I noted Domino's offering for pizza tracking last week: basically, you know what stage your pie is at in the process, not where it is. Papa John's is going with another technology, at least one 11 store group in Huntsville. (Joe will need to test this!)

The group is using technology from Trackmypizza a startup built by "two telemetry scientists who spent 10 years tracking defense missiles for the U.S. government." They use GPS enabled phones that travel with the drivers.

About 18% of all orders (phone and Internet) in the last 60 days are using the service and amazingly, online orders are up 100%. Part of the return on investment seems to be getting more folks to order online - they order more because they can see the whole menu.

Another tidbit - the tracking seems to use TIGER data: "TrackMyPizza itself relies on a mapping engine built by Randy Younger, the company's chief operating officer, and Ken Blankshain, its CTO, using geo data available from the U.S. government." The site is funded by Papa Johns and ads. And, the maps are pretty basic.

-
InformationWeek

Scientists at the Fraunhofer Institute for Intelligent Analysis and Information Systems IAIS in Sankt Augustin chave developed a frequency atlas that indicates how many people pass certain billboard locations every hour. They extrapolate from thousands of test subjects who wore GPS tracking devices. The atlas helps advertisers find the best spots and is already in use. Their analytical tools are also available for others to use.

- physorg.com