We often run into examples of how a customer only really needs one small feature to get a great deal of value from a system. We found one example working with a customer that rents mobile generators. There are a number of solutions out there that provide complex monitoring of fuel levels, battery voltage, and so on. But what really provides value is just total runtime. The difference between a problem generator and a reliable one is more about regular maintenance than anything else. Since rental generators are at remote customer sites for long periods of time and tend to go from one customer site to another, keeping track of total engine hours manually is a difficult task and one that is ripe for a simple and inexpensive remote monitoring solution.

Those of you who use our system for tracking your fleets or other vehicles may have noticed a small change about a week ago. The map on the main “Overview” page that shows all of your devices will now auto-refresh every 30 seconds. If you watch the border of the map near the upper right corner you will notice a message every 30 seconds that says “updating locations” while the latest locations are fetched from our servers and the map is updated without reloading the page. Hopefully this new feature will be useful in the cases where you are watching your vehicles in real-time. We will continue to make enhancements to our product over time, please do not hesitate to contact us with suggestions or criticisms. We are trying to keep our product simple and avoid throwing in lots of useless features that bloat the product and feedback from real customers is a vital part of this process.

It’s always good to hear from a satisfied customer and even better when they have found a way to use your product in a way you hadn’t envisioned. We recently spoke to one of our customers who felt compelled to thank us for removing stress from his life and adding piece of mind. Steve from Sarasota has installed a Ublip tracker in the minivan used by their nanny to transport their children and has set-up geofences around the various destinations where the nanny is supposed to be with the kids. Now he and his wife get emails sent to their phones whenever the nanny arrives at and leaves these destinations. In the past, his wife might be stuck in a meeting wondering if the nanny picked up the kids. Often the stress would build to the point that she would have to leave a meeting and make a call to check. But now, she gets an email on her phone that lets her know all is well. Peace of mind, delivered to her inbox.

I remember when I was living on a University campus and had to try to decide each day whether I should wait for a shuttle bus or just walk. The problem was, of course, not knowing how long I would have to wait. Well, Ublip is helping Tufts University solve that problem. Soon students will be able to look at a monitor and see exactly how where the shuttles are as well as an estimated time of arrival. Shortly after that, they will be able to get this information using their cell phones.

In our never ending quest to find new ways to stay in touch with our customers, Ublip now has a page on the social networking site Facebook. Please visit us there and check back often. We are also working on a Facebook application, but we’re not quite ready to talk about yet.