Power out? There’s an app for that!

ComEd announced yesterday that it too has joined the app craze by offering a new mobile application for smart phones. According to ComEd, the new mobile application enables customers to:

• Report an outage and check restoration status
• View their account summary and history
• Manage payments, including budget billing, automatic payments and one-time payments
• Report a meter reading
• Find a location to make an in-person payment

Here is the release from ComEd so you can get the scoop straight from the source.

OK, I could easily put a pun or snide remark about how difficult it will be to check your smart phone to get power outage updates when you battery runs out and you can’t charge it because your power is out.  That would be a cheap shot.  I think ComEd deserves praise for giving us the chance to use any ways and means to find out when our power might get turned back on.

However, they shouldn’t stop there.  ComEd should create the following game apps to play while you’re waiting for the electricity to come back:

Angry Squirrels:  Based on the over-the-top game app success, “Angry Birds”, Angry Squirrels lets you shoot Squirrels at telephone lines so they can eat through them and cut off your electricity.  Get additional points for getting the squirrels to do a kamikaze run and take down a transformer!

Tree Branch Toss: Again, based on the popular and mind numbing “Paper Toss,” this game allows you to trim tree branches near power lines and try to toss them into the wood chipper (the noisiest machines on the planet, by the way!).  Be careful, if you don’t trim enough the next storm could still take out the power and if you trim too much the angry neighbor comes out and sues you for ruining their shrubbery!  At this point you get transferred to the app: Frivolous Civil Lawsuit.

Power Cords with Friends: Playing “Words with Friends” is so yesterday.  In this game you try and convince your neighbors across the street who DO have power to allow you to string a power cord across the street and “borrow” their juice so you can charge your smart phone, run your three DVRs, 3 50″ HDTVs and your cappuccino maker that you just CAN”T live without.  You might have to fight the mobs at the hardware store to buy the power cords, deal with trucks, cars and plows running over the power cords strewn across the street and don’t forget that you can’t plug 20 items into one extension cord! Shockingly fun…

Doodle Jump, Summer Storm Edition: A severe summer storm has ripped through the city and it’s your job to jump from pole to pole, trying to fix 10,000 dropped power lines while worrying about live electricity lines, additional branches falling, lingering lightning strikes, angry pesky homeowners asking “when will my power be back on? 20,000 times (no, you can’t shoot them), flooded streets, and because you’re from another state you really don’t know where anything is…

If any of these games get made, I want residuals!  Until then, get the app from ComEd and cross your fingers for a summer with fewer storms!  And don’t forget to be nice to the people in the field who are trying to get your power back up…they did not cause the problem, they are trying to fix the problem.