I assume there is a long list of "features" which your users and program staff have come up with for desired future components. How do you prioritize those in the development queue? Is there any method at all? Squeaky wheel? Most requests? Interest of particular developers? Donations with particular requests?
Hi! I'm the founder of 10-20.com, and also a regular/. reader, so I suppose I'll stick my head out of my shell and address some of the good points many of you have brought up, and risk the [flame,crackpot,possible customer] replies.:)
- "It already exists": Yes, there are competitors to the 10-20.com system, but most of them use the cell phone network to move their data. One of our main selling points is that this works anywhere in North America, not just areas that have cell phone or 2-way pager coverage. Our market is the long-range traveler: small businesses with large geographic ranges, field service vehicles (oil, forestry, land management), RV's, off-road vehicles, etc. I will readily admit that cell phone transmission strategies make more sense in dense urban environments; that's not who we're after. Most of North America does not have cell phone coverage; we cover those spaces, and provide an easy-to-install solution for those huge areas.
- "How is this different than OnStar or LoJack?": OnStar uses cell phone data. As far as I know, OnStar does not allow you to access maps or history of your vehicle's position, and it is a "poll" based system, meaning that there is no information of where your vehicle is until there is an event (crash/panic/call outbound) or a poll by the central office. LoJack simply is a theft recovery system that is available to _some_ police departments in _some_ states, and is completely unaccessible by the customer - they don't even tell you where it's installed. With either of these two systems, you have no idea where your vehicle is, or was, unless there is an extraordinary circumstance.
- "You can do this with APRS": Yep, you can, and I applaud anyone getting their license and spending the time to put a system together. Most companies, though, don't want to go through this exercise. Plus, then you'll also need a back-end system to store the points, a mapping server to map them on street and topological maps, redundant servers to catch failures, etc. etc. To duplicate everything we have put together is a large effort, but if all you want is a subset, then perhaps there are less expensive ways to do it, but what's your time worth? (PS: APRS and/or wardriving users can contact me about possible very-small-fee use of our reverse geocode XML interface that takes USA-based lat/lon and spits out addresses over an HTTP query - a pretty neat service that we developed which isn't available for a reasonable price anywhere else, at least that we were able to find.)
- "This won't prevent criminals from stealing/stripping my car": No, the system really isn't designed as a theft prevention or theft recovery system, and we'll never probably advertise it as such. The antenna is fairly obvious, and easily decommissioned. This is a vehicle tracking system, which as a side benefit could possibly be used as a theft recovery system. If you have a driver who decommissions the antenna, that is detectable by the lack of updates to the system, which can then trigger an alert to one or many users.
- "This is an invasion of privacy.": So don't buy it. If your employer wants to buy it and put it on their vehicle, that's their right. We at 10-20.com are pretty fanatical privacy advocates, but we also recognize that if someone is paying you for your time, and is paying for their vehicle, it's their right to monitor the use of those resources. If this is a parent/child relationship, that is something that has to be worked out between the parent and child, and is a discussion between them and does not involve us. Note that we have an interesting system called "Peek-Proof" that notifies the child (if it's configured properly) via email every time a parent views their location on the system. This permission level removes the uncertainty of how often someone is accessing your position, putting the discussion back at the political level instead of the technological level.
- "Proprietary systems are bad": We're looking at how to deliver exported data for those of you who want to build your own tools. We like our offered tools, but it's nice to be able to support queries from outside. We also allow for incorporation of your maps (if you toggle that option) into your own web pages, at different map sizes and zoom levels.
Thanks for all your comments. There have been a few ideas in the above items which have made me consider different options for our next revision of the software.
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I assume there is a long list of "features" which your users and program staff have come up with for desired future components. How do you prioritize those in the development queue? Is there any method at all? Squeaky wheel? Most requests? Interest of particular developers? Donations with particular requests?
One more thing I forgot to add (isn't there always something?): yes, we of course accept credit cards. Somehow we missed that point in the FAQ.
- "It already exists": Yes, there are competitors to the 10-20.com system, but most of them use the cell phone network to move their data. One of our main selling points is that this works anywhere in North America, not just areas that have cell phone or 2-way pager coverage. Our market is the long-range traveler: small businesses with large geographic ranges, field service vehicles (oil, forestry, land management), RV's, off-road vehicles, etc. I will readily admit that cell phone transmission strategies make more sense in dense urban environments; that's not who we're after. Most of North America does not have cell phone coverage; we cover those spaces, and provide an easy-to-install solution for those huge areas.
- "How is this different than OnStar or LoJack?": OnStar uses cell phone data. As far as I know, OnStar does not allow you to access maps or history of your vehicle's position, and it is a "poll" based system, meaning that there is no information of where your vehicle is until there is an event (crash/panic/call outbound) or a poll by the central office. LoJack simply is a theft recovery system that is available to _some_ police departments in _some_ states, and is completely unaccessible by the customer - they don't even tell you where it's installed. With either of these two systems, you have no idea where your vehicle is, or was, unless there is an extraordinary circumstance.
- "You can do this with APRS": Yep, you can, and I applaud anyone getting their license and spending the time to put a system together. Most companies, though, don't want to go through this exercise. Plus, then you'll also need a back-end system to store the points, a mapping server to map them on street and topological maps, redundant servers to catch failures, etc. etc. To duplicate everything we have put together is a large effort, but if all you want is a subset, then perhaps there are less expensive ways to do it, but what's your time worth? (PS: APRS and/or wardriving users can contact me about possible very-small-fee use of our reverse geocode XML interface that takes USA-based lat/lon and spits out addresses over an HTTP query - a pretty neat service that we developed which isn't available for a reasonable price anywhere else, at least that we were able to find.)
- "This won't prevent criminals from stealing/stripping my car": No, the system really isn't designed as a theft prevention or theft recovery system, and we'll never probably advertise it as such. The antenna is fairly obvious, and easily decommissioned. This is a vehicle tracking system, which as a side benefit could possibly be used as a theft recovery system. If you have a driver who decommissions the antenna, that is detectable by the lack of updates to the system, which can then trigger an alert to one or many users.
- "This is an invasion of privacy.": So don't buy it. If your employer wants to buy it and put it on their vehicle, that's their right. We at 10-20.com are pretty fanatical privacy advocates, but we also recognize that if someone is paying you for your time, and is paying for their vehicle, it's their right to monitor the use of those resources. If this is a parent/child relationship, that is something that has to be worked out between the parent and child, and is a discussion between them and does not involve us. Note that we have an interesting system called "Peek-Proof" that notifies the child (if it's configured properly) via email every time a parent views their location on the system. This permission level removes the uncertainty of how often someone is accessing your position, putting the discussion back at the political level instead of the technological level.
- "Proprietary systems are bad": We're looking at how to deliver exported data for those of you who want to build your own tools. We like our offered tools, but it's nice to be able to support queries from outside. We also allow for incorporation of your maps (if you toggle that option) into your own web pages, at different map sizes and zoom levels.
Thanks for all your comments. There have been a few ideas in the above items which have made me consider different options for our next revision of the software.
- John Todd, founder 10-20.com (jtodd@10-20.com)