Forthcoming Improvements

It may appear to have been a bit quiet on these news pages for the last month, but rest assured, a lot is going on in the background.

We've got some great improvements on the way, and if all goes to plan, they should be implemented by the beginning of February.

The reason it's taking so long is these improvements require us to completely re-enter the vehicle database from scratch, which is something we've needed to do for a while. So far we've found one person can enter about 25 cars an hour, and considering there's about 6000 cars to enter, it's going to take a lot of man-hours. But enough of that, on to the improvements:

Firstly, a much better vehicle database. No more confusing names referencing things like VIN numbers and tyre sizes, just simple to understand, plain English vehicle entries, sensibly categorised.

It also means that everyone who's requested a car and not yet had it added will have their car in the database, although I'm still working on that 1961 Landrover.

We're also including CO2 emission data, so now you will be able find out your carbon footprint for your journeys, as well as the cost.

And finally, vehicle fuel tank sizes are being added, so we'll be able to give you an estimate of how full your tank needs to be, including a virtual fuel gauge for quick reference.

You may also have noticed we've added a comment system to the news articles, so now it's a lot easier to post your feedback.

TripCosting just got Easier.

Today we made a small change to TripCost, but this small change had a big impact on TripCost's usability.

This small change was made to the way in which TripCost converts an address typed in by a user into geographic coordinates (a process known a Geocoding). What does this mean? Well it means you'll be seeing a lot less of the “Address could not be found” message, in fact, since making the change, we haven't had a single town from the auto-complete list fail. Quite an improvement, I'm sure you'll agree.

We are also currently in the process of adding greater postcode support, with full postcode support coming shortly after that.

Another small change to TripCost is the addition of an email field in the car request form. You don't have to put you're email address in, but if you do, we will contact you to let you know when your car has been added.

One final thing, if you do manage to find a town from the list that fails to geocode, please let us know at info@tripcost.co.uk.

TripCost on TV and 3000 more cars added

It's been a great day and a great week for all things TripCost, first up:

TripCost was featured on today's (11-12-08) episode of Working Lunch on BBC 2. Working Lunch is currently running a feature where each day they open a door in an advent calendar to reveal a Christmas treat or a Christmas turkey. Today's was a Christmas treat in the form of recommending TripCost.co.uk, and that alone has brought over 100 times more traffic to the site, which is always good news.

Next up, TripCost has also been featured in this quarters issue of The Business League's Magazine. We will soon be uploading a scan of the article, or you can view it here (on page 14).

This week also saw the addition of another 3000 cars, bringing the grand total to nearly 12 000. This also means work can now begin on removing duplicates and sorting out some badly named entries.

One final item of business, today someone requested a 1961 Landrover to be added to the database, I was so impressed by this request that I have made it my personal mission to get the data for that car and add it to our database. I don't know how, or from where, but I will do it.

This does also bring me to another point, that is the lack of an email address field in the car request form. We will be adding one soon, because as it stands, we have no way to get in touch with you and let you know when your car has been added.

Many thanks to everyone who has requested a car or given feedback on the site.

- Matt Bearman

Over 2500 new cars added!

We've just finished the first phase of expanding our vehicle database, taking it from around 6300 cars to nearly 9000! This update was mostly adding older cars, and we now have the majority of production cars up until 2006 in our database.

There is still a small number of duplicates and redundant entries, as well as a few badly named entries that need to be worked out, but it would be a waste of time to tackle those before we've finished uploading the next two years (07, 08) worth of cars.

Once we've finished updating the car database we expect to have around 12,000 cars, while keeping it easy to find yours. Watch this space for more info.

Welcome to TripCost.co.uk

Well, it's been about six months in the making, but today TripCost.co.uk has finally gone live. There will probably be some teething problems in these early stages, so please bear with us.

We have a lot of plans for the future of TripCost.co.uk, so watch this space for updates regarding what you can expect and when to expect it.

For now please feel free to use this FREE service to within an inch of its life, and if you like it, tell people. If you have any comments or sugestions please let us now on info@tripcost.co.uk.