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About a month ago, I had an idea. This is not unusual for me. I have lots of ideas. What’s different about this one is that I actually decided to follow up on it.
When I’m in a vehicle, often it’s the case that I want to send a message to the driver of another car, and I usually don’t have their telephone number or email, so that makes it difficult. But the nice thing about cars is that they all have a unique identifier—their licence plate.
So what I did was write a very simple piece of software. I call it Skuttler. It’s a public messaging platform to allow users to send short messages to licence plates. (Such messages will be called “skoots.” Naturally, skoots are to Skuttler as tweets are to Twitter.) Then, anyone (whether they have an account or not) can look up what skoots are sent to any licence plate. Users can also claim to be the driver of the vehicle with that plate, and they can “follow” licence plates that are interesting to them if they want to receive email or SMS notifications.
I imagine that many of the skoots that go through Skuttler will be road rage-related. But then, I can imagine a number of other uses for it too. I, for one, am perversely curious to know what sorts of messages other people would send my family and friends.
As of today, the service is up and running, which means that you can sign up and use the full web version, and there’s also a mobile version for your convenience that has been tested on an iPhone 4 and an iPod Touch. I have not tested it on an Android or a BlackBerry, but I will do so at my earliest convenience. I’d call this a beta release, since there’s certainly going to be bugs in it, and I’m still field-testing it. That said, everything “works” on it. (Except changing user settings on the mobile version.) Just promise me you won’t use it while you’re in the driver’s seat, unless the car is in “park.”
Writing Skuttler was a fun little challenge. I had to brush up on my parameterised SQL queries, and I learned a lot about best practices regarding safe storage of user information. (What? I can’t just save users’ passwords as plain text? :P)
I’m sure that the French version has some … erreurs. That said, I came up with the second greatest pun in my life while working on it. Shortly after decreeing that Skuttler messages would be called “skoots,” I remembered that in French, “discuter” means “to discuss.” So if you go on Skuttler using a browser set to French, instead of saying “nouveau skoot,” it will say “diskooter.” Now, I just need to think up an equally fun English pun.
There currently is no native iOS app for Skuttler. I wanted to focus on making a web version that is platform-independent before I got too crazy making an iOS version. I expect that I will write an app for Skuttler in the near future, but for the time being, if you want Skuttler for your iPhone, you can install it as a web app, which works great!
I’m treating this mostly as a social experiment, and I also plan to use it myself as a place to vent automotive frustrations, but if you want to join me for the ride (or if you have some suggestions regarding the way it works—or my French), please check Skuttler out!
