Comments on: JotYou: SMS, Only Creepier, and A Deadpool Candidate

By: Trapster: Document Speed Traps On The Go

Trapster: Document Speed Traps On The Go — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 08:01:42 +0000

[...] I admit that I gave the folks at JotYou a bad time. Turns out they also are doing this thing called Trapster that lets people with GPS-enabled phones document the exact location a speed trap or red light camera is. [...]

By: anonymous

anonymous — Sat, 23 Feb 2008 19:46:15 +0000

hey, the cops like it! It beeps, you slow down, they give next guy a ticket, and they slowed 2 people down!

By: PhoneBoy

PhoneBoy — Sat, 23 Feb 2008 17:29:29 +0000

Maybe I’ll do a piece on trapster: a social network for speeders?

By: anonymous

anonymous — Sat, 23 Feb 2008 14:09:31 +0000

OK, I understand and respect your position on this; it’s not for everyone. But to be clear, the folks at JotYou do *not* see your GPS coords either.
>>–why no native S60 app?
s60 native version will be ready in a week or 2. Trapster.com native s60 version is already released (same company).

By: PhoneBoy

PhoneBoy — Sat, 23 Feb 2008 06:58:34 +0000

I know you explicitly have to run the app–why no native S60 app? That’s not the point. The point is I’d rather not be broadcasting my GPS coordinates to anyone, if I can avoid it. Even if only the folks at JotYou see it, that’s too many people from my point of view. Then again, maybe it’s my natural paranoia or skepticism.

When GPSes are more prevalent in phones, this might be a cool app. Right now, though, it seems a little ahead of it’s time.

By: anonymous

anonymous — Fri, 22 Feb 2008 15:39:21 +0000

JotYou doesn’t do anything unless you explicitly run it.

Assuming you do, JotYou doesn’t track you – well – unless you explicitly use the “tracking group” feature. That feature is designed for rallys, games, footraces, etc., i.e. events where you specifically want to be tracked so people can watch progress on a Web page and map on mobile. For that 4 things must happen 1-someone creates tracking group 2-that someone (group owner) enables tracking 3-that someone invites you to group 4-you enable tracking on your mobile phone.

You (as message sender) can look to see if/when a message was delivered, but you can’t see the GPS coordinates of where the person(s) was when it was delivered. You can deduce, of course, that they were somewhere in the area you sent the message to, which has a minimum radius of about 1/2 mile. I think “they” should take this as a feature request – option to shut off visibility as to whether message was delivered or not.

I use external Bluetooth GPS with my N95, even though it has internal GPS. External gets a fix much more reliably (indoors, etc.), and battery life is 10+ hours. You didn’t mention time-to-fix, which is horrible on N95, because it’s autonomous. With external Bluetooth GPS TTF goes from a couple of minutes max to maybe 10-20 seconds max, and often a second or two.

You can’t beat WiFi for TTF or indoor use, though. Either it gets a WiFi fix or it doesn’t, When it does, it’s instant.

WiFi location can’t work on Java, unfortunately, because Java won’t allow the WiFi scan. JotYou / Windows Mobile is available now with hybrid GPS/WiFi.

The GPS/Java version already runs on N95, but of course no WiFi location support. A native Symbian with hybrid GPS/WiFi location is in the works (of course requires total rewrite of the program).

And looks like that goofball fixed the no-script-redirect error. He said to tell you “thanks phoneboy, my bad, nice catch, and pretty cool site you have here!”

By: The PhoneBoy Blog

The PhoneBoy Blog — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

I admit that I gave the folks at JotYou a bad time. Turns out they also are doing this thing called Trapster that lets people with GPS-enabled phones document the exact location a speed trap or red light camera is. The application, which works with many different phone models, including Symbian,