http://www.fuelly.com/blog/ Development News at Fuelly. Thu, 20 Nov 2008 15:21:37 -0800 Thu, 20 Nov 2008 15:21:37 -0800 en-us http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/tech/rss 60 http://www.fuelly.com/blog/252/UK-MPG-Added Hit the UK link in the upper-left corner of any page to start viewing the site in Imperial Units. Like the Metric option, you'll still see Litres and Kilometers on car profile pages, but the fuel economy rating will be in MPG Imperial (Miles/Imperial Gallon). We call it UK MPG for brevity.

As we understand it, you can't actually buy petrol by the Imperial Gallon anymore so we don't have that as a fuel-up option. This conversion is strictly for reading the site in UK MPG.

Let us know here if you spot any problems or find a place the conversion isn't happening.]]> tag:fuelly.com/forum,2008:site.252 Thu, 20 Nov 2008 15:21:37 -0800 pb http://www.fuelly.com/blog/242/Retire-a-Vehicle retire a vehicle on Fuelly.
Retiring a vehicle will take it out of your garage and put it under a new heading called Your Retired Vehicles. When you go to fuel-up or add a note, you won't have that vehicle as an option anymore, and it won't show up on your dashboard.

Retired vehicles do stick around in the system though. They're still available for others to browse, and they're still linked from your Fuelly profile.

To retire a vehicle, go in to edit its properties and look for the new Retire button:



From there you'll have the chance to change the vehicle's description if you want to let others know why you're retiring the vehicle.

Once retired, you won't be able to edit the vehicle beyond removing it entirely from the system. You also won't be able to bring a vehicle out of retirement, so please retire vehicles carefully.

Oh, and as an extra related feature, you can now set your primary vehicle in your site settings (link in the upper-right of every page). Whichever vehicle you choose as Primary shows up first in your list of vehicles across the site. Here's what that looks like:



Being able to designate your Primary vehicle will let us do more with vehicles in the future, so stay tuned.]]> tag:fuelly.com/forum,2008:site.242 Tue, 11 Nov 2008 15:23:04 -0800 pb http://www.fuelly.com/blog/221/Forum-Signature-Image couple requests in our forum for forum signature images, we put together an image that you can use in your signature on other sites.
To try it out, add /sig to any of your vehicle profile URLs to get a page that includes BBCode and HTML that you can include in a signature at other forums. The image is basically a direct copy of the tables you see in Your Garage on your profile page. Here's an example, this is my Prius:



The image includes your car name, year/make/model, your Fuelly username, engine/body style (if available), # of fuel-ups, image (if available), and average MPG. The code links the image to your Fuelly profile for that vehicle.

If your vehicle is set to track in Litres or Kilometers, you'll get average L/100km instead of average MPG.

Let us know here if you spot problems.]]> tag:fuelly.com/forum,2008:site.221 Fri, 24 Oct 2008 13:25:58 -0800 pb http://www.fuelly.com/blog/207/Car-Filtering-by-Engine-and-Body-Style When you're browsing cars, you can click the new filter link to bring up two menus:



You can select an engine type and/or body style for that model, and click apply filter to narrow the listings on the page to just those matching cars. Here's what the menus look like:



In this example, the Honda Civic page has been limited to hybrids, so you can see averages across Civics with that type of engine. The number listed after the engine or body style type in the menu is the number of matching cars with that type of engine or style alone. (Not a combination of the two.) That might be confusing at first, but it should give you sense of the most popular engines/styles for that model.

You can also click hide filter if you have the filter menus open and you'd like them to go away.

As always, let us know here about any problems with the new filters. Thanks!]]> tag:fuelly.com/forum,2008:site.207 Wed, 15 Oct 2008 13:15:37 -0800 pb http://www.fuelly.com/blog/205/CountryCurrency-Preference If you click "settings" from the menu at the top right, you have a new option to choose your country next to "Location". Once you set your country, your currency should match the country's currency on your vehicle's profile page. You'll also get a little flag next to your location on your profile page, and a flag to help people see which currency you're using for fuel-ups on vehicle pages:



We still have some updating to do on fuel-up report pages so you get the correct currency symbol, but that should be finished tomorrow. Let us know if you spot any problems with this feature.]]> tag:fuelly.com/forum,2008:site.205 Tue, 14 Oct 2008 17:01:33 -0800 pb http://www.fuelly.com/blog/198/Vehicle-Notes Add a note from the left menu. Recent notes will show up on your vehicle profile page, and your fuel-log for that vehicle.
We aren't doing much with the odometer field right now, but you might want to use that to track where your vehicle was when you got an oil change.

Please post any problems or ideas for improving notes here.]]> tag:fuelly.com/forum,2008:site.198 Tue, 30 Sep 2008 17:03:21 -0800 pb http://www.fuelly.com/blog/195/Sharing-Vehicles shared vehicles feature.
Shared vehicles allows two Fuelly accounts to share a single vehicle, so both members can add fuel-ups. We know that often more than one person is filling up a car or motorcycle and it doesn't necessarily make sense to share a single Fuelly account. (Or create the same vehicle under two different accounts.) With sharing you can choose one Fuelly member from your friends list to share a vehicle with, and then that other person can add fuel-ups.

We're just about ready to add shared vehicles to the site, but we'd like to iron out any bugs before we flip the switch. Here's how you can test it out. Go to your vehicle profile and add /share to the end of the URL. From there you can choose a Fuelly friend and invite them to share your vehicle.

This was a fairly big change behind the scenes and there are bound to be bugs, so please post here if you spot any problems. Thanks for trying it out.]]> tag:fuelly.com/forum,2008:site.195 Mon, 29 Sep 2008 14:09:05 -0800 pb http://www.fuelly.com/blog/193/Fuelly-Mail Fuelly Mail is a new messaging system that will let members send private messages to each other. To send a message to another Fuelly member, visit their profile and look for the "Send Fuelly Mail" link:



From there you can compose a message, and click "Send This" to send your message.

When you receive a Fuelly Mail from another member of the site, you'll be notified in a couple different ways. First, across every page of the site is a quick link to your Fuelly Mail inbox. When logged in, at the top right of the page you should see "welcome back...", next to that is an envelope that links directly to your Fuelly Mail. If you have any new messages, you'll see how many are waiting for you:



You'll also get a note about new message on your dashboard (the 'Home' link on the left menu):



And Finally, by default, any new Fuelly Mail will also be sent to your email address. If you'd rather not get those messages, log into Fuelly and click "settings" at the top of the page. Scroll down to Contact Preferences, and uncheck the box labeled "Email when members add you, share cars, or send you a message?" Click "Update Profile" and you'll no longer receive Fuelly Mail at your email address.

If you need to block a specific Fuelly member from sending future messages, you have the option to "Block this sender" at the bottom of any Fuelly Mail. Fuelly Mail is built for one-to-one contact and we're not planning any ways to contact multiple people at once. And of course report any abuse of the system immediately and we'll look into it.

Please post here if you have any questions or concerns about Fuelly Mail and happy Fuelly Mailing!]]> tag:fuelly.com/forum,2008:site.193 Thu, 25 Sep 2008 10:45:46 -0800 pb http://www.fuelly.com/blog/185/Vote-for-Tips Logged in Fuelly members should see a checkmark and an x next to every tip on the tips page that looks like this:



If the tip works for you, click the checkmark. If the tip doesn't work for you click the x. You can always change your mind down the road and switch your vote by reloading the page. The vote totals are reflected below a tip where it says what percentage of voting Fuelly members agree with the tip.]]> tag:fuelly.com/forum,2008:site.185 Tue, 16 Sep 2008 13:23:10 -0800 pb http://www.fuelly.com/blog/168/New-Model-Mileage-Graphs It's a distribution of average MPG (or L/100km) across that model. Here's what it looks like:



The graph is rounding average MPGs to the nearest whole number, and average L/100km to the nearest half. If there isn't enough data for a particular model, the graph isn't shown.

These graphs should show you at a glance the most common fuel economy people are getting with that particular car. Please post here if you spot problems.]]> tag:fuelly.com/forum,2008:site.168 Sat, 06 Sep 2008 08:07:09 -0800 pb http://www.fuelly.com/blog/139/Data-Import-Test We finally have the first version of data import ready to try out, and we'd like to get some more testing with real data to work out the bugs before we link it from car profiles.

If you're feeling adventurous, you can read about Importing Your Data Into Fuelly to see how the CSV file should be formatted. Then you can try it out by adding /import to your car profile URL. From there you can try out the new import feature.

Please post any comments/problems here. Thanks!]]> tag:fuelly.com/forum,2008:site.139 Thu, 28 Aug 2008 16:18:04 -0800 pb http://www.fuelly.com/blog/137/Metric-Display-Test We have a switch in place that will turn all instances of mpg into L/100km, all miles into km, and all gallons into litres. Here's what a standard car profile basic stats display looks like in metric units:

If you'd like to help us test this feature, you can turn on metric display here: display metric units. And you can turn it off here: display English units.

Once set, you should see metric units across the site: browsing cars, recent activity, your dashboard, and your car profile pages. Please let us know if these are the units you expect to see, and if everything is working for you in the metric view.

(Currency conversion is a next natural step—Fuelly is expecting everything in US Dollars right now. It's the next item on our internationalization to-do list.)]]> tag:fuelly.com/forum,2008:site.137 Tue, 26 Aug 2008 11:05:32 -0800 pb http://www.fuelly.com/blog/124/More-Metric-Options We just tweaked the new car page so it's not all or nothing with metric. You can choose your distance and volume units like this:



Thanks for bearing with these Americans while we learn your measuring conventions.]]> tag:fuelly.com/forum,2008:site.124 Fri, 22 Aug 2008 15:20:30 -0800 pb http://www.fuelly.com/blog/116/Partial-Fuelups This is a partial fuel-up.
You'll find the partial fuel-up option on the Add a fuel-up form just above the Fuel-up! button. This will tell Fuelly you didn't fill your tank all the way and it'll be reflected in your stats. Here's a little more info about partial fuel-ups.

We've found a big cause of wildly inaccurate mileages is partial fuel-ups. The system was assuming each fuel-up was filled completely each time. You can also go back through any old fuel-ups that were partial, click edit, check the partial box, and save. That should even out any problems the partial tanks were causing.

Please post here if you have any trouble with partial fuel-ups.]]> tag:fuelly.com/forum,2008:site.116 Wed, 20 Aug 2008 15:43:25 -0800 pb http://www.fuelly.com/blog/115/Hide-Zero-MPG-While-Browsing While you're browsing cars, look for the "hide zero mpg" link at the top of the page.



Click it, and you'll get a list of just those cars that are reporting mileage. You can click "show all" to go back to the default listing. We're planning to add this to motorcycle browsing too once there are more motorcycles reporting mileage.]]> tag:fuelly.com/forum,2008:site.115 Wed, 20 Aug 2008 10:28:22 -0800 pb http://www.fuelly.com/blog/103/Custom-Car-Models-and-Motorcycles Motorcycles/Scooters

When you click the Add a vehicle link from the sidebar or homepage, you now have the option to click the Add a Motorcycle/Scooter tab.



From there you can choose your motorcycle manufacturer, enter a model, and select the model year. Motorcycles have their own public directory. There's not much there yet, but hopefully it will start to fill out as people add their motorcycles.

Custom Cars

On the Add a Car form, you now have the option to add a model we don't list. If you choose your car make but don't see your model listed, choose Other from the menu and you can type in your model name.



You can also select different model years, body styles, and engine types for your car. We started with a database of American cars, but we'd like Fuelly to be available to as many people as possible and we're hoping this change will help

Missing Manufacturers

Because there are far fewer manufacturers than models, we'll still be offering a limited list of car makers. However, we would like to add any that are missing. If you don't see the manufacturer of your car or motorcycle on our forms, you can Request a Make and we'll add it to the Fuelly database.

Bugs!

These changes represent a fairly big shift behind the scenes and there are bound to be bugs. Please post here as you find them, and if you could include your browser/OS combo with any bug report that would help. Thanks!]]> tag:fuelly.com/forum,2008:site.103 Mon, 18 Aug 2008 12:57:52 -0800 pb http://www.fuelly.com/blog/77/Missed-Fuelups We've had a good number of requests for the ability to let Fuelly know you've missed an entry between your last fuel-up and adding a new fuel-up to the site. Now you can check the "I missed a fuel-up" option when you fuel-up which will tell Fuelly to skip the miles/mpg calculation on this round and start up with next one. Here's a bit more info.

You can go back and edit any existing fuel-ups and check the option for more accurate statistics. As always post here if you find problems with this new feature.]]> tag:fuelly.com/forum,2008:site.77 Tue, 12 Aug 2008 11:41:28 -0800 pb http://www.fuelly.com/blog/71/Nice-new-Fuelly-screencast-courtesy-of-Demo-Girl Demo Girl made a great screencast of her experiences with Fuelly that I have to say is much better than my own personal take on it (on the homepage when logged out). Thanks, Demo Girl!
]]> tag:fuelly.com/forum,2008:site.71 Mon, 11 Aug 2008 17:34:07 -0800 mathowie http://www.fuelly.com/blog/67/Metric-Data-Entry-Added Car profiles are still very US-centric with miles and mpg featured, but we added a new data point: Average Litres/100 Kilometers. (Here's what it looks like.) This is a standard measure of fuel efficiency outside the US, and we felt it was another important data point that should be available to everyone.

We still don't have a way to add cars from outside the US into our system, but we're working on that now and hope to have it available soon.

Metric support is brand new and there are bound to be bugs. Please post here if you spot problems.]]> tag:fuelly.com/forum,2008:site.67 Mon, 11 Aug 2008 14:21:04 -0800 pb http://www.fuelly.com/blog/40/Launch-day-issues-and-a-quick-FAQ - We've been featured on a lot of blogs today (thanks Lifehacker!) and we just crested our first thousand users, so welcome!

- Metric!: We will shortly (hopefully by the end of the day) allow you to set km as distances instead of miles and liters instead of gallons (and we'll add imperial gallons and L/100km type calculations as well).

- Motorcycles/scooters!: By early next week we should have a way to enter in your year, make, and model of two-wheeled vehicle, and we'll use submitted data to build up a database of all known bikes being ridden out there.

- My car/model/engine isn't listed: By next week we should have ways to enter in data that is outside the bounds of what we list (we started with a somewhat complete list of cars available in the US).

- Locations of fuel-ups? Highway vs. City estimates? Prices in something other than US dollars? Email/SMS input? Upload API?: Yep, we've gotten a ton of great ideas that we'd like to also add in the next week or two and these will be some of them. We have a complete running list of major features we're still working on in a previous post.

If you have any other questions or suggestions for data you'd like to see (especially in non-US countries -- how does your country typically report fuel economy?) drop them in here.]]> tag:fuelly.com/forum,2008:site.40 Fri, 08 Aug 2008 09:05:10 -0800 mathowie