Program your cellphone to avoid speeding tickets

First, the highway patrol set up radar guns. Then motorists who hate speed limits got radar detectors. And now a California inventor is proposing a new wrinkle - a cell-phone social network that aims to share information and help members avoid getting speeding tickets by issuing real-time cellphone warnings when they approach speed traps.

The California inventor is Pete Tenereillo, and his firm, Trapster.com, partly relies on Skyhook Wireless, a Boston company that provides location-based positioning services based on WiFi access points.

Trapster, which bills itself as a speed-trap sharing system, also depends on Global Positioning Systems, which uses satellites, and other systems that use cell towers to determine the exact whereabouts of an individual cellphone user who happens to be zipping along happily well above the speed limit.

To view a video of an interview with Tenereillo that recently aired on CNN, click here.

Here's how this warning system is supposed to work: Go to Trapster.com and sign up for free membership. Next down-load some special software to your cellphone. According to Tenereillo, most newer generation cellphones and personal digital assistants can support Trapster.

Now when you're motoring about and spot a police officer with a radar gun, hit "pound one" on your cellphone. Trapster knows your location, and if any other Trapster members are driving in the vicinity, they'll get an audio alert on their cellphone when they near the speed trap: "Live police! Live police!"

For cellphones with screens, members can also see a road map of their whereabouts with speed traps clearly marked.

Still in the beta-testing mode, Trapster is planning an official launch in early April, Skyhook noted.

It would seem that Trapster would need a critical mass of members for its speed-trap early-warning system to be effective, with input coming from many widely dispersed cellphone-equipped motorists.

But according to Tenereillo, that isn't necessarily the case. A video-sharing network like Youtube.com has a "high leech rate," he said; in other words, only a tiny fraction of users are sharing content and posting videos, while maybe 95 percent of visitors to the site are simply viewing videos and not contributing videos of their own.

But so great is the public aversion for speeding tickets that nearly half of Trapster members in beta testing have contributed data.

"My leech rate is only 60 percent," Tenereillo said proudly.

One subject he won't discuss is how many cellphone users have signed up for Trapster so far.

"With a Web 2.0 business, that's like telling people your Social Security number," Tenereillo said.

Trapster sounds cool enough, but what about a business model?

While companies have approached him about advertising on the Trapster network, a Trapster bottom line isn't an immediate concern, said Tenereillo, 46, who claims to have made enough money from writing code for networking products giant Cisco Systems Inc. that he is at the moment gloriously free from the immediate need of a positive cash flow from Trapster.

"I'm going to worry about that later," he said.
(By Chris Reidy, Globe staff)