Last Halloween, a friend’s kids wandered off in search of candy before the younger children and adults were ready. Their mom knew they were going, but finding them later had me a little worried. On top of that, it’s a lot less fun finding kids in a crowded mess of people in the dark than just taking the little ones door to door for candy. This is where Trick or Tracker would have come in handy.

Trick or Tracker’s main objective is to allow the parent to know where the child is when that child is old enough to go out door to door on his or her own. That may be the core focus of the program, but it has some pretty cool features to round the whole thing out.

- Locate a trick-or-treater with the touch of a single button on the parent’s smartphone.
- Messages can be sent to the child’s phone using a special code that is picked up and responded to via pre-set coordinates.
- The child’s phone will have a special “Where Am I?” button, and the parent’s phone will have a corresponding “Where’s My Kid?” button.
- Parents can program their phone to receive messages at regular intervals revealing exactly where their child is.

I imagine most parents would want the peace of mind that the instant location checking can offer, but the feature that intrigues me even more is the notifications based on pre-set coordinates. From the sound of it, you can be alerted if the child wanders off too far or into an area you don’t want them in. This is a great feature that I can see my sister using with her kids.

Only the child’s phone must be an Android OS phone. For the parent, any Google maps-loaded phone (including iPhone, Blackberry, or Windows Phone 7) will work using a simple manual process that the developer identifies in the FAQs on their web site. I’d love to see the child app available for the iPhone, too, but I’m guessing hurdles exist with regards to a developer’s ability to access certain data on the phone.

Priced at $4.99, it’s not exactly necessary if you’ll be walking with your child every step this Halloween, but if they’ll be out on their own this year, Trick or Tracker seems like a pretty good way to give your child a little freedom without being completely in the dark.