There are lots of uses for an iPhone and it’s good to have one in your car, especially in the case of Trapster, an iPhone app that aims to alert you about speed cameras and other gear out there in the streets that can get you fined. It’s a brilliant idea, but let’s see if this app does what’s promised and whether it performs that task well enough.
How does it work?
First of all, even though the app’s description doesn’t clearly mention it, the app alerts drivers based on a user-populated database; the iPhone does not have the necessary equipment to detect speed cams! What that means is that you get alerts only for those traps that other people have reported, and that data may be inaccurate or even completely false. There is though a means of rating each trap and the app calculates a confidence level for each one, but still this is all based on people’s good will.
One case in which the user-centric database can be of no use is that of systematically submitted false alarms. Some anti-trap-alerting group, for example, could massively submit numerous traps that are not real, thus making the app useless for a driver that would constantly get alarms for cameras that are not there. But assuming that there are no such groups (yet) and the authorities would never come up with this, false alarms shouldn’t be a big issue, although some of them surely exist.
Jeez, where’s that camera?
The main problem with Trapster is not the data, but the way it reports traps to the user, who in this case is, the car’s driver. This is where Trapster fails to deliver in a practical way, for many reasons. First of all, the reports are using a synthesized voice that not only sounds rather ridiculous, but is hard to notice at times over the noise in the car. Also, don’t hope that you can scroll the map as in the Maps app -no, no! The map stays fixed and you have to hit a “center” button to re-position your car in the map.
But most importantly, the problem is that the algorithm for trap detection is based purely on proximity and doesn’t account for the car’s direction, thus alerting drivers for traps that are monitoring the cars that are going to the opposite direction! This can be rather frustrating if you’re driving in quarters that you’re not familiar with (but that’s the point of this app, if you already know by heart where the traps are, it’s of no use, right?) since you’ll be alerted for traps that aren’t meant for you, but you’ll still be slowing down and wondering where in Earth that trap is supposed to be.
Another problematic area that can be improved is when a user submits a trap, since the map problem mentioned above doesn’t make this too easy for a driving person. I think it would be a good idea to let users log in to the site when they get to their computers and fine-tune the data they entered in a hurry while driving, or even add some more details about the trap.
Bottom line
Trapster is a nice idea that is poorly implemented, at the moment. However, it can still be quite handy and save your from a speed ticket or two, so it’s good to have the app running in your iPhone while driving in a highway. Knowing it’s problems and limitations will reduce your frustration, and keep in mind that this app uses data generated by people like YOU - so don’t forget to submit the traps you see, or rate the existing ones!
Wishlist
Here’s a list of a few ideas that would make this app much better:
Detection algorithm should account for the vehicle’s course (e.g. create a vector simulating the vehicle’s track and associate that with a user-submitted trap, then check against this before alerting users).
Use a clear and loud human-recorded voice for reporting traps.
Calculate the vehicle’s speed and use audio cues to report how close the vehicle is to the trap (i.e. a driver’s that’s moving too fast should be notified earlier than one who’s barely above the speed limit).
When such audio cues cease, drivers would also be informed that they have passed by the trap and are no longer in it’s range.
Fix the interface, please (draggable map, zooming with gestures, auto-following the vehicle - you know, like the Maps app!).
Allow users to refine trap data through the website.
Recently, I’ve been arguing with a trio of ambitious entrepreneurs whether a touch interface is coming to Apple products and how this could possibly affect iPhone app development. My point was that, since Apple has already filed a patent for a touch-screen mac and had shown strong interest on multi-touch user interfaces (see iPhone), it won’t be long until we see new touch-screen Macs.
Today, circulating the news is a video demonstrating Mac OS X Leopard running on a Gigabyte M912X (video follows), a small PC laptop with a touch-screen. The video is hosted on YouTube and has already been viewed more than 12k times since it was uploaded two days ago. Reading the comments, one can see that many people would like to do the same thing with their tablet PCs, which strengthens the idea that a touch-screen Mac (or a tablet Mac) would be quite popular.
If Apple officially produces touch-screen Macs, then I can safely bet that the UI (User Interface) would be enhanced to support multi-touch gestures etc, as well as other features that were missing in the OS since it was hard to implement without a touch interface. Combining this with the recent incidents of Apple rejecting iPhone apps for duplicating built-in functionality, my point was that building an iPhone app with features resembling those of a future Mac OS release supporting touch, could possibly be rejected - if Apple has already implemented such features in the OS. And since Apple is a company that knows well how to keep secrets (see the move to Intel processors) it wouldn’t be a surprise if we suddenly see Jobs demonstrating a tablet Mac on stage, anytime soon.
Usually when you click on the red “X” button on the top left of a window, it closes. Or, when you press Command-W on the keyboard, which is my preferred choice. But since I updated my Powerbook to 10.4.11, which upgraded Safari to 3.0.4., Safari windows won’t close. No matter what.
My first reaction was “thanks Apple”, but then it turned out the culprit was not our beloved Mac maker company. After checking the ~/Library/InputManagers directory, I found only one folder in there named SIMBL. What was this, I didn’t know, but after deleting it and restarting Safari, I am now able to close it’s windows again!
It turns out that SIMBL is a Smart InputManager Bundle Loader used by some plugins for Safari. It must have gotten there when I installed Taboo, ages ago, which I also deleted now since I don’t need it anymore.
In case you also have the same problem, check out whether any of your Safari plugins is outdated or incompatible with Safari version 3. Take a look at ~/Library/InputManagers for any defective input managers. Also look in ~/Library/ApplicationSupport for the plugins. There are lots of stuff in there, so examine the names and see if you find something strange. Or, open Spotlight and search for “SIMBL”.
I got my digital camera in 2004 and started making a library with all the photos I took in my vacations, journeys and other occasions with more than 2.5k photographs at this moment. These photos resided only in my Powerbook, which means a single point of failure: if something was to happen to the laptop’s hard drive (or even if I dropped it or it got stolen) all those pictures of memories of last years would be lost.
So I got my new iMac last week and decided to move the entire iPhoto library to the new computer, only to find out that there’s something wrong with the disk that won’t let the copy complete. All I got was the spinning beachball. It wouldn’t stop spinning. I tried to disconnect the network drive, turn airport off, press command-alt-escape to relaunch Finder. Nothing.
Disk problems
So I fired up Disk Utility and verified the Machintosh HD disk to get the following error message:
Verifying volume “Macintosh HD”
Checking HFS Plus volume.
Checking Extents Overflow file.
Checking Catalog file.
Invalid node structure
The volume Macintosh HD needs to be repaired.
Error: The underlying task reported failure on exit
Apparently there’s something wrong with the filesystem, probably due to hard drive error, since I heard some “weird” sounds coming from the hard drive. How many of my files were affected by this? I don’t know. I tried to copy each one of the subfolders to the new drive, but whenever it encountered a file that was damaged, all I was getting was the beachball, and then I would have to restart the computer, identify the damaged file and copy the rest of them.
The trick
Well, doing this for my entire library could take forever, so I had to find another way to copy the files to the new computer. Apparently, there is damage in the catalog structure of the FS at some point and Finder doesn’t seem to handle this damage nicely - the whole OS is rendered unusable. But how can one copy files bypassing the Finder, when it’s the only app that does such stuff? Think deeper: Darwin.
So I opened a terminal, and used the cp command to copy all of my files to the new computer, i.e.:
The -r flag tells cp to do a recursive copy (all files and subfolders inside) and I also wanted to witness the process of copying the files, hence the -v flag (for verbose).
Luckily, the copying of the files was smooth. No delays, no freezes. Well it took sime time to transfer about 7GB of data wirelessly to the new computer, and of course the damaged files did not recover, but at least I managed to copy them to a new disk before this one completely fails some day and doom my entire photo library. After scanning quickly through my library from the iMac (thanks Frontrow + remote!) I concluded that very few pictures were damaged - most of my precious memories are still intact.
So, when the Finder fails, summon Terminal to the rescue.
[Edit: It looks like Apple may have resolved this issue with the 10.4.9 update to the Mac OS X operating system. I am guessing this because after upgrading, the phone icon in iSync looks like a K610 (a red one actually). And maybe that explains my blog's visit from the apple.com domain. If there's someone that hasn't used my patch and made the phone sync with 10.4.9, please let us know by leaving a comment.]
For all of us Mac users that have bought the Sony Ericsson K610im (i-mode) phone, there was a disappointment when we got back home and tried to sync the new phone with the contacts. Luckily, the solution is quite simple, and here’s how you can make your phone sync with your mac:
Download the aforementioned file to your desktop and extract it’s contents. You will see a new folder named SonyEricsson-K610.phoneplugin
Open a finder window and point locate the iSync app in your /Applications folder
Right click iSync and choose “Show package contents”
A new finder window appears that has only one folder in it, named “Contents”. Open that folder and inside it go to PlugIns/ApplePhoneConduit.syncdevice/Contents/PlugIns
Move the folder SonyEricsson-K610.phoneplugin from your desktop into this folder
That’s it, you’re done! Open up iSync again and this time your K610im will be able to sync.
If you’re having problems or would like to discuss this topic, please leave a comment.
