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

Garmin has, as some expected, launched its first phone, which focuses on navigation. It's called the nuviphone. Garmin doesn't yet have any information on its website, but there's plenty of coverage elsewhere, including at Engadget and the Kansas City Star.

Also, word from Dominos you can now track your pizza order to your door - at least from 3,200 outlets. But, it's really a "what step is it at" tracking, there's no geo involved. From the PR:

Once customers place an order, they can go to www.dominos.com and click on the Pizza Tracker icon. They will see a horizontal bar that lights up red as each step in the process is completed. Customers will see confirmation of their order being received by the store; when it's being prepared; when it's been placed in the oven; when it's been boxed and placed in the Domino's HeatWave(TM) bag; and finally, when it's on its way for delivery.

Still, Dominos has applied for a patent on the technology.

The deal costs $420 per year and includes emergency tracking, limited talk time and unlimited texting. Students are not required to have a particular phone or carrier (not sure how that works with this flat fee...) The VNU article does not say what prompted the requirement, which is apparently the first in the country.

Things are getting worse. The company announced plans to drop 23% of its employees and a few days later the CFO resigned. The stock, which had a high of $32 in 2000 has a 52 week high of 24 cents. This week it dropped to 7.5 cents on the Toronto exchange.

- The Star

--- original post 11/14 ----

Mobile Resource Managment provider AirIQ is being hit by geography. It's based in Canada where the dollar is rising and thus its once not so small debt is much bigger - $3.4M this past quarter from $1.2M a year ago.

To fix things some execs may go. Most of its clients are in the U.S. - 95%.

- The Canadian Press

for a bird, that is, was recently tracked using satellites and transmitters. E7 is a female bar-tailed godwit which USGS tracked during March through September from New Zealand to Alaska and back. She travelled 18,000 miles. It was the last leg, some 7,200 in eight days that set the nonstop record for tracked birds. I hope that puts all the Turkey Day travel challenges in perspective.


People and Water.gov (via reader Larry)

This week we tackle a question that came up in our work recently: Just what constitutes a "location-based service." The topic emerged as we discussed which posts here at APB should be tagged "LBS." In this podcast we tease out our own definitions and explore the future of the term. We apologize for the less than optimal sound quality; we hope the content is worth the effort. The podcast is 16 minutes long and was recorded on November 19, 2007.

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