Tangent Thought Gallery

If you’ve not heard of Trapster.com you may soon. Trapster is the online and mobile phone based application to warn drivers of speed traps (still in beta, according to the Trapster site’s info). It’s the virtual equivalent of flashing your lights as a neighborly warning that “There’s a cop with a Wookie sized radar gun pointed in your direction over the next hill!”

It’s insanely simple and elegant but it does require a few tech pieces to work.

1. A GPS aware mobile phone
2. A Trapster account
3. Other drivers similarly equipped

In theory this should work very well and it also should work, I’m assuming, with a GPS aware laptop. It’s got an API tie in to Google Maps and there’s even a BlackBerry specific version; get the instructions here: http://www.trapster.com/bbinstructions.php.

There’s a lot of blog debate about the viability of the service, particularly if it should become illegal. What? Could this become the first illegal mobile phone application? Perhaps in Canada, which seems to have intensely Draconian views toward traffic violations. But how could anyone technically detect that someone was using the mobile service? Not that this couldn’t happen, but talk about Orwellian visions!

I understand that there will continually be a battle between traffic policing and countermeasures. If the law enforcement community was smart about this, rather than Byzantine or intrusive legislation and straining resources to enforce those questionable laws, wouldn’t it be smarter to swim in the same pool? If I’m running a county traffic program, why don’t I just get numerous Trapster accounts myself, pass these along to my staff, coordinate the “dummy”traps (places where we have *no* intention of actually monitoring traffic), and set up literally dozens upon dozens of false reports? Two things are likely to happen:

1. Trapster’s data integrity would be severely threatened, if done right, so people would be less inclined to trust it and less inclined to use it.

2. There would be so many ‘hot spots’ listed in the Trapster reports, some real and some not, that the county becomes much more placid from a traffic perspective (and this would be the end goal anyway).

Or maybe law agencies outsource this? Hmmm, do I smell a business opportunity here? Not for me, personally; I like to play on the ethical side of games. But it does demonstrate a particularly intriguing maturation and inherent vulnerability in social networking. Value depends on truth.

How many sites have you seen in your lifetime? How many stand out among that crowd? You know, I couldn’t even begin to guess at the number of sites I’ve seen but I can guarantee there are precious few that rise above the rest.

One that whacked me up side the head this week was Burger King’s stroke of marketing brilliance in support of last year’s Simpson’s movie: SimpsonizeMe.com. I had seen a few Simponized avatars/icons around the web and had suspicions that there was some tool to do that but hadn’t found it until last night. The Simpson’s have been on screen (broadcast and DVD) quite a bit in our house over the years—definitely not my wife’s favorite, I think she’s got it pegged a few rungs down from the Three Stooges, and although I believe the writing had gone downhill some years ago, I just had to try this online toy.

So, after a little while, my wife comes down into my office and asks “What are you up to?” Caught!

“Well, er, I was kinda burned out on the tech issue I was wrestling with and found this, uh, site.”

She, moving closer to my desk, asks, “Oh really; anything interesting?”

Me, feeling like a 9 year old with his hand in the candy jar, “eh…yeah, well, it’s this site that lets you make a…” (I’m thinking, “Might as well say it, Kolb”) “…a Simpson cartoon character out of your uploaded photo.”

I quickly add, “But it doesn’t really look like me though.”

Zooming in for a closer look at the screen she bursts out laughing, “No, it looks ‘exactly’ like you!”

Now I feel like a 6 year old because my son comes in, takes a quick look and, laughing as well, agrees with her.

I’m over it.

But the site, IMO, is brilliant. It couples a Flash application, a configurator, a commerce engine, personalization, plus enough eye and ear candy to make it seem like an amusement park “A” ride online, and makes it all easy to use. You then can buy personalized merchandise like hats, shirts, etc. And that’s not even the purpose of the site. It’s to promo the movie and subtly blast Burger King’s image into your mind while you’re playing and buying stuff.

There are few sites of that caliber that can capture not only their customer’s attention but also their inner child.

Oh, BTW, Happy April 1st!