Alec Saunders SquawkBox

Our guest today was Trapster.com’s Pete Tenereillo, who I met last week at DEMO. Trapster is a social network for reporting speed traps. Integrating GPS, mobility, the web and social networks, it’s a pretty interesting use of technology to solve the age old problem of the speed trap. We caught up with Pete, and asked him about Trapster and some of his other projects, including Awarespot and JotYou.

Trapster operates as an application on a mobile handset or NAV device.  As users spot various kinds of police traps, they touch a simple key combination (#1, for example) to notify Trapster that a trap is present.  A location stamp is taken via the handset’s GPS, and the information is relayed to Trapster.  As other users come to the locations of known traps, Trapster informs them by sounds played on the mobile device.  The kinds of traps Trapster can warn users about are a temporary speed trap, speed camera, traffic light camera, and a known hiding place.

On the Calliflower Conference Call this morning: Pete Tenereillo, Robyn Tippins, Bill Volk, Tom Orr, Jim Courtney, Adam Somer, Jeb Brilliant, Ian Hood, Jonathan Jensen, and Sheryl Breuker.

Related articles by Zemanta

• Trapster exposes speed traps on your mobile device
• Trapster Saves Your Butt From a Ticket
• Dash Opens Up APIs For Its GPS Device to Developers

 

 Squawk Box September 15 - Trapster.com [38:17m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Phoneboy dishes on EQO this morning in a piece titled Why I Think EQO is Doomed.  I agree with him that the hardest mobile strategy of all involves convincing carriers to put your software on their deck.  Carriers move slowly, and view the deck as a distribution platform that the software developer should be paying for.  Never mind that many services live in the cloud, and the software is simply an enticement to use that service.  Never mind that there are many models for getting paid for the service that don’t involve an upfront payment.  Never mind that there are far more applications for mobile than can possibly be put on the handset deck.  To a carrier that’s all moot.  Most carrier’s thinking around business models for the deck hasn’t progressed past 1995 when PC manufacturers first started charging for access to the desktop.  Today the practice is widely decried in the computing industry, and PC manufacturers are starting to move away from it.

The one ray of hope in all of this is that handset manufacturers will start to emulate Apple’s App Store approach.  It’s been shown to be a clear advantage for Apple, and as a result many others are starting to copy the Apple approach. Hopefully EQO and the other pioneers in this space can hold on long enough to be able to benefit from these developments.

If you’ve been waiting to upgrade your first gen iPhone to the 2.0 software, or holding off on buying an iPhone 3G because of the reports circulating about dropped calls and the like, wait no more.  iPhone 2.1 is out.  This is the software that Apple should have released when they first shipped iPhone 3G.

Browser instability.  Fixed.  I haven’t seen a single Safari crash since installing on Friday morning, nor have I seen any of the applications that rely on the browser object in iPhone OS crash either.

Battery life.  Extended dramatically.  I charged on Friday evening and again on Sunday evening.  Previously iPhone wouldn’t have lasted more than one day without a charge.  

3G fixes.  While I haven’t seen any problems here in Canada on the Rogers 3G network, reports from the US indicate that the 3G complaints down south have also been resolved.

In addition to fixing the problems, Apple has included one more juicy reason to upgrade — the Genius music selector.   Over dinner I slapped KD Lang’s Constant Craving on, and punched the Genius for 25 more similar songs.  Dinner music taken care of.  Out by the pool, it’s party time with 80’s power pop,  starting with Yes’ 90125 and 25 more like it.  Forget about carefully crafted playlists anymore.  Genius takes care of picking the music with a whole lot more intelligence than random shuffle. 

Related articles by Zemanta

• iPhone 2.1 Update Available Now
• Apple releases iPhone 2.1 update
• Finally, Apple might have fixed the iPhone 3G
• Software Update 2.1: A Cure for What Ails the iPhone?

I’ve been working with Chrome off and on for a week or so now, and I’m preparing to replace Firefox with Chrome as my standard browser on at least one PC.  Why?

Speed.  It is noticeably faster on many of the sites I use.  I don’t think this is a placebo effect.  I think the updated V8 javascript is having an impact on GMail, WordPress and others.

Convenience.  There are a lot of small things that Chrome does that others don’t.  All of the major plug-ins are already installed.  It keeps track of the sites I frequently visit and places them on my home page when I load the browser.  

Design.  I’m sick of the fact that every tool I install into Firefox or IE wants to consume a toolbar.  Chrome’s default UI, with a few simple tabs at the top of the page, is clever and maximizes the real estate I have to work with on the screen.  They’ve broken the Windows GUI paradigm, but they’ve made it better. 

There are some gotchas, however.

Installation.  Chrome breaks the Windows install paradigm.  It doesn’t put the application code in the program files directory, opting to install in the hidden directory AppData\Local.  What does that mean?  Every “user” on a computer has to install Chrome themselves, including users without Administrator privilege.  Not only is it a waste of disk space, it’s a security flaw. 

Compatibility.  I’ve encountered several sites now which don’t work properly in Chrome.  

Overall, Chrome gets an enthusiastic two thumbs up from me.  If this is what browsers will be in the future, bring it on.  I’m ready. 

Related articles by Zemanta

• Google Chrome, a Shell for the Web

The schedule this week is a test of something I’ve been wanting to do for a while, which is to bring more hosts to the show.  I’m travelling heavily myself, which means that you will have the opportunity to hear from others in the moderators chair!

I’ll be hosting the show Monday and Friday.  Join Yahoo! Community Manager and blogger Robyn Tippins on Tuesday, Dan York live from ITExpo in Los Angeles on Wednesday, and Carl Ford for a talk on regulatory issues on Thursday.

Here are this week’s shows:

Calliflower users not on Facebook:

Mon – http://apps.calliflower.com/conf/show/38881
Tue – http://apps.calliflower.com/conf/show/38938
Wed – http://apps.calliflower.com/conf/show/38942
Thu – http://apps.calliflower.com/conf/show/38949
Fri – http://apps.calliflower.com/conf/show/38950

Calliflower Facebook users:

Mon – http://apps.new.facebook.com/calliflower/conf/show/38881
Tue – http://apps.new.facebook.com/calliflower/conf/show/38938
Wed – http://apps.new.facebook.com/calliflower/conf/show/38942
Thu – http://apps.new.facebook.com/calliflower/conf/show/38949
Fri – http://apps.new.facebook.com/calliflower/conf/show/38950

See you on the SquawkBox!