Rate the PLATE official news

Last September, we announced the release of the Google MAPS functionality on our Leave a Rating page. This function allowed registered users to pin-point the exact location of an incident anywhere within Australia, right down to street level.

We are now very proud to announce the release of the Google MAPS feature on our Homepage

From now on, any user of our site has the ability to view and filter Ratings via the familiar Google MAPS plug-in. The feature provides all users with the ability to view specific Ratings in context of a geo-location. The plotting of individual markers (representing each Rating) provides users with a powerful and unique visual reference. Each marker can obviously be clicked which reveals further summary information including PLATE, address, date/time and offence.

But the real power of the feature is when users start ‘filtering’ Ratings by the use of our ‘Show Me’ dropdown fields. Using ‘Show Me’ allows a user to filter ratings by offence and location which allows them to view recent ratings in context of where they live simply by selecting an incident type, state and location.

For example: is a user wants to view recent mobile/cell phone users in Canberra, ACT, they simply selection those values (using mobile/cell phone, ACT, Canberra) from the ‘Show Me’ dropdown fields and Hit the Go Button, which is conveniently located above the Google MAPS interface on the Homepage.

This function empowers users and providers a unique visual insight in to the driving habits of Australian motorists.

Jump back on to the Homepage and give it a go. We hope you like it.

Best Regards

The Rate the PLATE Team

From now on, when you contribute a Rating to Rate the PLATE, you will be offered a small code snippet to paste into your own web site or blog.

This client-side code snippet will render a small image of the PLATE that you rated on your own web site, linking through to the vehicle’s driving history on Rate the PLATE alerting your visitors to the kind of driving behaviour that you encountered.

This new feature is ideal for expressive bloggers who love to tell all about daily life and issues of importance.

We hope you like it.

Best Regards

Rate the PLATE Team.

On Friday night we pushed out some subtle but powerful enhancements to the Rate the PLATE system.

The most prominent being the inclusion of Google MAPS on the “Leave a Rating” page. This allows members to pin-point the exact location of an incident anywhere within Australia, right down to street level. For existing ratings, you will also find a brand new “Revise” button from your my Ratings page which allows you to make changes to previously contributed ratings - this includes the ability to go back and pin-point the location using the new Google MAPS tool.

Here’s a sample of what it looks like:

We’ve also added a lot more detail to the “Leave a Rating” form which now allows you to record:

• The make of the vehicle.
• The colour of the vehicle.
• The approximate age range of the driver.
• A description of the driver.

Various tiny niggling bugs that were also identified over the past couple of months were also nailed, so the system is now cleaner and running smoother. We also made some changes to optimise performance further as demand lately has placed additional load on the hardware.

You will also notice a new tab known as Ratings. This is simply a new area that we decided to open up to allow people to browse to a specific type of incident and view all of the recent ratings for that particular type of incident. We released this due to a lot of user feedback asking us to open up more ratings, so we hope you find these new pages interesting and useful. For example, you can simply monitor all the latest reports to do with Burnouts and Donuts by just checking this page.

This is only the start of a whole wave of exciting new features that are on the way. We feel that work on the web site is never complete and there is always so much more we are just itching to do. Thanks for your patience and please stay tuned for the next round of enhancements.

How’s your driving?

Best Regards

Rate the PLATE Team.

Tonight we released a couple tiny improvements:

1. A new revised, tidier Member details page also including a new “incidents resolved” metric.
2. Some additional info snippets on the home page: “Rated Organisations” and “Vehicle types in incidents”. We hope that you find this information as interesting as we found it.
3. “Most Common Ratings” has also been changed to show percentage values.
4. There were also a couple of subtle tidy ups and improvements around the place not worth mentioning.

There is more exciting work nearing completion which you should see rolled out over the coming 1-2 weeks.

How’s your driving?

Best Regards

Rate the PLATE Team.

A big thank you to all the users who continue to share our vision and supply us with so many diverse, wonderful ideas.

In the Rate the PLATE engine room, a lot of your ideas are in progress right now. Its exciting for us, because each time we push out some new features, the feedback is really valuable. Its a process of continuous improvement.

Keep ‘em comin’

Best Regards

Rate the PLATE Team.

As the data grows, we are finding some extremely useful and interesting numbers.

As of today, 12.3% of driving “incidents” occur between 5 and 6 pm. The next most active window is between 8 and 9am, trailing with 11%. This is exactly what we predicted we would see before creating Rate the PLATE - peak hour tension. People commuting to and from work, feeling the pressure.

The number of ratings that we have collected since last October is now becoming enormous and continues to grow. This allows us to hold a lot of faith and reliability in these figures that bubble to the top. It will be interesting over time to watch the figures further average out.

How’s your driving?

Best Regards

Rate the PLATE Team.

Today we launched a minor variation on the core Ratings system - the ability to actually “Resolve” incidents.

Although simple today, this is a feature that is going to evolve substantially over the coming weeks. This initial version is a very simple, cut down tool allowing Members to “resolve” an incident if they feel that both parties have reached an appropriate understanding through calm, non-violent communication. If you are in this boat, first of all, thanks for helping make a difference on our roads. Secondly, you will find access to this feature in the “my Ratings” area.

In the future, we are going to see this feature enhanced considerably, so that it brings together both parties a lot more. This is one of the key differences that we see between Rate the PLATE and say your typical blog/forum text-only site. Rate the PLATE is not simply a place where users record their experiences, its an interactive tool that can be used to make a real difference out in the real world. Its an application that you can use to solve problems.

As always, your feedback on this new feature is greatly valued.

Best Regards

Rate the PLATE Team.

Thanks once again to all you energetic Members who have provided us with your invaluable feedback.

One of the biggest things that you are all wanting is a way to positively reward or thank all of the courteous drivers out there.

We couldn’t agree more - thanks for letting us know how you felt.

Obviously, the core functionality that the site currently offers, revolves around recording negative incidents, but in a way to achieve a positive outcome - awareness. We always intended to introduce a positive rating system, just that it wasn’t the first thing that we built. And to be effective, it needs to work in a fundamentally different way than the current incident reporting system. Avoiding abuse from fake Members attempting to “reward themselves” is critical.

We are pleased to announce that “we have the answer” and are working on something very, very exciting and powerful. We won’t say any more at this stage, but our coders in the Rate the PLATE engine room have been very busy with the Japanese word “kaizen” in the back their minds - persistent improvement. We simply cannot wait to release some of the new functionality.

Please check back soon.

Best Regards

The Rate the PLATE Team.

Tonight we were featured in a Today Tonight story.

We anticipated that the prime time story would test our hardware out - apologies for some minor performance degradation during the peak of the story running. After some minor tweaking, the system handled the load gracefully and kept serving requests very well. Future television exposure will not be a problem for the system which has now proven itself.

Its great to see such a powerful response from the community and the very large number of new Member signups that we are receiving. The number of idea and feedback emails that we are receiving is impressive and will really help towards shaping the future of the Rate the PLATE.

Best Regards

Rate the PLATE Team.

Rate the PLATE was unofficially launched today after wandering users came across the site by (a) accident and; (b) word of mouth through a tiny select group of early beta users.

Well, looks like you found us. So welcome to Rate the PLATE - we hope you find the site useful and interesting.

We are just itching to release so many of the new features that we have on the horizon.

Please check back often and remember to pass on your extremely valuable feedback.

How’s your driving?

Best Regards

Rate the PLATE Team.