User Invisible

Posted on September 25, 2015 by george

We all appreciate the tasks that are completed for us invisibly

The best companies know their customer so well that they are able to provide their offering almost invisibly. This is refreshing in an era where we are bombarded at every turn by another ad message seeking our attention. There are a couple of so called recruiting firms that spam my e-mail daily, to the point where I will have nothing to do with them — ever. If they show that level of insensitivity to the candidates whom they believe should buy their service, I can imagine how they appear to the companies who are hiring.
Texting is a good example of user invisible. The using public is very comfortable with text messaging because it has been around for a long time. In 1933 RCA Communications, introduced the first “telex” service between New York and Europe. My dad’s best friend, a NASA electrical engineer HAM radio enthusiast, carried on a radio telex conversation with a friend in South Africa long into the night when the fickle strength of the nighttime ionosphere permitted it. The rest of us had to wait for texting to become a feature of our cell phones. In 1995 Telecom Finland and Radiolinja in Finland offered cross-network SMS (Short Message Service) functionality which began the modern back bone for cell phone texting. Today, in countries such as Finland, Sweden and Norway, over 85% of the population use SMS. The European average is about 80%, and North America is rapidly catching up with over 60% active users of SMS as of the end of 2008.
The brevity of the text message is appreciated by the users and the carriers alike. The 160 character size (invented in 1985 by Friedhelm Hillebrand while he was working for Deutsche Telekom) of a text message enables transmission of 350 text messages in the bandwidth required to send a single phone call. The users experience this simplicity as an affordable price. Text messaging services can feel particularly intimate because they talk like humans. Digital users who type “thank you” after the software executes a command instantly get a “you’re welcome.” The barriers to using a new service are also lower, because there’s nothing to download. In a February blog post, Jonathan Libov, an analyst at venture capital firm Union Square Ventures, recounts standing at a New York City bus stop and having another passenger tell him about Bus Time, which lets people text the Metropolitan Transit Authority to find out how long they’ll have to wait for the next bus. His first thought: “Thank God I don’t need to download another f—ing app for this.”
When we were inventing http://mileagetrakker.com we chose a hybrid approach. Our beta testing proved that the users wanted to choose an interface that matched their lifestyle. The nice part of a connected car service is that we know when the vehicle is actually driving. Our cloud based interface does not get the users into trouble by having them text and drive. Selected users find it easiest to record the business purpose of the trip as they walk away from their vehicles.

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Product Hunt introduces 10-20 new smart phone applications every day. This is a lot more than will ever fit into my smart phone. Gartner analyst Ken Dulaney said in a statement: “Our analysis shows that most mobile applications are not generating profits and that many mobile apps are not designed to generate revenue, but rather are used to build brand recognition and product awareness or are just for fun. Product Hunt now lists over forty offerings that use text instead of an application as a user interface. Text is a trend that is growing.

Iteration

Posted on September 18, 2015 by george

Advancing technology is a series of iterative steps

It no longer becomes possible to define completely the details of a project when you are pushing the technology envelope. With the Mercury space project, the leap was aggressive with massive public attention. The planners who arranged that successful effort, formalized the iterative approach to new product development. They found it necessary to move beyond trying to define the desired result at the beginning and progressing in “waterfall” fashion to completion. Using the iterative method that they formalized, the Mercury project was organized into a series of experimental steps. The results of each step’s planned test provided the information needed to progress further. Obviously some of the tests ended in failure as we have seen in the news. The latest SpaceX, Blue Orion, Challenger disasters that literally explode into the public consciousness come to mind. Neil Armstong was asked to indicate what he thought was the dangerous part of space flight. He indicated it was the time between entering and leaving the space capsule
The Chrysler Minivan actually has the same cargo capacity as was offered in the smallest full size van at the time. Achieving this feat is a good example of iteration in action. One of my car designers described the task as stuffing 10 lbs into a 5 lb box. We did not wish to give up the ability to stow a full size spare. Since changing a flat is such a pain in the butt, it is unlikely that a traveler with a flat in the wilds of Laos will appreciate our efforts until he is writing his memoirs.

Having a full size spare tire saves spending the
night out in the wilds of Laos

The basic challenge is that a full size tire did not fit between the rear axle and the rear bumper. Tough development tasks require superb executive planning. The advanced design team got the first kick at the can. They picked adding a kink into the axle. Fortunately planning a hand off to a second design team solves the issue of becoming attached to a mediocre solution simply because of pride in authorship. Offsetting the axle both down and forward proved to be the elegant solution. Having an overlap between the production design team and advance design team efforts mitigated the time lost by changing concept midstream. (We also got lucky because the kinked axel was the item that failed when the advance design was tested)
Iterative product development (in manufacturing we call this Kaizen) has emerged as the dominant strategy for launching software products. Following the tenants of lean startup, we launched http://mileagetrakker.com. A/B testing was used to tune our product so that the UX (user experience) is positive. Subsequent improvements are evaluated using the SCRUM approach where potential improvements are exposed to subsets of the user base. The first improvements that we implemented made more of an impact because diminishing returns sets in.

Iterative development illustration by Dutchguilder

Warm and Fuzzy

Posted on September 13, 2015 by george

Automation has replaced armies of clerical workers
(the new pink collar workers)

We all know the drill ” Thank you for calling Modern Company. If you know your party’s extension please dial it now. For sales dial 101, for service dial 102, for HR dial 103, for accounts receivable dial 104, for shipping dial 105, for scheduling dial 106 —- if you wish to hear the options again press 1″ Usually none of the listed extensions match our needs, so we pick one in desperation only to hear a recorded message “Your call is important to us, please call back when our operators are not busy.”
In today’s lean world, nobody has time to sit at their desk waiting for the phone to ring. If you look at the sea of desks they are mostly unoccupied. Many of the players are simultaneously sitting in teleconferences while answering the daily bombardment of 2 to 300 internal e-mails. This overload is unsustainable and the pendulum will swing back to add new controls. Back in era of large companies, the chain of command was expected to correctly filter the information flow. Sending communication to higher than your boss’s boss was not permitted.
It would be nice to think that an instruction manual would be sufficient to accomplish a simple installation like a computer display screen. In the industrial automation arena, equipment is expected to live 7 years with first rebuild giving another 7 years. When you are matching a new display screen to equipment and controls that are more than 10 years old, a generation miss match occurs. Usually a live local technician with many years experience is needed to resolve the problems, especially if the set-up is complicated by having a defective replacement display screen to start with. This is why we pay a premium to buy industrial display screens because warm and fuzzy help is usually needed to get the repair done. Even good live help, last week we lost three days of production sorting out the replacement of a dead computer display screen.
This is an opportunity that start-up companies can use to grow. Most customers want a warm and fussy feeling and react favorably when they are serviced by knowledgeable people who are not remotely located in a call center. The UX (User Experience) movement is all about having your development staff interact with a representative group of users. As we performed the www.mileagetrakker.com beta test we personally got to know all of the beta testers. Since most people learn by interacting with other people, it was natural for the www.mileagetrakker.com beta testers to acquire the knowledge that they needed. As we scale beyond the beta phase, we continue to test which of the introductory activities can be automated on the website and which training and set-up actions require personal involvement by the sales staff. Even though is is possible to accomplish all of the actions needed to acquire a Mileage Trakker device by interacting with the website, the vast majority will join us due to the activity of the sales staff.

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The new battle ground in the marketplace will be establishing the correct balance between efficient computerized automation and warm and fuzzy human support. Monopoly power can force customers to fight with faceless computerized non service, but this jeopardizes the continuation of the company. The pendulum will swing back to creating new employment roles for people.

Jump Frog Jump

Posted on September 4, 2015 by george

Frogs use jumps to escape danger

A researcher wanted to investigate how frogs jump. He invented an experiment to determine the contribution of each leg. He needed a baseline, so he put the frog down and said “Jump frog jump!” Measuring the distance, he wrote in his journal “Frogs with 4 legs jump 3 feet.” Cutting off the right front leg, he put the frog down and said “Jump frog jump.” Measuring the distance he wrote in his journal “Right front leg contributes .5 feet to jump.” Cutting of the left front leg, he put the frog down and said “Jump frog jump!” Measuring the distance, he wrote. ” Left leg contributes .8 feet to jump.” Cutting of the right rear leg, he put the frog down and said “Jump frog jump.” Measuring the distance he wrote in his journal “Right rear leg contributes 1.7 feet to jump.” Cutting off the left rear leg, he put the frog down and said “Jump frog jump!” —- “Jump frog jump!” —- “Jump frog jump!” He wrote in his journal “Frogs with no legs are deaf”
We are all aware that it is easier to make good decisions when you have good data to back them up. Designing the affordable experiments to generate good data is where the difficulty starts to appear. This is especially true in a start up, where a lack of accumulated cash limits the number of pivots that can be done to recover from bad decisions. Even if you invent a timely affordable A/B test to guage your customer’s UX [User Experience], as this joke illustrates, many times convenient conclusions are applied to avoid the work that is actually required to provide what the customer is willing to buy.
A good example is a CAD (computer aided drafting) program. Back in the 90’s we still used drafting boards. By the 90’s this was a money issue related to the user experience of the CAD draftsman. The time, effort and cost of creating CAD drawings could not be recovered by the benefits. Since the downstream benefits of CAD drawings are fairly static, it all boiled down to adjusting the program so that making a drawing on the computer was quicker than using a drawing board. As is true during disruptive time, there were many players who saw the future benefits and wished to own the market. AutoCAD succeeded and displaced most other early players by incorporating effective feedback from thousands of CAD users. A/B testing established the CAD 2D drawing interface that has become dominate.
Ah, but the season changes. AutoCAD 2000 finally had all of the features that a large pool of their users ever wanted. This is not good news for a company with a business model based on selling a new version of their software every three years. Yes, there is other market segments that can take advantage of CAD drafting. Unfortunately cluttering the desktop with additional command icons alienated the existing user base. The A/B testing that enabled AutoCAD to achieve dominance, could not uncover a new look that would entice existing users to buy a new version… A good example of trying to extrapolate a convenient conclusion onto real test data. The actual conclusion is that it is necessary to allow the user to customize his desktop, so that it is possible to retain the look and function and minimized keystrokes of the earlier versions. Only then is the added functionality of new software versions interesting to current users. A/B testing will not invent a desktop look that is acceptable to everyone.
The same process applies to my www.mileagetrakker.com device. Our benchmarking against the competition indicated that UX is the battleground. Most business travelers put 12,000 business miles on a vehicle in a year. This deduction puts $2000 in their pocket provided that they have the correct tax records in the required format. Having spent a large part of Christmas vacation inputting the required mileage logs for many years in a row, my wife and I set out to find a better way. In start-up fashion we did A/B testing during the beta phase to discover whether the user wished to interface using a cell phone, texting, e-mail or a web site.

A/B testing is only one of many testing tools to hear the voice of the customer

I suspect that Mileage Trakker would have died if we simply taken the results to infer that it was possible to only offer the most popular method. In this mass customization era, the customers expect that they can choose the option that is best for them. Yes it does take more work on our part.
Mass customization is a paradigm shift. The reduction in computing cost has made it possible to offer your customer base some degree of choice. This reality on the ground will filter back into all of the activity and decision making methods within a business. As this example shows, it is important not to limit your chance for success with myopic vision

The Extra Mile and One Half

Posted on August 28, 2015 by george

We all use milestones to measure our progress

Those of us who actually go the extra mile know that you really have to travel a little bit farther than that to get the job done.
Jesus declared in the Sermon on the Mount “Whoever forces you to go one mile, go with him two.” (Matthew 5:41, (NASB)) “impressment” allowed a Roman soldier to conscript a non Roman citizen to carry his equipment for one Roman mile (milion = 1,000 paces, about 1,611 yards)– no easy task considering a Roman soldier’s backpack could weigh upwards of 100 pounds (45.4 kg).
The concept of the extra mile applies heavily to quoting contract manufacturing. After you learn to quantify and price everything it takes to do a job, you discover that you also have to plan for the extra mile. This reflects the fact that everything will not go perfectly. Most industries have a multiplication factor before profit which is applied to the computed cost. This adjusted cost is a much more realistic value when the accounting is done at the end. This type of feedback loop is embedded in making a profit. It would not have been possible for me to turn around a few manufacturing companies without basing these factors on historical experience. The fact that all projects have built in inefficiency creates a lean consulting industry.
The volatile nature of employment these days causes many people to put in the extra mile on the highway in traffic jams. Not everyone clocks the extra mile willingly, as Jesus suggested, which is why we hear about road rage.

. Our daughter when she was young was stuck in traffic with her mother. She weighed in on the topic. “You know traffic has an end. You just have to go there.” Ah! Wisdom out the mouths of babes. For those of us who are unable to go to traffic’s end, we need to adjust to the longer commutes. Many people who drive for business find that the old approximate methods of estimating mileage for their expense reports miss some of the miles needed to make the actual trip. This is why people who choose to use a www.mileagetakkker.com device to automatically tabulate their trips in IRS format end up money ahead.

Global Positioning

Posted on August 9, 2015 by george

Satellites used for glodal positioning circle the globe.

As little children we are taught the story of Hansel and Gretel who are faced with the challenge of finding their way home in an unfamiliar woods. As we all remember they discovered that pebbles as signs along the way create a map to follow. This lesson went to our hearts and the automobile clubs led the charge to install street and route signs at every fork in the road. Navigation using signs is a workable method as long as it is daytime and the weather cooperates. I can remember my mother turning on the porch light as a beacon to guide out of town visitors to our house.

Safe travel has long been based on line of sight
position references

Lighthouses have long been used as beacons to guide sailors safely back to port. During the second world war a concerted effort was made to improve on visual position references. The British development of radar branched into the creation of LORAN.(short for LOng RANge navigation) It was not until the introduction of solid state electronics in the 1970s that marine and military use of LORAN became common. This system used a grid of land radio beacons to calculate the position of ships and planes. Most of the positioning systems still in use today are an evolution of the original LORAN. The position of a GPS receiver is calculated by timing the transmission from 3 or more transmitters in known locations. The measured position accuracy improves if the transmitters are closer or there is fewer obstructions. This is why we primarily use satellite or cell phone based GPS today.
I would like to report that our GPS navigation systems are infallible in their calculation of location. Even though they work most of the time, certain types of obstructions such as parking garages and metal buildings block or reflect the signals. Applications that require continuous guidance, such as the autonomous vehicles that I helped design for warehouse delivery, have additional local beacons to provide sufficiently accurate location. This also overcomes the intentional dithering that the US military adds to the satellite GPS signals. Other useful devices that use GPS locations, such as my www.mileagetrakker.com ,have an embedded workaround that makes the temporary loss of location user invisible. Even though this level of coding is complicated, the user experience is greatly enhanced.

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Many of the things that we are trying to achieve are related to our current location. It is not surprising that some of the most successful automation effectively utilizes embedded GPS calculations.

OBD II – On Board Diagnostics

Posted on July 10, 2015 by george

Modern car repair is guided by IoT on board diagnostics

It is not surprising that the general public is unaware of the user invisible computers running their vehicles. It is a testament to the skill of the automotive engineering community that computer controls were adopted with the care and testing which enabled them to remain hidden in the background. On Board Diagnostics were included within these controls due to the magnanimous donation of thousands of hours to industry committees who hammered out the standards. Access to the “big data” is just the starting point. Many iterations of testing and development are needed to weed out the “false positive” alarms that shake our confidence in the “code”. We evolved from OBD 1 through OBD 1.5 to the OBD II standard that came into effect in 1996. The upgrade to the standardization of OBD II was the result of emission requirements but the industry implementation included useful features such as common connection hardware, standardized diagnostic trouble codes, and access to the computers.
Vehicle computer controls are very sophisticated these days. Artificial intelligence in the form of mapping is used to keep up with the vehicle processes in real time and adjust the response to accomplish better outcomes like lower emissions, better fuel economy, traction control, straight line stopping and smoother ride.

Real time controls choose their actions using a map like this NASA map which shows where people live.

New values are continuously stored in a digital map which is used to avoid computing from scratch when the same conditions occur in the future.
The embedded On Board Diagnostics are able to spot failures which are above even my talent and vision. More important than that is that they continuously track simple failures
like disconnected wires. My college roomate electrical engineer, stated that there are no electrical failures. There are only mechanical failures. Electricity will flow if you give it a path. On Board Diagnostics is like having a mechanic who rides with you every mile of the way watching for even the simple failures. Nothing is more frustrating than having an intermittent problem that clears up every time you schedule an appointment with the mechanic.
As an automotive engineer and trained auto mechanic, I championed the display of the diagnostic trouble codes in addition to the “idiot light” on the dash panel. Now that I have seen this IoT application evolve, I realize that simply displaying the diagnostic trouble code number (some cars use the odometer display to do this currently) is of marginal usefulness compared to simultaneously providing the technical data and links like YouTube instructional video related to the indicated code. Applications such as my www.mileagetrakker.com grow in the marketplace because most car users also need lots of actionable related information, like the nearby location of appropriate repair shops.

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The IoT has emerged into the marketplace in true “overnight success” fashion. Volkswagen brought out the first on board computer with scanning capability in 1968. The car repair industry was disrupted and gas stations with repair bays were replaced by convenience stores. In the 1940’s and 50’s tape driven digital servo motor controls were added to drive the motions of milling machines. CNC machining centers (and their intranet linked CAD and cutter path generation and management software) now dominate, displacing most Bridgeport milling machines. (And the Bridgeport company itself) In 1968 Bedford Associates brought out the first PLC (now Modicon) for GM. As a result, historic relay industrial controls have been replaced by PLC computer systems with their embedded intranet links.

Will we ever see the first disruptive Internet of Things success? Now that I have seen the security agencies complain that encryption is blocking interception of ISIS phone conversations, my prediction is that it will arrive as an extension of the Intranet of Things. Most IoT applications, like home security, require that any intranet extension onto the web includes the emerging communication encryption.

Kludge

Posted on July 4, 2015 by george

Treasure is camouflaged in the digital jungle

kludge
[klooj]
noun – Computer Slang
1. a software or hardware configuration that, while inelegant, inefficient, clumsy, or patched together, succeeds in solving a specific problem or performing a particular task.

*definition from Dictionary.com

Whoever came up with this term must have been assigned to marry legacy IoT (Internet of Things) digital controls. Lots of ones and zeros show on the logic analyzer, with obscure or forgotten protocols for interpreting what they mean. In the arms race to stay ahead of the newest start-up, many of the companies who built the previous generation equipment with embedded internet communication no longer exist. However, even the first internet connected device is still a part of our IoT infrastructure. At the blinding communication speed of two bits per week, the transmitter shuts off the water feed pump every Sunday when the water tower is full.

We take running water out of our taps for granted

I used to worry about terrorists gaining control of our infrastructure using the internet. It is theoretically possible to inflict some serious damage and injury. My concern was based on the fact that early IoT devices have very little access protection. Now that I have integrated some legacy systems I realize the lack of standardization will be our saving grace. It is next to impossible to apply experimentally the right combination of ones and zeros without a guide.
I was discussing the evolution of CNC position encoders with the technician who was upgrading the control on one of our CNC machining centers. In mold making, the cutter path software that converts 3D models (3D printing) into physical shapes, originally used a layer by layer contour line approach. We would like to use the more modern climb milling software because it eliminates the contour lines. (and the hours of hand draw polishing to remove them) The upgraded control will position X Y and Z at high speed instead of just X and Y which is all the contour line method requires. The embedded computer in each axis position encoder sends a high speed serial data stream including error correcting bits back to the control. This is a far cry from the first GE (now Fanuc) CNC control retrofitted to a Buffalo milling machine that I first programmed – yes, there is still a lot of legacy stuff in operation out there. This control also had position encoders without the local embedded computer. It only lost about 2500 count per shift (about 1/4 inch of position) and it came with a switch to shut off the Z axis so that you did not mill too deep. We evolved through resolvers and glass scales and back to a smart encoder. Don’t expect to do “big data” analysis of this type of IoT real time data stream. Bad things happen if the transmission of position is interrupted.

Who will bridge the genetation gap?

On the hardware side it is very convenient to connect the 10/100 port of my laptop to the ethernet switch. In my latest control I added ethernet cables so that it can be used in convenient locations without exposing it to the open internet. The generation gap became painfully obvious on the software side. The desire of the Windows operating system coders to download daily changes exceeds the ability of any custom low volume application software creator to keep up. We are finding that the latest version of custom application software is obsolete before it is sold. In the short term we will keep the systems synchronized by isolating them from the internet once we solve the inter-connectivity issues. This solution does not work for every IoT software mismatch issue. In my mileage trakker www.mileagetrakker.com IoT connected car application, it is necessary to have a staff who continuously monitors the functionality of the links and keeps up with interfacing with each model and car maker as they evolve. This becomes part of the monthly charge which enables our trakkers to obtain a couple thousand dollars in annual savings. Many of my mileage trakker competitors have gone out of business because they got caught continuously rewriting their cell phone based code in order to keep up with a rapidly changing software platform.
The IoT is evolving like the power grid. New IoT applications emerge based on the cost and performance drivers. Each implementer chooses a variation that matches the application without regard for the broader inter-connectivity issues. This will generate employment for the people with the STEM skills to link users to the vast data pool.

Connectivity

Posted on May 8, 2015 by george

Humans are all interconnected

The first long distance communication link was actually digital. The telegraph replaced flags, smoke signals and mirrors as the first reliable long distance link.

A telegraph key and sounder

My dad’s best friend was a HAM radio enthusiast who worked for NASA. As a young child, I remember watching a teletypewriter translate radioed Morse Code and print at 20 words per minute. I thought the transmission was coming from Mars. Funny on today’s scale, in that this transmission was at the blinding baud rate of 8 bits/second. (still faster than you could send and receive Morse Code using the key.) The general public never wanted to learn Morse code so they migrated to the telephone, radio and television. My parents cottage / retirement home is on Lake Erie in a small village called Saybrook.

A lineman on a telephone pole.

No it was no longer necessary to climb the pole to answer the phone. But, I can remember when a live operator came on the line to ask you what number you were calling from for billing. For us non-residents, it is mandatory to keep the cell phone plugged into the car charger so that you have enough broadcast power to last though a normal phone call. I am not surprised that Saybrook was a Finnish community. The equally sparse Finnish landscape prompted a Finnish company Telenokia in 1991 to invent the digital GSM G2 cell phone protocol. A digital link, initially at 40,000 bits/sec (the old telephone modems are at 48,000 bits/sec) replaced the G1 analog cell phone networks. This digital strategy made simultaneous voice and data transmission possible. We quickly adopted this communication link. Connected car services such as my IoT (Internet of Things) http://mileagetrakker.com automated milege report generation system became possible. Mileage Trakker even works in places like Saybrook which isn’t scheduled to upgrade beyond G2 cell coverage until next year.

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Humans are funny creatures. In the near future we will all be transported by self-driving vehicles. I suspect that the resulting traffic jams will cause us to want enough cell bandwidth to synchronize the flow.

Computer control will stuff the roads

This is very similar to the task of keeping track of Kiva robots scurrying around a warehouse. Very high capacity “blanket” WIFI systems at 450,000,000 bits/sec by Extricom http://www.extricom.com are the minimum needed for this task. The actual bandwidth we will want is probably higher, in that it takes 32,000,000 bits per second, to transmit TV images to entertain us during the trip. We are watching all of our communication links converge into a single interconnected system.

KISS

Posted on May 4, 2015 by george

KISS also applies to automation

KISS — Keep It Simple Stupid
Early in my career I was assigned the task of commissioning an $70,000 electric paint robot. Unfortunately at that stage of robot evolution, the seal design at the robot joints prevented it from painting more than the first part. The vapors shorted it out. What I learned is that it is more effective to tackle automating the simplest tasks first. Simple tasks take less investment to automate. Even though modern 6 axis robots can now handle painting tasks, combining them with required sophisticated guard enclosures places them far from the KISS category in my mind.
I was watching a 2 axis gantry “robot” carry engine cylinder heads at a Honda assembly plant in Alabama. Reminded me of a dog playing fetch with a stick. The jaws of the gripper opened and the human at the end was presented with the retrieved cylinder head. I install gantry robot transport systems for the same benefit, their simple motion and guards allow humans to safely work along side them. These robots do not care that I am comparing them to a dog. As Ada Lovelace wrote as her work began the digital age “The Analytical Engine has no pretensions whatever to originate anything. It can do whatever we know how to order it to perform”

A Spaniel fetches a stick by Kleuske

Kiva robots are even simpler. They race to the other end of the warehouse and wait like puppy dogs for us to collect the item they have retrieved. All of this without the clutter of the rails and guards of gantry retrieval systems.
Moore’s law marches on. The cost of computers has dropped to the point where we can afford to automate even simple tasks. It is easy to write down date, starting odometer, location, finishing odometer and purpose for one business trip. You get pissed off enough to invent a better way when you spend a chunk of every Christmas vacation inputting a list of a thousand or so business trips so that you qualify to keep the $8000 to $9000 dollar business mileage deduction. I want to use the KISS principle to fix all the aggravations in my life.

Capture your full mileage deduction

It is nice that an affordable computer http://mileagetrakker.com can talk to the car and generate the log for me

The Lean Innovator

Lean Engineering Solutions to Improve Profitability in the Areas of Manufacturing, Material Handling and 3D

Category Archives: Mileage trakker

User Invisible

Iteration

Warm and Fuzzy

Jump Frog Jump

The Extra Mile and One Half

Global Positioning

OBD II – On Board Diagnostics

Kludge

Connectivity

KISS