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.

Here at Ublip, we are big fans of  mashup applications which are applications that combine data from multiple sources. We have just released our first feature to help allow their creation. The most recent location of a device is now available as a secure GeoRSS feed. If you look above the upper right corner of the map on the All Readings report, there is now a GeoRSS icon that is linked to this feed, see the image below:

In the near future, we will be adding additional feeds for multiple devices, geofence violations, stops, etc. If you have any suggestions for feeds or other kinds of API access, contact us.

One of our developers has written a blog post about integrating Ublip feeds with Yahoo Pipes.

In the competitive world of GPS tracking everyone is trying to one-up the competition. As we’ve discussed previously Ublip is trying to one-down the competition. Our approach is less is more and we’ve identified the features that we feel are most important to companies or consumers with small fleets. We don’t believe in “everything but the kitchen sink” when it comes to our products. Wireless networks, devices, and protocols are complex beasts and we ultimately want to abstract our users from all this. Our goal is to provide a fun and engaging user experience when tracking mobile assets. If you don’t believe me then feel free to give us a try and we’re offering a 30 day money back guarantee on our GPS tracking device. We stand by our product enough to let you use it and return it if you’re not 100% satisfied. If you’re evaluating a GPS tracking system I encourage you to give us a try. You can order your GPS tracking device online and have it up and running in minutes (after you receive it, of course).

We’ve received quite a few emails asking for more information about our GPS tracking system. Our tour page shows a few screen shots of the system, but we’ve decided to expose a real GPS tracking demo based on demand. Please note that the GPS data in the system is intentionally delayed for security reasons. In our live system this data would be accurate within minutes of the current time. We believe you’ll agree that our Web-based GPS tracking software is simple to use and isn’t bloated with features. Read more about what you can do with it on our demo page. As always, feel free to contact us or post any questions in the comments section below.

I love when I explain to someone what we’re creating and they “get” it. What I mean by this is not even a minute into the conversation that person sees how the product would impact their life. Their eyes light up and and they talk more excitedly. They lean in the more you talk and smile during every word. That happened to me just a few days ago. A friend of mine asked me what this ublip thing was that I had been blogging and talking about all summer. I explained we were trying to build and launch a product and service called ublip and that it was a great chance to track anything and everything from fleet applications, to your dog, to you and your family. The rest of the conversation went something like this:

My Friend: What is this ublip thing?
Me: Its a site that lets you track yourself, your car, your company assests, you family or anything else that moves!
My Friend: [an “a ha” expression takes over her face] So I could see when my puppy runs away and then chase after it?
Me: Sure. You can get the results sent to your email or your cellphone.
My Friend: So if someone stole your car you could have the police find them quickly?
Me: Of course, you could bring your phone with them and receive text messages or emails with street address based on where your car is located!
My Friend: Or if I can’t figure out where my husband parked the car after work I can just log in and view it, time, date everything?
Me: Yeah you’ve pretty much got it.
My Friend: Is it up yet? I want to know where my daughter goes after school!

It gives us such a great feeling when we can explain to someone what we’re working on and they understand it quickly. I think that is one of the reasons we are all participating in this venture. We realize that there are other companies that “track things” but no one “gets it” yet. No one has a great user experience with a device or an application and we truly believe that our launch will change the way people view this sector. We want to make a difference in the world. There is a certain satisfaction that comes from helping create a product that others instantly get excited about and discover how it directly and positively would improve some facet of their life.