As I’ve mentioned several times, the MileTrack team is focused on creating a new tracking device that you can leave in your car. We’ll be partnering with Verizon Wireless so that the device can log trips in real-time.

The device is bench-prototype complete. It’s been taken on trips sitting in the passenger seat for several weeks now with stellar results. We’ll soon be starting the process of miniaturizing the device and finding manufacturers for the prototype phase. Drop us a note on our Contact Us form and tell us a bit about your mileage usage patterns if you’d like to be considered for beta testing the new device.

We recently received a request from a customer asking us to raise the bar in regards to our slogan of “Pain FREE Mileage Tracking”. He had two “lazy” salespeople working with him that need everything in the Android app to just work automatically. Here is an excerpt of his enhancement request:

Description:
Your philosophy of making things easier is along the lines of our business process, but in the interest of making our sales reps even lazier than they already are, I ask that you consider a feature enhancement to enable automatic logging of trips once a certain speed/distance has been exceeded and the phone is being charged (most our people don’t go for jogs with their laptops in tow).

Steps to Reproduce:
Find a really lazy salesperson. No, seriously. The 2 individuals I directly support haven’t filed a mileage expense report since the beginning of time. They are leaving over $1000 a month on the table, and they both say that not having to be bothered is worth it.

We get a fair number of enhancement requests, but this one really struck a chord with our development team. I mean, Why COULDN’T everything be triggered and uploaded automatically? The current process for logging a trip looks like:

1.) Plug phone into car charger.
2.) Launch MileTrack GPS app.
3.) Press Menu->Start Trip
4.) Drive to destination.
5.) Press Menu->End Trip
6.) Choose YES button to upload trip
7.) Choose Menu->Exit
8.) Unplug phone from car charger.

Version 1.2.4 has been released live on the Android market and it has a new feature called “Automatic Tracking”. It’s enabled by default once you upgrade to 1.2.4. If you don’t like it, you can disable it from the Settings screen. Due to this setting, we’ve reduced the process for logging a trip:

1.) Plug phone into car charger
2.) Drive to destination
3.) Unplug phone from car charger

MileTrack GPS 1.2.4 will recognize when your phone has been plugged into power. It immediately turns on and starts listening for movement. If the speed exceeds 5mph, a trip log is automatically started in the background (no need to launch the app at all). When MileTrack recognizes that power has been lost and it has an in-process background trip log, it will automatically stop the trip and begin uploading it to the miletrack servers.

Enjoy the new update and thanks for your continued support!

Our most-requested feature is the ability to add a trip manually in MileTrack. Either you’ve forgotten to log a return trip, or remembered to start logging half-way into a trip. In any case, our users have been clamoring for this ability for some time now.

In order to use this new feature, simply click on the Add Manual Trip button, enter the trip information and Save.

We’ve pushed out a change that allows you to edit descriptions directly from the map screen. You can move from trip to trip without leaving the map in order to add descriptions. In case you’re curious, the trip I delete during the screencast is actually a plane trip. Our takeoff speed was 180mph and cruising speed was around 500mph.