyone wishing to support it publically.

 

[psynami]

I have some serious questions with apps like these...
Who is going to check and decide if tablets are really dangerous? Who is going to post and what will they post? Can anyone post like on pillreport where you ll find 50% of the results are not true?
Which kinds of tablets will you accept? Just adulterated ones? And how long will they be shown and in which regions? Drug markets are highly flexible. They change all the time. Certain stamps contain different substances in different places in the world. A stamp containing PMMA in the UK, could contain something else in the Netherlands. So it is very likely that people will make the wrong conclusions... They can easily think their tablet is safe because it is not on the app.

 

[Bearlove]

Can we link reports from Pillreports to your site? Matching Pill purity based on region is redundant these days (and dangerous) - copycats can hit a region before the original.

I love that your trying to spread the word of Harm Reduction - but based on what? What more / what other do you offer than whats already available ?


Bear