How To Upload A POI

Hi everyone,

In an effort to increase contribution, I wanted to provide a quick rundown of how to contribute a POI. It's sooo easy!

Once logged into the system, click the "Upload" link to end up here:

From here, adding a POI is very easy. Just enter the Name of the POI (can be anything), the Latitude, and the Longitude.

Other items (optional) are:

• Private - restrict access so only you can view the POI
• Rating - How do you like the POI? Do you recommend it?
• Tags - used to help you organize POIs uploaded to or found on Tellpoints
• Description - your description of this POI
• Image - upload an image if you desire

Then, click "Insert This POI" to add your POI to the Tellpoints database!

Hi everyone,

We've had the site out there for a few months, tweaking here and there, and we already have almost 60 registered users.

Most people never log in again after they register, which doesn't help. If anyone reading knows why, let us know!

From what I can tell, I think people don't find any POIs with their searches, because there aren't many, so they register thinking it will help them find POIs. We designed the site so that anyone can use POIs in the database without an account, so that doesn't really help.

Any ideas on how to make it easier to submit POIs? We're all for suggestions!

Release Today

Hi all,

I just released some changes to www.tellpoints.com. I don't plan to have release numbers, because I plan to make changes quickly and release when available. Release numbers for a website seem tacky to me...

So, this release supports photos. I had photos available previously, but only the person who contributes the POI had a chance to add a photo. And, it was only while they added the POI. If they didn't do it then, they were out of luck.

So, now anyone with a tellpoints account can add a photo to any POI!

First Post!

Hi Everyone, and thanks for dropping by tellpoints.com!

Ottar and I have been working at this site for a little over a year now, just on nights and weekends, and it starting to get to the point where we are ready to try to promote it. So, first step, we started a blog!

A few words about what tellpoints.com is supposed to be. We're trying to create a free, easy to use application for storing and sharing points of interest that people record on their GPS units. While you have to have an account to add POIs to the system, searching and downloading is always open to anyone, visitors and users alike.

In addition, we don't plan to ever charge our users a dime. We can't say we never will, maybe there will be a point where a premium service makes sense, but for the time being, we don't think so.

The site isn't just a charity though, we want to make money and quit our day jobs one day! We plan to make money from advertising on the site. We'll always ensure that advertising isn't intrusive on the site, and we'll put the user experience first, but we do want to make a buck at this.

Right now, only 2 of us are going to be posting on the site. My name is Eric, I work in the IT industry and GPS is sortof a hobby of mine. So are websites, so I'm probably the big push behind tellpoints.com. I live in Georgia, US.

Ottar is a friend of mine in Norway. He works in the medical technology industry. Ottar and I met a few years back and did some work on another hobby that never really took off (though we hope to get back to it one day). We'll both post on here from time to time, giving updates on what we're working on on the site, looking for feedback, or writing articles about GPS related stuff or the website.

Please don't hesitate to drop us a line or post a comment, we'd love to hear from you!

Eric