The app’s sleek, stylish design—simple and effective.

Ever get tired of rummaging through Facebook/e-mail/Bwog/Spec/bulletin boards/asking around/passenger pigeon to find out what’s going on on campus? There’s a new app called Commune that wants to solve exactly that problem.

Commune is basically an event aggregator; it allows you to see everything that’s going on in the university (and in the city at large). It also allows you to quickly organize events, from casual pick-up sports games to large volunteer efforts. You can filter by event type and by time, so it’s hard to miss what’s going on. Likewise, if you want to organize something, you’ll know that somebody will find your event and join in.

Even more special is the fact that Columbia is the first university to get this app in full form. Oxford got it for a few weeks of beta testing last semester, and soon (but not yet *smug laughter*) it will also go to NYU, Harvard, Oxford, and Cambridge.

Founder Mikael Hveem says that the app was created with “the idea that any user (or “citizen”) should be able to reach out to his community to realize any idea or activity.” Other apps, he claims, shared too much personal information and had too much gamification to be effective. He wanted something “as efficient as e-mail,” and that’s what commune is trying to be.

We think it’s a cool idea, but it won’t make Columbia life easier until a lot of people are using it. So far, the app is available for iPhone, available to download at the app store. But download it and use it to announce your parties and bake sales, and maybe this will be a thing. And maybe it can make Columbia’s mess of a communication system just a bit better.