Speed trap tracker that tries to help iPhone users avoid speeding tickets extremely appealing
Ever since its launch over a year ago,
Trapster has improved upon its police speed trap tracking software by a long series of gradations. One of the biggest updates arrived mid-June of this year, when the release of iPhone OS 3.0 gave Trapster's developers the ability to greatly increase the speed of the app, to provide alternate maps for multiple perspectives, and to enable push notifications so that the app did not need to be run constantly.
As users of the app already know, however, the key to Trapster's success is the social community. Whenever anyone spots a trap, they simply update the app with their location and all other nearby drivers will be alerted as they approach the same area. Therefore, the best upgrade Trapster could possibly get is an upgrade in number of users.
Well, just a little over three months since the app's revamping over the summer,
TechCrunch reports that Trapster is now "getting about 50,000 downloads a day."
Though Trapster has already exceeded 1 million downloads, this download rate can only mean good things for the company. As the community gets stronger, the app gets more effective, and the app gets popular all over again. It's just the kind of vicious cycle users of the app had hoped for.
While the app's data improves daily through crowd-sourcing, Trapster's developers have been hard at work improving other features of the software, like audio syncing in the car, map manipulation, and iPod control.
Considering that all of these features come packaged in a free app, it's no surprise that the app is seeing so much action.
Even police officers endorse Trapster: "Having (motorists) slow down on their own is a lot less manpower-intensive than having us forced to spend time writing tickets," says Sgt. Brent Barbee of the Amarillo Police. "Whether they slow down because their friend told them to slow down (by using Trapster) or a ticket, the net effect is the same: They've slowed down."
Steven Loeb
