Aug 23 2010
How true, again from our favorite geek comic strip, XKCD.
GPS Navigation Humor
Original here:
Rob.
Aug 14 2010
I was at Bass Pro Shop today getting some fishing things for my boys who want to go fishing.
I had to take a picture of this guy & his shirt.
Real Cowboys Don't Need GPS
I guess that is the end of our steer tracking initiative…
Hilarious!
[p.s. I checked online to see where to get this for those of you who can't wait to own your own.
Here you go: http://www.fortwestern.com/store/product.php?productid=421243&cat=509&page=5
Real Cowboys don't need GPS
Real Cowboys don't need GPS
Only $14.98…
Rob.
Jun 04 2010
We have had roughly 1400% 4 year growth since 2006, and have applied for inclusion on the Inc Magazine “Inc 500″ — we think we may make the top 100 (we’ll see). We received word today that we were chosen as their “Applicant of the day.”
We find out in July where we wind up on this list of large, fast-growing companies.
GPS Insight is the Inc. 500 applicant of the day on Facebook
And on Twitter
You can visit their pages at:
http://www.facebook.com/pages/Friends-of-Inc-5000#!/pages/Friends-of-Inc-5000/10150132658680187?ref=ts
and
Thanks, Inc. Magazine!
Rob.
May 25 2010
Here is a really good article about how GPS works, and the new satellites going up to replace the aging ones out there now:
GPS has become critical to EVERYTHING (to include GPS Insight...)
It’s really worth reading if you are interested in this world-changing technology.
Rob.
Apr 15 2010
Today, 4/15/2010, is the “legal” 5th birthday of GPS Insight (as a product we celebrated back in August). I “spun off” GPS Insight from my consulting company as its own legal entity 4/15/2005.
In that time, we have grown from one customer & 286 trucks to having sold over 1,000 customers & over 20,000 tracking devices.
We have gone from 3 employees to over 30, and now have 8 digit revenues and are sustainably profitable (much better than 5 digit revenues and 6 digit losses back 5 years ago…)
My wife was nice enough to remember the “birthday” and send this bouquet of cookies to the office:
GPS Insight 5th birthday
Many Heartfelt Thanks to everyone who has helped us make it to this important milestone. It has been challenging for everyone through the past few years with the economy like it is, and we are proud to have helped our customers save money, identify problems, and keep their drivers and businesses safe with GPS Insight’s GPS fleet tracking product.
Here’s to the next 5 years!
Rob
Apr 14 2010
This is very to the point:
Our reports and proactive alerts help you to ensure your drivers are not idling.
It’s both wasteful and impacts our environment.
I pulled up a relatively new customer at random & ran an idling report for them & was happy to see that they CUT THEIR IDLING 75% WITH PROACTIVE MANAGEMENT!
Here is how I ran the report:
Run a GPS Insight Idle Time History Report
The report came up in 1.6 seconds & quantified 33,400 hours of driving since January, and the Purple Line (the important line) shows a marked decrease from a high of 20% idling to a current low of 5%:
75% Reduction in idling percentage
The full report shows all the particulars & shows very clearly the effects of both using GPS Insight as well as managing the drivers to stop idling:
Decrease from 20% to 5% idling over 3 months
Note that this is only one of our thousand customers, and only 234 vehicles. I like the fact that GPS Insight truly is helping our customers make a big difference both in terms of saving fuel money, and the environment.
Another report shows that they have saved roughly TWO THOUSAND IDLING HOURS across their fleet of 234 vehicles by eliminating that 15% idling (based on 13,000 hours driven in the past month). With fuel costs plus wear & tear easily costing $5 per hour, they’ve seen a $10,000 PER MONTH savings, which is $42 per vehicle. We charge them $32.95. So they make $9 per month just by reducing idling, and now they have all the other benefits of GPS Insight for free – efficient dispatch, proof of delivery, proof of driver hours worked, reduction in speeding, theft recovery, and so on.
Plus they’re not pi$$ing on the planet anymore…
Click to learn more about our GPS Fleet Tracking System.
Rob.
Mar 12 2010
Keir is still hiking across the harsh Chilean desert as we speak, tracked with a 5.9 oz. satellite tracker in his pack.
Keir hiking across the Chilean desert
Not to be outdone, I covered 40 miles today in the harsh wilderness myself, with only the assistance of 20 ski lifts, gravity, 2 skis and a couple of beers:
Ski tracking in Deer Valley at Park City UT
Just kidding, obviously a lot harder to walk 20-some miles across the desert than ski around a bunch. Maybe I should invite Keir next time…
Rob.
Mar 12 2010
Keir is doing well, in 112th place (out of 127 left in the race), and there are a LOT of people who have dropped out.
112th out of 127 left in the race
The site says he has raced for just shy of 40 hours. We are tracking him every hour with a GPS Insight TT-1900.
I ran a track like this:
GPS Track of Keir across a Chilean desert
And see where he’s gone (roughly — we update once an hour):
GPS Track of Keir across a Chilean desert
This shows 94.2 miles, but it’s been more than that, since he’s not racing in a straight line.
Good luck Keir! He’s got 1 more 25 mile day, then a 50 some mile day tomorrow to complete this race, his second Racing the Planet race.
Rob.
Mar 09 2010
I’m on a vacation at Park City Utah, and I have a new app for my iPhone called Navionics. It lets you see where all the ski trails are, and search for them, as well as track your own trail.
It’s got great features, but is a shining example of how inaccurate phones are for tracking purposes. The “pins” are GPS Insight, and the little yellow “O”s are my Garmin Edge 705. The red line which goes off the mountain then back at the top of the lift is the iPhone based tracking device. I did not go over the side of the mountain, trust me…
GPS Insight vs. Cell Phone Tracking
It’s a nice app nonetheless – here are a few screen shots:
Ski trails on Navionics
List of trails you can choose to see in NAVIONICS
Highlighting a single trail in NAVIONICS
But when you take the inaccurate iPhone “track” which NAVIONICS provides out of the map, you can see that GPS Insight (light blue) and the Garmin 705 (red) are both very accurate. The GPS Insight EZ-1000 was set for 1 minute updates, and the Garmin is about 10 seconds between points. The big difference is the EZ-1000 transmits its location every minute, and with the Garmin (meant for bike riding), you need to upload the data when you get back to a PC.
GPS Insight vs. Garmin to track snowboarding
The speeds even match up pretty closely:
snowboard speed using GPS
Note that this view (from the Garmin website) shows both speed AND elevation (so you can see I went on the long run 4 times, & smaller runs 5 times through the day):
GPS Tracking snowboard activity & speed
That was enough to kill my newbie snowboarder legs, so I’m taking today off & have plenty of time to write about it…
Rob.
Feb 21 2010
I took my boys (7 & 9) skiing (snowboarding they correct me every time…) up to Flagstaff AZ this weekend.
I brought my Garmin Edge 705 (a Garmin for bikes, basically) & put it in my coat pocket to get a really good feel for where we went during the weekend. It logs every 10 seconds for eventual upload (vs. once a minute in real time for the EZ-1000 I brought along as well).
Garmin EDGE 705
They are really nice, and we don’t sell them — I bought mine at the bike shop. [We do sell Garmin's for vehicles and can integrate them with our GPSI-4000 GPS tracking solution though...]
The Garmin is an optimist, and thinks I ran up all those hills & burned 5248 calories in the process (had I brought the wireless heart monitor it would have known better):
Garmin's interpretation of my Skiing with my kids
This is a great image of GPS Insight vs. Garmin (bear in mind we are an “ACTIVE” tracking system whereas the Garmin is “PASSIVE” and needs you to upload the data eventually):
GPS Insight vs. Garmin for ski tracking
The “pins” are EZ-1000 points [every minute while in cell coverage, which is spotty on the mountain]. The yellow circles are Garmin points (a LOT more of them).
Here is the Garmin unit track of where we went (and where I remembered to turn the unit on…):
Skiing at Snowbowl in Flagstaff AZ
It’s nice to have that for sports usage. But if you want to track your vehicles in real time, that’s not an option — you need an active tracking solution like GPS Insight. Both are great products — just for entirely different needs.
And here are my cold kids. Lots of snow this weekend, and way colder than they’re used to living in the desert.
Rob's kids in their cold-weather snowboarding attire
Rob.
