Being reacquainted with my lost mobile phone and passport from last weekend’s trip out of state would be kind of nice. A comparable thought must have crossed Zach Haller’s mind when he decided to create Found in Town, a free, online lost-and-found recovery service based in Chicago that helps to get misplaced personal belongings back to their sore owners.

In theory, this is a brilliant idea, but how many people have hearts kind enough to go out of their way and return your items? Found in Town has a practical response to this question and it involves a simple, anonymous, and convenient web-based messaging service. After signing up, you receive your own personal tags, each of which have unique serial numbers and a “FiT URL” on them. Affix these tags to all of those items you just know you’ll end up losing by some unpredictable, indescribable stroke of bad luck. If someone happens to come across your lost belonging all they have to do is go to Found in Town, enter the serial number, which is linked to your email address, and, of course, make your day. How you go about getting the item back is your call.

This service is not merely restricted to consumers; in fact, it places heavy emphasis on selling the service to a large array of businesses that can directly benefit from offering such a convenience to their patrons. The possibilities do not stop at businesses, either, since FiT also plans on extending the recovery service to universities as something they can offer to both registered and incoming students or faculty members. Assuming that most people who choose to take advantage of the service are technologically competent, it is fair to say that a mobile app could be in-demand.