Well this is not what I had originally intended this post for. Let me quickly detail my original plans and then what actually ended up happening. First off, we were trying to ship a 17″ MacBook Pro to a co-worker in Austin. We thought about having a little fun and sending the SPOT Satellite Messenger I received for Christmas along with it. This would allow us to track the package with roughly a location reading every 10 minutes. We’d be able to watch the package as it moved within the Ublip fleet tracking app, though we were very skeptical of it ever sending a reading since it would be indoors (or inside a truck) most of the time. But hey, it was the beginning of a cool experiment.

So here are where things go a bit awry. Here’s a pic of the UPS store I shipped from:

Click the image to see the store’s location. Next I snapped a pic of the MacBook along with the SPOT device:

I originally took this photo with excitement as I’d be able to blog about how we tracked the MacBook all the way to Austin using our location tracking software. Boy was I wrong about that. So I turn on the SPOT and walk into the store. I put the power cable and SPOT in a small box as not to draw attention to the flashing LEDs on the device.

The guy behind the counter (the store manager) asks me where the computer is going and I give him all the details. He weighs it and asks me how much I’d like to insure it for. I’m going to be completely honest here and admit my first mistake. I tell him that I’d like to insure it for $1,000. As you may or may not already know, the 17″ MacBook Pro can easily set you back $3,000. Now let me justify my decision a bit. When asking for insurance I always work under the assumption that I’m having something insured against damage because of mishandling or some sort of accident. I own a PowerBook G4 and the worst damage I ever had with mine was getting the motherboard replaced after I dropped it. This cost a nice $900. Anyway, that was my somewhat weak reasoning.

I’d like to point out the store manager weighs the MacBook before putting it in the box and prints my invoice based on this weight (approx 7 lbs). That doesn’t seem to concern me too much, but when I ask him where’s the box so I can package the MacBook he tells me that they’ll do it behind the counter. Since I’ve insured it they feel more comfortable taking on the responsibility of packaging it themselves, than letting me do it. That seems like a reasonable policy and I’ve done this on several occasions in the past, but never with such an expensive piece of equipment. My second mistake was to trust this in their hands and walk out of the store without ever seeing them package the MacBook. It’s all good, so I drive back to the office to login to our GPS tracking app to see if the SPOT had reported. No report. No big deal as I was very skeptical we’d ever get a report in the first place.

The next day I’m at dinner with a friend and I get a call from Austin. Austin was the recipient of the package and he lives in Austin. Austin says to me, “Hey, did you forget to put the MacBook in the box?” This kind of throws me for a loop and I say to him “What in the word are you talking about?” He then proceeds to tell me that there’s an empty box with the SPOT tracker inside, but nothing else. My first reaction was of complete astonishment. So we talk through the situation some more and I try not to presume the worst, that the MacBook had been stolen. So I ask Austin to snap some pics and send them to me.

This first pic is of the box after Austin opened it. The box looked perfectly sealed and everything, just weighed about 7lbs less!

This pic is of the bubble wrap the MacBook was apparently in:

Here’s a pic of the small box I packed the SPOT device and the power cable in. This was inside the big box with the MacBook. As you can see, there’s no power cable:

And last but not least, a random zip lock bag (that’s right kids, a zip lock bag!) that Austin found inside the box:

A rather humorous point I’d like to make is that the SPOT tracker was still blinking when it arrived at Austin’s doorstep. I had put it in continuous tracking mode before I shipped it from the UPS store in Dallas. That means some idiot had to open the box, pull out the power supply, while a GPS tracker was sitting right there next to it. If ONLY the friggin’ SPOT would have reported JUST THAT ONE TIME!

Our other theory is that since I was such an idiot and left the store without ever watching the MacBook get boxed up is that it never made it into the box. When I called the store manager the next day he sounded very nonchalant about the whole situation and mentioned that this is somewhat common during the Holiday season. I was baffled to hear this and it blows my mind that our MacBook was stolen by a UPS employee. When I went into the store just to get clarification on the situation the lady was very offended by some of the questions I asked such as:

- Do you have confirmation that the computer actually left the store?

- Is the weight of the package monitored at each check point?

- Will we be reimbursed for the full cost of the computer?

At any rate, I thought I had every right to do my own sort of investigation since a $3,000 piece of hardware just turned up missing. I asked the store manager what comes next and he informed me they would tell UPS of the situation. From my understanding UPS stores are independently owned and operated.

After UPS was notified they would send a fraud investigator to Austin’s house to pick up the package and inspect it. We were informed that if everything goes well we should get our $1,000 claim check. When I heard this I almost flipped my lid (hence my reference to mistake #1 above). They’re going to reimburse us a measly $1,000 because one of UPS’ employees stole our MacBook? When buying insurance never in a million years did I think to insure it against theft from the company I was shipping with.

I really am not interested in pointing the finger because I do realize mistakes happen. But the least UPS could do is refund us the cost of the MacBook. At the time of this post we’re waiting to hear back from UPS regarding our $1,000 insurance check, but I’m kinda hoping this post raises a little more awareness within their organization. I will post an update once I hear from UPS.

Here’s what I did learn in this entire process:

- If you ship high-value goods with UPS I would recommend insuring them for their total value. It sucks that you may need to insure them for their retail value, not what they’re currently worth.

- The SPOT Satellite Messenger is not a reliable device to do package tracking with. That’s not its intended purpose, but I thought it would be a cool experiment.

- Always watch the person at the front package your item or do it yourself before you get into the store.

- UPS really needs to consider a GPS tracking solution for high-value goods. I know a great company that could help them with this (check out www.ublip.com - my shameless plug).

I would like to ask anyone that reads this article to please share their thoughts on the following:

- From the information I’ve shared, where do you think our MacBook is? Do you think it’s with someone at the UPS store or possibly stolen by a UPS driver?

- Have you ever experienced a similar situation?

- Do you think UPS should refund us for the full cost of the MacBook?

I’d love to hear your thoughts and hope you enjoyed the rather eventful post. I can say that it’s been a very eventful last week and everyone that hears this story stares at me in disbelief.

If you’ve ever used Google maps, especially since they’ve added the satellite view, you’ve probably looked up your house. And chances are very good that the location that came up in the map was close to your house, but not quite there. Well, you can now fix that. Google now allows users to edit locations in their maps, as long as the move is less than 200 yards, the change is instant. I already fixed the location of my house, and I encourage you to do the same. As you may know, we use Google maps for our fleet tracking application and rely on Google’s address to lat/long lookup (technically known as geocoding) for things like setting geofences, so the more accurate their database, the better for us. Unfortunately, we do not seem to get the edited data through their service yet, but I’m sure that will change.

Google put together a clever video about this, check it out:

If you interested in seeing what other people are editing, Google also built a recent edits page that is very cool.

We were informed today that the Tufts University JoeyTracker has gone live. Be sure to check out this article that talks about the project and individuals involved:

http://www.tuftsdaily.com/

We posted previously about Tufts engineering students using our GeoRSS feed to build the JoeyTracker application. It’s amazing what a couple of college students can do when they put their minds to it. Using the Ublip Foundation they were able to build the application in a relatively short amount of time. Hats off to the Tufts team for their persistence and hard work. We’ve truly enjoyed working with their team and look forward to bringing more Joeys online.

We were recently contacted by Tufts University about our GPS tracking system. The Tufts student government had been working on a project to track their campus bus (The Joey) and chose Ublip because of our simple approach to GPS tracking. We’ve worked hard to include only the features that customers need within our web-based software. This seemed to resonate with Tufts and they enjoyed our simple and intuitive user interface.

As with most projects, there’s always a requirement or three that fall outside the scope of the current product. While we’d love to implement every feature our customers suggest, we believe in keeping our software bloat-free and adding features that we feel that everyone can benefit from. When Tufts asked for a few features that we considered “custom” we decided they could make use of our GeoRSS feed.

The main feature Tufts wanted was for their students to have access to “The Joey’s” current location without having to login to the Ublip system. While in most cases we strongly advise against this, it made perfect sense for Tufts. So giving them access to our GeoRSS feed allows them to supply HTTP basic auth credentials from their application to ours. Tufts engineering students were then able to consume our GeoRSS feed and create their Joey Tracker application with minimal effort. Check out the video below for a basic overview of the integration.

We’ve been working with Tufts University on a GPS campus bus tracking project. Before I get into details I’d like to say thanks to Dan Gross and Matt Shapanka for making this happen. The history of the Tufts bus tracking project has not gone without criticism. It first started with an implementation using a mobile phone, but I could go on and on while there are so many points of failure with this type of device. I’ve developed a few mobile GPS applications and can’t tell you the number of emails I’ve received because “it just stopped working”.

Students at Tufts have grown impatient with the project, and reasonably so, since it has been in the works for nearly two years. If you don’t believe me then read the following posts:

http://www.collegeotr.com/tufts_university/joey_gps_nope_it_will_never_happen_240
http://www.collegeotr.com/tufts_university/matt_shapanka_and_joey_gps_you_have_to_be_shiting_me_5427
http://www.collegeotr.com/tufts_university/joeygps_finally_a_reality_still_a_waste_of_money_5800

I’ve found the posts highly entertaining and a few of the students bring up a really good point: it really doesn’t have to be that hard. So when we first talked with Matt we let him know the process would be pretty simple:

1. Buy the device
2. Install it when it arrives (see basic installation here)
3. Log in to the Ublip tracking application and use it

The company that runs the buses on the Tufts campus was able to get the device installed and running in no time at all. Now that “The Joey”, as they call it, is being tracked we believe there are a quite a few benefits for this type of application:

- Increases efficiency as students aren’t waiting around to catch a bus
- Increases safety at night by allowing students to wait inside their dorm or building before the bus arrives
- Increases bus usage since students know where the bus is at all times
- Students can stay indoors and keep warm (Tufts is in Boston, you know) while waiting for the bus

I can guarantee a few Tufts students will disagree with these statements, but only time will tell whether or not the use of our technology on the Tufts campus will prove beneficial. In all reality it was less than a $400 annual investment to validate this.

Matt and his team at Tufts have quite a few interesting uses of this technology in store for campus students. If you’re interested in seeing it live then click here or on the image below. Please note that the Tufts engineering team developed this application using our GeoRSS feed.