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iPads now helping food charity feed the hungry
Just last week we wrote about iPads being given out to doctors in Australia, and now we are seeing another hospitality-based use for them -- tracking food donations and pickups for Melbourne's FareShare food charity. An iPad app developed by volunteers and employees of FareShare acts as a data-entry point for their drivers, who enter the amount and ingredients of donated food they have collected on their routes. This information is then accessed by the chefs who can plan their meals according to what food will be arriving back at the kitchen later that day. According to FairShare's Food Donations and Logistics Manager Chris Scott, the information "is helping our kitchen plan what to cook, and is increasing the number and diversity of meals we can make. We can also re-distribute packaged food straight to charities' doors faster than ever before." Use of their app has also streamlined the charity's record-keeping and freed up more time to work on charity-specific endeavours rather than paperwork. FareShare runs their app on three donated iPads and hopes to receive three more to equip even more drivers with the technology. With iPads (and tablet computers in general) being deployed more and more for corporate use, it's nice to see them being used for charity work, too.
How D7 Consulting uses the iPad at work
We've been covering the story of D7 Consulting for a while here on TUAW -- that's the company that originally won 20 iPads from Box.net through our comments section, and then became a showcase project for how the iPad can be used in real-life business. I called up CEO Joe Daniels for one final interview this week to see how things have progressed and what he and his company have learned from using their iPads while out and about. He told me that even though the dust has settled on the initial program, the iPad implementation at D7 "is going to be ongoing forever." It's "an evolutionary thing," Daniels said. But it has gotten to the point where the company no longer uses paperwork to share files. "Everything I do when I go out to a job site is done through the iPad and Box. I don't even take a file with me any more."
