News and chat about and around ArrivedOK - the Personal Flight Arrival Tracker and mobile tool for travelers like you to instantly notify your friends and family when you arrive at airports worldwide
I just saw a TV news piece (UPD: and New York Times Travel wrote about it too) saying that new security measures on US flights require airlines to turn off maps on in-flight entertainment systems so terrorists would not know the airplane location.
This sounds ridiculous because, firstly, those maps are scarcely informative. Secondly, if a serious person is planning to blow an airplane in the sky over any particular point of interest, he probably knows the route by minutes, so he does not really need a map or any kind of location technology.
Now, think about the in-flight Internet. This is a service on the rise – American Airlines was going to launch it, and Virgin too – see http://blog.arrivedok.mobi/2008/06/25/internet-on-the-plane)? Will it be banned too for security reasons? Because if a passenger have an Internet connection and/or a GPS device he can easily detect the plane location.
I can only hope that those travel restrictions will not affect our ArrivedOK Flight Arrival Tracker when it will be available in the US. Simply because its purpose is to track your mobile phone when you turn it on after landing and trigger the delivery of arrival alerts to your designated recipients. But who knows.
The news for today is that our mobile site became fully functional – now you can sign-up with m.arrivedok.mobi, edit records, update your personal profile etc – all the things you do at our main site. Also:
If you go to the regular Arrivedok.mobi site from a mobile device, you’re redirected to the mobile version by default (there’s a link to the main website if you want it).
It became simpler, faster, more lightweight, a true mobile resource for travelers.
ArrivedOK (both the web interface, the engine and the server) undergoes a major update.
You may notice that since yesterday (1) it became remarkably faster. (2) the interface changes comprise Groups in the address book and the option to add recipients from a list; (3) less javascript applied, which means less troubles for MSIE8 users; (4) mobile site redesigned for enhanced functionality (now you can register and do all the things on the go) and compatibility with older handsets (the interface needs further refurbishing though); (5) the tracking algorithm is greatly improved to provide better service quality when detecting arrivals in certain countries and mobile networks. (6) many other things. French and Japanese localizations are temporarily shut down due to full GUI backend re-writing; they will be added back later. It’s still beta, and it’s still free, so please send us your feedback!
Frequent flyers across the Atlantic know that flights from US to UK in the winter can often arrive 1hr+ early due to tailwinds. This is the case when ArrivedOK may think it is Right Place, Wrong Time situation as described here:
If you turn on your phone in the expected destination but 30+ minutes earlier than your scheduled time, ArrivedOKs will not be delivered and you’ll get an error message.
One of our users suggested a workaround for that issue: you just deliberately set your arrival time in ArrivedOK an hour earlier than your planned arrival. This way you can signal your recipients about your precise landing time.
Another thing you can do is postponing to turn on your mobile phone until your scheduled arrival time, though in that case your recipients will get their alerts later than you land. However, if you want to contact your driver automatically when you arrive, the first hint fits you better.
