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.
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
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.
Feb 03 2010
I have a daily report which comes to me which tells me how close we are to hitting 2 major Alert milestones:
GPS Insight's Millionth Alert and Billionth Check are coming soon!
We are very close to sending our MILLIONTH alert out.
Shortly thereafter (unless drivers stop causing alerts which, uh, isn’t very likely…), we will process our BILLIONTH alert check.
We process a huge number of alerts checks and send quite a few each day.
In the short time I’ve been typing this blog article, we have processed 15,282 checks, yielding a relatively small number of alerts — 3.
This is because it’s night and most of our customers’ drivers aren’t driving, let alone speeding, idling, or going in or out of landmarks. Chances are those were odd-hours alerts…
I’ll let everyone know when we hit these marks.
[worth noting, on 8/15/2009, when I last wrote about this, we were only at 350 million checks and 419,000 alerts. Customers are really starting to utilize our alerts more now than they have in the past]
Rob.
Dec 20 2009
Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays, and Happy New Year from GPS Insight
Click here for the animated holiday card!
Thanks for everyone’s support in 2009 & best wishes for the Holidays and a Happy New Year.
Rob.
Dec 19 2009
We will have a formal announcement about this after the holidays.
Just last Tuesday, we lit up exactly 1,000 new units on GPS Insight for a new customer.
They all came online at the exact same time, which is not typical, but this had an interesting and noticeable effect on our daily processing.
Here is a graph we get each day which is typically 100% bell curve shaped. This indicates driving activity, and peaks during the middle of the day when most of the drivers of our tracked delivery vehicles, service vehicles, and government vehicles are out doing their jobs.
GPS Insight turns on 1000 new units
It was very evident when these devices started reporting to GPS Insight, so I thought I would point out the nice “bump” we got to our overall vehicle installed base Tuesday.
It is interesting to note that even though we have vehicles in 4 different timezones (6 if you include Alaska and Hawaii), and in 100 different types of business, they all wind up “smoothing each other out” to a single bell curve.
The street sweepers and a number of over the road/long haul vehicles work at night typically, which keeps our nighttime activity from dipping too low, and the early morning service workers (Construction, typically) get things off in a hurry starting around 4 AM MST (here in AZ this time of year that means 6 AM New York Time). The longer tail at the end of the day is because of overtime — drivers get going according to a schedule, but don’t always finish on time.
Some drivers drive to a workplace once a day, then there is no more movement until they leave to go home, and some drive all day long (e.g. delivery vans). When you you put together tens of thousands of vehicles though, across over 1,000 customers, things balance out and become pretty predictable.
GPS Tracking histogram / Bell Curve
Here’s a daily “by hour” for the whole month. The only anomaly is a slight dip in the 11:00 hour — I’m pretty sure that’s lunch related. I bet if our customers check the street view on their vehicles locations, there would be a lot of this stuff going on:
This is our Scion 4000 on the way to take a couple salespeople to the airport to head home after a week in the office:
19 minute lunch stop into the 11:00 Hour
In-N-Out stop for Joe Vidmar
Our Chicago guys only get into Scottsdale occasionally, and needed their In-N-Out Burger fix before heading back on Friday. Them & several other thousand drivers being tracked by GPS Insight around lunchtime. And now 1,000 more.
Rob.
Dec 15 2009
Watch some of the GPS Insight staff “get down” in a hilarious dancing elves video.
Happy Holidays!
(click below to watch the video)
Nov 25 2009
Happy Thanksgiving from GPS Insight
On behalf of all of our employees, we wish to express our gratitude to all of our customers and vendors (and even some competitors…). We hope you have a great Thanksgiving holiday. We will have Support available on Thanksgiving, but it will be cell-phone based, and you may get someone in a Turkey Coma.
Rob.
Nov 01 2009
My kids went trick-or-treating the second we got back from Disneyland yesterday. Jack is wearing the skull face, and Ryan is the headless horseman. Sarah is the Alice in Wonderland.
Rob's scary and cute kids
(Look at the arrow on Jack’s shirt below) Just like in Halloween 3, the movie, there was something REALLY scary — truly frightening — lurking underneath Jack’s Skull costume. I had no idea until I saw it later.
YIKES! (shudder...!)
Ryan had enough battery left in his EZ-1000 to track him trick-or-treating around the neighborhood so I could stick with Sarah on her first Halloween:
Halloween GPS tracking with an EZ-1000
Rob.
