TrackMyShipments offers a centralized delivery tracking service that is similar to TripIt.
The concept is simple. Users sign up and forward emails they receive when ordering goods online to TrackMyShipments. The email can be in any format and any layout. The service then extracts the data to create a centralized tracking point for all deliveries. TrackMyShipments regularly pings the original service for updates, and can email or SMS location updates of tracked items to users.
The Milpitas based service is a solid enough idea, although I can’t help that wonder exactly how many people have soo many packages on the way that they need a centralized management service for them. Perhaps this is a service that may find a stronger use base in the corporate sector where deliveries are more frequent, than with average consumers.
blog post title fix needed :-p
Seems like this runs afoul of many shippers’ TOS?
even with only a few shipments, so long as I don’t need to login every time, I’d use it. I constantly am searching Gmail for my tracking emails, sometimes I’ve deleted them, sometimes I’ve forgotten the titles, etc. Nice idea– not revolutionary but nice.
And TrackMyShipments plans to make money how?
Lame… iSnoop.net offers a Google Mashup for tracking packages including an RSS Feed. Then you just have to drop it in a feedreader like Netvibes, iGoogle, or Google Reader and you are good to go.
http://isnoop.net/tracking/
Re: money
Check the screenshots, they have a google adsense in there.
why is anyone even writing about this company. its a joke.
it’s easy
it’s free
it’s simple
it has no way to make money
it will go away after 6 months
it’s easy
it’s free
It could not be a good business, who will use them? And how could they make money? And what would happen if UPS or FEDEX intergate this funtion to their own website.
Re: money
It’s main business based on Email, Google Adsense could not do much help on Money.
I like the concept, but two things:
1) I think this may violate TOS agreements with shippers
2) You need to be able to manually input tracking #’s. I don’t always get an e-mail with the tracking #. (Ex: sometimes you have to login to the site to get the tracking info)
Ebay power sellers are an obvious example of people who could use this…
You mean ebay power BUYERS…
I don’t get out of the bed for anything under $1,000.
They will receive 5mil in funding for a service that will fold in a few years.
Hheehhe …You all are so wrong ..
This is a good starter project .. The creator never said they were going to quit their dayjob ..
There is not wrong with reading about a company like this .. You have to give the little guy a chance ..
Many thanks for all your comments and to Michael and the gang for the mention today.
Russel: Yes, there are other tracking services out there – TMS is for those who don’t know what RSS feeds are and who don’t have time for lots of cutting&pasting.
Matt & Simon: re EBAY – We track incoming and outgoing shipments.
Dave: You can enter shipments ‘by hand’ – just send an email to track@trackmyshipments.com with the shipping company’s name (eg USPS) and ‘tracking XXXXXX’ (where XXXXXX is the tracking number) in the body of the email. We’ll add this tip to the FAQs and Help Pages. Many thanks.
Morgan & Matt & Startup News: Thank you. Yes, TMS is supposed to be easy and useful – I’m trying to solve a problem that I’ve had for many years, it’s as simple as that. Old chinese proverb: “Solve people’s problem now, money later”
Many thanks to everyone for trying out trackmyshipments.
-Andrew
http://www.trac...myshipments.com
i think its a perfectly cool idea. once you have it out there you can always find ways to monetize on it and grow it as you have a better realization of how people actually use the service.
Is this what passes for news for Duncan Riley? Sorry, but this has FAIL written all over it.
Duncan..go back to school and get a real degree that has some usefulness.
I don’t get why so many people are calling fail- Here’s why I think this site will do fine:
1) An ad-sense based site completely removes the user’s bank account from the business model, so traffic (and therefor profit) are based entirely on usefulness.
2) It’s useful.
To answer the question in the post, “although I can’t help that wonder exactly how many people have soo many packages on the way that they need a centralized management service for them.” – I plan on using it a lot, and I never have more than 1 or 2 packages being shipped to me simultaneously. The main thing convenience for me here isn’t so much multiple simultaneous trackers, but multiple company trackers ON ONE SITE. I can ditch all my fedex/usps/ups/hong kong air tracking bookmarks, and replace them all with that one. I won’t have to look up an email to remember how my next package is shipping so I can go to the corresponding tracker website. Just go to this site.
It’s kind of like putting feeds in Google Reader – Even if you don’t read all your feeds all the time, it’s still handy to only have one destination address to get all the information you’re looking for.
This does violate the shippers TOS.
A company called “iping” was doing this back in 2002 and was forced to cease and desist by UPS.
wow..i get like package a month…this one might want to target businesses
joe
diamondrings411.com
I think this is very cool and will spread everywhere. Just think how many secretaries and assistants send out fedex packs from reception areas every day through various companies and are always getting quized by the boss: is it there yet?
Also – forget the TOS BS. Everyone understands that 2.0 is about communication freedom and the old timer at UPS in 2002 is probably tending his vegetable patch now and muttering oaths…..
This gives me a great excuse to buy more on line now. I hated saving all those email responses for shipments over christmas…now I can check on site a day vs. 10.
Next idea to put in the hopper….track my rebates! Those take forever….
good luck
WARNING – as soon as I signed up with TrackMyShipments.com and started using the service, I started getting a lot of spam. I know this has to do with TrackMyShipments.com because I used a totally new and unique email address when I signed up with them.
So I contacted them and they stated: “the route that we use for outgoing
mail isn’t 100% secure, and I’ll look into that.”
Given that their service is based upon them email you status updates, I would avoid them unless you don’t care about getting a boat load of new spam every hour.
It’s certainly true that you can’t keep all the people happy all the time. I’m sorry that ‘photoTristan’ isn’t happy with our service.
In fact we swapped several emails with him about his account (after 10pm on a Saturday night) and answered all emails within a few minutes of receiving them, and we never said that we had a problem with the security of our email.
We actually said:
———-
Hi Tristan,
I’m not sure what that means, but I assure you that
your email address is very secure on our servers.
It is possible that the route that we use for outgoing
mail isn’t 100% secure, and I’ll look into that. I
appreciate the heads up.
Many Thanks,
-Andrew
———-
We have looked into our email paths to reassure ourselves that everything is 100% secure and haven’t found any issues – everything is totally secure.
I’m sorry that ‘photoTristan’ felt the need to post his comment before we had the chance to do anything (he posted this about 10 minutes after we emailed him the above!).
The Techcrunch mention has added many 100s of new users to our service and ‘photoTristan’ is our only unhappy customer – we’ve had dozens of emails and comments saying how useful and convenient TrackMyShipments is.
-Andrew
my hobby is radio control , and each new model i build often involves a number shipments from different vendors (e.g., a radio, a battery pack, the model itself, servos, etc.) luckily for my personal productivity, trackmyshipments came before i finally gave in and tried to make it myself.
as for whether TMS is around in 6 months, i hope it is. but if it isn’t i’ll just have to go back to what i was doing before (checking tracking via emails in a folder), or maybe explore one of the RSS, etc., approaches mentioned above. HOWEVER, unlike many other new sites i consider using, there’s no risk for me with TMS. at any given time, i might care about 3 or 4 shipments — but only until they’re delivered. TMS is immediately useful to me, all for just forwarding one email per package i’m interested in.
nice work, and thanx andrew!