Pittsburgh’s iPhone complaint feature debuts

PITTSBURGH (AP) — Pittsburghers who want to complain that a pothole needs to be fixed won’t have to try to describe it or explain where it is — if they have an Apple iPhone.

The city has debuted a new service called iBurgh which lets citizens snap a picture of a pothole, or graffiti, or any other problem they notice and send it to the city’s 311 complaint system.

The 311 system is like 911, except it fields complaints about nonemergency problems that citizens have.

The application uses Global Positional System technology to pinpoint the location of the problem.

The city’s 311 system already fields about 200 citizen complaints each day. The iBurgh feature will soon be available on other smart phones, too.