To be filed under Don’t Leave Home Without It—or maybe, Gift Ideas for Your Jet-Setting Neighbor—there’s a new iPhone app in town.
"The Bed Bug Identifier" ($4.99) guides you through the hotel-room bed bug sweep you should conduct to protect yourself and your neighbors back home, i.e. those people whose lives could be seriously disturbed by your bloodsucking hitchhikers.
Here’s what Bedbugger.com, the daddy long legs of bed bug blogs, had to say about the app today:
“The Bed Bug Identifier ($4.99) includes articles (insects mistaken for bed bugs, control tips, travel tips, etc.) and photos (bed bug life cycle) “Hotel Hot Spots” helps you search a hotel room for bed bugs, by showing you where to look in the room, and what evidence looks like. It also has a helpful “Life Cycle” wheel, showing various life stages and sizes (and colors). The material is sound and though it will be familiar to hard-core bedbuggers, is a helpful educational tool. It seems like it would be especially helpful for regular travelers.”
The app is made by the creators of Packtite, a small machine resembling a suitcase that is marketed to frequent travelers and the already-infested. The $295 device heats up your belongings (including your unpacked luggage and items stuff in your infested apartment that can’t be laundered) to a temperature that kills bed bugs.
“For people who are infested at work, or whose children are attending a school known to be infested, this may be a way of keeping bed bugs in clothing, backpacks and purses from coming into the home,” says Bedbugger.
Related links:
Bed bug insurance? Apparently not
Bed bugged storage (Part 1): Is your stuff safe?
Bed bugged storage (Part 2): How to protect your stuff
NYC bed bug stats: A vast understatement?
$250,000 bed bugs online; another co-op goes to war
Brooklyn still #1 bed bug borough; Manhattan (UWS & North) next
Co-op hair-raiser: $250,000 bed bug bill
Your neighbor's bed bugs
