KINGSTON — While in the “shadow” of the technology giant that is Seattle, Trevor Hall of Kingston knows all it takes is a great idea for small tech businesses to prosper.

Hall is the founder and CEO of LootTap, a website and smartphone application (or app) which makes searching for, well, anything, easier. One year after its invention, he said LootTap is on the cusp of registering its 10,000th user, and about 50 percent of the users come from mobile initiatives.

LootTap is simple to operate: users plug in the item they’re looking for — anything from cars to couches to your grandmother’s Tiffany lamp — set a price range, and let the application do the searching. It searches E-Bay, Craigslist, Best Buy, and other big websites.

“It’s a service that helps consumers find what they’re looking for on the Internet, for the price that they’re willing to spend,” he said simply.

After registering and putting in the search, the program sends regular emails (only during local timezone daylight hours) notifying the user if the item is found and where. The search expires after 15 days, unless the user chooses to re-activate the search.

Hall launched the website, www.loottap.com, in March 2011, and soon after developed an app for the Android smartphone market. He is currently waiting review of his app for the iTunes market. The apps are free, and free of advertising. Hall said he wants to keep it that way, and makes his profit from a small commission off each purchase.

The Android market, he said, was easier to break into — the literal market is bigger, it costs $25 to upload an app, and Android seems to “trust that everybody is out there to put a decent app on the market.” Apple, on the other hand, takes a more stringent approach — $100 and a longer testing and review process. He expects it will be available in the next week or so.

LootTap started as a personal resource for Hall. He has been a software developer for 15 years, and working as a contractor for about three years. He was searched for work contracts on Craigslist, but tired of having to search for the same thing on the Internet every day. Soon, he began using it to look for things like furniture, and after his family “caught wind” of it, “it was a snowball that turned itself into an avalanche.”

“I’m excited,” he said. “This shows that it is possible for any company big or small, especially a tech company in Kitsap County, to exist and succeed.

“Technology isn’t going anywhere. The more Kitsap can grab onto that, the better.”