GPS Insight Blog » UNRELATED TO GPS

Aug 06 2011

Tracking (and using) the Branson MO “Downtown Trolleys”

Category: cell phone capabilities,GPS Insight Employees,Miscellaneous,mobile mapping — rdonat @ 8:38 am

I am on a Summer trip with my 2 boys for their vacation to Branson, MO. It’s like Disneyland for kids in the Ozarks in Missouri.

As we were getting onto the Trolley which shuttles you around “Old Town” Branson, I realized they were a customer of GPS Insight’s, and asked a support person to send me the Mobile Map link to their vehicles so I could “track myself” and see how close the trolley was later when it was time to get back on. [Mobile Mapping is a free capability within GPS Insight under the "Mapping/Mobile Mapping" menu. You just need to retrieve the unique, secure link and you can view your vehicles from any smart phone or tablet]

Here is a picture of the boys on the Trolley:

My boys on the Branson Downtown Trolley

So within a minute or so my support person was able to text me the link to use from my smartphone to see the Trolley position:

Where the Trolley is according to GPS Insight

Then quickly I clicked on Street View to see where Google thinks it looks like out my Trolley Window:

Google street View from Trolley Location

And quickly I took a picture with my iPhone to show it was EXACTLY like that at the moment:

Actual picture I took from the Trolley window

Not bad, Google (or GPS Insight)!

The Branson "Downtown Trolley"

I got off at the Bass Pro Shop stop so my kids could look around in advance of their big fishing trip the next morning. I’ll talk about how I was able to minimize my wait for the Trolley (it was 111 degrees and HUMID) in the next article.

I’m glad we’re able to help Branson with their Trolley Tracking initiative. Great town to visit with your family. For more information click here!

Thanks,

Rob.

Tags: branson, business vehicle tracking, car tracking, commercial vehicle tracking, Fleet Tracking, fleet tracking device, fleet tracking software, gps fleet tracking, GPS Tracking, gps tracking devices, mobile mapping, trolley tracking, truck tracking, vacation, Vehicle Tracking

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Jan 29 2011

You should sanity check certain directions first…

Category: Humor — rdonat @ 1:58 pm

Someone brought this to my attention recently.

If you use Google Maps to get directions “From: United States, To: Japan” it gives you the following instruction at #31:

Kayak across the Pacific Ocean

It suggests you Kayak across the Pacific Ocean.

Kayak across the Pacific Ocean

Again, a good reason to sanity-check the directions your computer or Garmin give you…

Rob.

Tags: fleet management software, fleet tracking devices, gps fleet tracking, GPS Tracking, gps vehicle tracking, vehicle tracking software

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Jan 09 2011

Should we change our logo?

Category: Miscellaneous — rdonat @ 3:43 pm

I have my 5 year old daughter and 10 year old son in the office with me today (Sunday), and Sarah said she lost her “work shirt.” I told her I didn’t know what she meant. She said she would draw what she meant, so she put this on my whiteboard:

Sarah's new Logo?

Not bad! I figured out what she meant — we have T-Shirts with the logo on them & I had given her a small sometime when she was here. Her brothers must have stolen it so she got a new one today…

Here’s a picture of the artist with her drawing (and a cup of carrots she got from the fridge):

Sarah with her new Logo

She’s playing Club Penguin right now in the main Conference Room right now on the 120″ projection screen — tough life!

Sarah makes use of the conference room

Jack (my 10 year old) is equally busy in a smaller conference room, playing Halo Reach online with his friend on XBox:

Jack plays XBox at GPS Insight

He was mad that when I made him smile for the camera, someone killed him in the game…

The family that “works” together stays together, right?

Back to work for me now…

Rob.

Tags: Fleet Tracking, fleet tracking software, GPS Tracking, gps tracking system, Vehicle Tracking

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Dec 13 2010

GPS Insight adds new servers to keep the site fast — with no downtime

Category: Availability,Miscellaneous — rdonat @ 11:48 pm

GPS Insight is very fast, and we never hear complaints from our customers about the site speed, the time it takes to run a report, wait for map refreshes, etc.

But as we add customers and vehicles under management, we always ensure we add as well as migrate to newer and better hardware.

When we do maintenance and server upgrades, our customers never see the impact — we have redundancies in place to ensure we can “cut over” while replacing/upgrading any particular part of the system.

We have spent the past few days migrating a few “old” servers which were still being used to newer ones.

I took a quick look before we finished up this process, and saw that our oldest web server had been up without being rebooted for almost 3 YEARS STRAIGHT:

GPS Insight web server up for 2.9 years without a reboot

Another key server was up for 800 days exactly before being “put out to pasture”:

GPS Insight server up without a reboot for 800 days straight

Don’t try this with Microsoft operating systems… (sorry Bill).

Rob.

Tags: gps fleet tracking, GPS Insight availability, GPS Tracking, gps tracking software, server reliability, Vehicle Tracking

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Oct 26 2010

Why would you name your GPS device the “POO 7″ ?

Category: competition,HARDWARE TYPES,Humor — rdonat @ 12:10 pm

We get a lot of inquiries from Chinese manufacturers (all of our hardware is assembled here in the United States by the way).

This one made me laugh — a lot.

poo 7

Why in the world would you name your device the Poo 7 (or any numbered variant of the word Poo)?

I wonder how well it works… True to its name? I’m guessing something got lost in translation.

We won’t be selling it anytime soon…

Rob.

Tags: Fleet Tracking, fleet tracking software, gps fleet tracking, GPS Tracking, gps tracking device, Vehicle Tracking, vehicle tracking solution

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Aug 23 2010

GPS Navigation Humor

Category: GPS Navigation,Humor — rdonat @ 7:53 pm

How true, again from our favorite geek comic strip, XKCD.

GPS Navigation Humor

Original here:

http://xkcd.com/783/

This happens to me all the time, & it drives me crazy. Except then inevitably they live on some crazy brand new street and I wind up calling them for directions anyway…

Rob.

Tags: gps fleet tracking, GPS Navigation, GPS Tracking, gps vehicle tracking, Humor, xkcd

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Aug 14 2010

Real Cowboys Don’t Need GPS

Category: Humor,Miscellaneous — rdonat @ 4:49 pm

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

Only $14.98…

Rob.

Tags: cowboys, gps fleet tracking, GPS Tracking, gps vehicle tracking, steer tracking

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Jun 04 2010

GPS Insight is the Inc. 500 Applicant of the day

Category: GPS INSIGHT COMPANY SPECIFIC,UNRELATED TO GPS — rdonat @ 5:20 pm

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

http://twitter.com/inc5000

Thanks, Inc. Magazine!

Rob.

Tags: gps fleet tracking, GPS Tracking, gps vehicle tracking

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May 25 2010

Good LA Times article on the history of GPS & the new system going in soon

Category: GPS Navigation,Miscellaneous — rdonat @ 1:09 pm

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.

Tags: gps fleet tracking, GPS System, GPS Tracking, gps vehicle tracking system, NY Times

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Apr 15 2010

Happy 5th Birthday GPS Insight

Category: Fleet Tracking,GPS Insight Employees,Miscellaneous — rdonat @ 11:42 am

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

Tags: gps fleet tracking, GPS Insight, GPS Tracking, gps vehicle tracking

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