TrackMyShipments+ is a completely new, coded-from-scratch, TrackMyShipments iPhone app - we know you’ll love all the new features. It’s FREE!

I’m really proud of this new app and its features:

• In-app map allows you to see where all your shipments are

• Push Notifications so that you can get updates direct to your iPhone and iPod Touch’s screen

• No need to type in your password every time you run the app (unless you want to)

• Update and edit your Associates direct from the app
• Complete shipment status history
• All new UI design

• Many Push Notification sound effects to choose from including our favorite, the Robot! Why shouldn’t shipment tracking be fun?

If you’re a user of our old TrackMyShipments iPhone App…Don’t worry - you’re not being left in the cold. Simply log into TrackMyShipments+ with your current email and being careful to use your current password and you’ll get all the features you’ve had before + the great new features of TrackMyShipments+

TrackMyShipments+ is available at this app store link.

I hope you enjoy this new edition of TrackMyShipments.

-Andrew

Christmas 2008 was our 1st fully running Christmas season (last year we were in Beta) and I’m happy to report that our servers and system stood up to the load. We regularly tracked thousands of shipments at once and had many users who wrote to tell us that we’d saved Christmas by telling them about stuck shipments.

One iPhone App Store review for our iPhone version reads:

TrackMyShipments saved my Christmas. I found out one of my packages (the critical one, of course) was stuck in a carrier facility, so I was able to call and fix it before it was too late. I wouldn’t have been able to do it without TMS.

We have some big plans for TMS in 2009, and we’ll let you know about them here as we implement them.

Happy New Year everyone.

It’s always great when you work on a product and then it’s released to users and they love it as much as you hoped they would.

We had a 5/5 Star Review on the App Store today which really put across well what type of experience we’re trying to bring to TrackMyShipments iPhone:

I have been waiting for a while for a good shipment tracking application and finally this one is available. It is a great app and does exactly what it says. Once I forwarded my “shipment” email to them it was updated within 2-3 minutes. Very quick. I emailed tech support with a question and had an email back within 5 minutes. If you are looking for a good app to track shipments I highly recommend this one.

Thanks to everyone who has downloaded TrackMyShipments iPhone so far.

If you have any product comments or suggestions, please let us know.

We’ve been working on it for a couple of months and are super happy with this 1st version.

I hope you’ll support us and download a copy.

I’d love to hear from you with any suggestions for features etc.

Yes, that’s right! We’re working on a version of TrackMyShipments for iPhone. We hope to have it finished and available on the iPhone Application Store by the start of September - watch this space!

A really nice write-up on associatedcontent.com (here) and on pcmech.com (here).

Things here are going great. We are regularly tracking multiple thousands of shipments at any one time, and our user numbers are climbing nicely.

We expect much growth as the summer ends and the Holidays start.

TrackMyShipments starts charging for some features today.

As you can see above, the main differences between a FREE and PRO account are the number of shipments that can be tracked at any one time, and SMS Shipment Status Updates.

We’re using PayPal for our subscriptions for security and ease-of-use.

We will use this income to continue to improve the service.

(Note that all users who have signed up before tonight will get the SMS Shipment Status Updates feature for Free for 12 months as a ‘thank you’ for being an early user of TrackMyShipments)

The answer is a complex one. The quickest answer is that we’re always adjusting our algorithms to get the best performance without our servers constantly shouting ‘HEY - what’s happening with shipment X’ to the shipping companies’ servers.

The situation we’re aiming at is where you hear a thump on your doorstep and your email pings with a new status email from TrackMyShipments telling you that the shipment has arrived.

In most situations this is what actually happens!

In some we can’t achieve this level of service because either our servers are temporarily overloaded (something we’re always adjusting and improving) or the shipping company doesn’t update its servers immediately.

Perhaps we’re setting our sights too high, but that ‘thump & ping’ is what we’re aiming at.

Everything is up and running again now without any problems.