Social sourcing, also known as aggregate sourcing, has been in the news recently – mostly in an unfavorable light. People fear that it may lead to government and big business shaping our personal lives harmfully.  But programmer-inventor and former De Anza student Safeer Mohiuddin has found a fun way to make social sourcing help our daily lives.

“Mezz,” a name taken from a shortening of the word “message,” takes sourced content and shapes it into a new useful iPhone application that lets users know what is happening in their neighborhood – social gatherings, theater shows, business sales, instant “happenings” – via postings from users, tweets, business and school feeds.  

Unlike Yelp and other crowd-sourced applications, “mezz” is free. Installation is simple, requiring only an installation key that you can get through email after you download the app. You let it access your location, then sign in via your Facebook, Twitter or email accounts. When signing in via email, submit your email address to receive an access code. 

After installation, “mezz” appears as a vertically scrolling set of pictures in information boxes with small icons in each. The default access is “recent” posts, with “trending” (most liked) and “following” (follow a certain poster) buttons at the top. “Feed” returns you from “trending” and “following” to the “recent” screen. “Share” lets you share posts, and “me” lets you see only your own posts. 

You tap on the boxes to expand them to full-screen boxes with links to websites (if posted), a link to the poster of the information, a heart-shaped link to “like” the information, and a place to link the box as a Facebook entry, a Twitter tweet, get information or flag the entry as inappropriate. 

The idea for “mezz” came to Safeer and his friends last summer when they were sitting around bored and with no idea what interesting things were going on around them. Although he was still at Foothill High School, Safeer had been taking programming classes at De Anza and Foothill Colleges. He is currently on leave of absence from UC Irvine.  

He and his friends Shafath Syed and Fouzi Husaini released “mezz” in November 2011. With the backing of his father, six-time business entrepreneur Razi Mohiuddin (who quit his own job to help), they are continuing to improve “mezz.” Search capability for the iPhone will be added next week, with porting to Android-based phones within a month or so. 

Safeer feels the best advice for other programmers, and budding entrepreneurs, is, “Go build something!” He added that it doesn’t matter the fields. The best way to improve your skills is to go and do it – wise advice from this 19-year-old inventor.

The application can also be used directly from their website. 

My recommendation?  Get it! You’ll never be bored again.