Woman Tracks Stolen iPad, Can't Convince Cops to Help

There's an app for pretty much everything—except cutting through bureaucracy. A woman who mistakenly left her iPad on a plane was able to track the whereabouts of the device, but couldn't convince authorities to follow up on it, reports the Syracuse Post-Standard, via the Consumerist. The woman was fairly certain she left the iPad on a plane after deboarding in New York City, and after leaving messages with American Airlines, she used the GPS function of MobileMe to find that the iPad was in a house on Long Island.

She contacted airline and law-enforcement authorities with the exact location, but no action was taken. She suspects an airline employee pocketed the iPad because it then made several trips back and forth between JFK airport and California. She can't trace it anymore because she replaced the iPad and shut off wireless service to the old one. At one point, she used an app to make it beep every two minutes. “I just wanted to harass who ever took it,” she said. “I didn’t want him to enjoy it if he was using it.” (More iPad stories.)