March 8th, 2010
For this birthday we’re happy to announce a brand new version of Trixie Tracker coming at the end of next month. This new version has been in development for over a year and we’re insanely excited to be on the home stretch. Really. We are extremely ready to put this baby in your hands! I first announced the new version this time last year, and while our original release target has slipped, I’m very pleased with what we’ve accomplished and I am confident you guys are going to like it.
Why did our development schedule slip so badly? The short answer is software development estimation is hard. The long answer is the existing application had to be completely rewritten from the ground up because it was too difficult to work around five year’s worth (counting the beta development time) of calcified code and there was more in the application than we realized.
We look forward to rolling out the new version next month. If you are interested in helping kick the tires of the new site, please follow us on Twitter; we’ll put out a call for beta-testers soon.
Thanks to all our great parents who’ve supported us over the last four years and made this new version possible. Thank you!
Ben MacNeill
Founder, Trixie Tracker
Posted in Telemetry | 4 Comments »
May 26th, 2009
I want to point out (in case you didn’t know) that Trixie Tracker is designed so you don’t have to track continuously. For example, if you aren’t concerned with the weekend schedule or are taking a vacation, you can just stop tracking. Start tracking again when you’re ready — TT will automatically exclude all the empty days from your averages.
Posted in Telemetry | Comments Off
May 17th, 2009
We are working hard on the new version of Trixie Tracker that was announced on our third birthday, but with all things software, development always takes longer than expected. I don’t have a release date set, but I can share some of the behind-the-scenes details for those who are interested. We’re moving from a PHP environment to Ruby on Rails. (The new version has lots of Rails goodies in it.) Diapers, Bottles and Solids are finished, and we’re making progress on Medicine and Pumping.
Visually, there’s going to be a new look to the application, and some of the details in the new design are actually flowing back into the existing application. For example, today we replaced all image buttons in TT with pure HTML/CSS buttons. That’s a visual detail you may not notice on your desktop, but mobile users will appreciate the cleaner, faster interface.
This is just a quick update. Thanks for your patience as move ahead. More updates to come!
Posted in Company News | 3 Comments »
April 25th, 2009
Wired launched a brand new UK version of their magazine this April and Trixie Tracker is included in the first issue. Unfortunately, our article is not available online, but if you happen to have a copy, please look for us in the “Your Life Is A Number” story that talks about life-tracking, sharing data online and discovering patterns in everyday life. Thanks Wired! (http://www.wired.co.uk/)
Posted in Company News | Comments Off
March 17th, 2009
I was reminded recently that Trixie Tracker isn’t just for infants and babies. Tracking sleep patterns can help establish good nap and bedtimes schedules for toddlers too. Kara emailed me out of the blue to share how tracking food allergies and sleep for her 3 ½ year-old son yielded big returns:
I just wanted to write and say thank you for the Trixie Tracker. You are tremendously improving the quality of our lives. We have been tracking a little over a month I think and we have already seen huge improvements in our management of our son’s food allergies & intolerances along with his sleep. Tracking the food online is so much easier than the written journal I was trying to keep!
By tracking our son’s sleep I have now been able to see patterns I never would have seen otherwise. It was counterintuitive to me that we would sleep more in 24 hour period if I cut out his nap (he is 3 ½). We no longer have to dri
By eliminating his nap, he is actually starting to sleep a full 11 hour night now (sleep has always been a problem since he was born) and has boosted his sleep time in a 24 hour period by about 1 ½ hours. He is happier and healthier. Thank you so much for the Trixie Tracker! I only wish I had started tracking earlier!
Transitioning a toddler away from a daytime nap can be a huge step because how do you know it’s really the right time? Trixie Tracker helped Kara make that decision and then showed her an increase of almost 90 minutes in overnight sleep as a result. Thanks for sharing your story Kara, and congrats on the 1 ½ hour sleep gain. That’s huge!
Posted in testimonials | Comments Off
March 7th, 2009
This weekend Trixie Tracker celebrates its third birthday and we’re excited to announce some big reasons to celebrate. We’ve made continuous, incremental improvements over the last three years, but all our improvements had to fit within the existing code architecture. It’s been hard to add major new features because the original code base (from March 2006) wasn’t built in the most flexible way.
The only way around this problem is to rebuild the application from scratch, and design it to accommodate future growth and exciting new features. The downside to a rebuild is the significant time and money needed to simply replicate the existing application, and it’s not always clear if that’s a good business direction.
Last December, we reached a decision point about the future of Trixie Tracker. We’re a small company, but we’re growing every year and we realized it was time to make the financial commitment. So, since January, we have been working on a brand new version of Trixie Tracker. Initially, the new version is going to look pretty similar to the existing application — with a few minor improvements such as improved date and time user interfaces, more sharing, and more averages.
But under the hood, the new version provides a solid architecture for a bunch of neat features coming later in the year including: better dashboard options for twins and multiples, better iPhone integration, and even a daycare version. We’ve also received a ton of great ideas from existing users that have been put on hold because of the Trixie Tracker rebuild. After the rebuild launches, we’ll start tackling those requests.
Thanks so much to all the dedicated parents whose curiosity helped make this site possible. We’re looking forward to the next three years and beyond.
Ben MacNeill
Founder, Trixie Tracker
Posted in Company News | 13 Comments »
October 31st, 2008
Daylight Savings Time transitions will cause problems with the display of your charts, but it doesn’t affect your actual data. Here’s a few notes to help you through the weekend:
- Trixie Tracker will handle the time change automatically. You don’t need to do anything.
- Your charts will be off until Monday. There’s no way to map 23 hours or 25 hours to a 24-hour time scale. It’s like trying to park an 11-foot car in a 10-foot garage — it’s just not possible.
Falling Back
In the fall, it’s extremely difficult to tell software which 1:50 am you are talking about when there are two times that exactly match that description. To avoid this problem, please record events in real-time during the transition hour (and avoid editing them afterwards).
Springing Forward
In the spring, the transition is easier. Recording real time events shouldn’t be affected because we skipping ahead, and the times never overlap.
Posted in Telemetry | Comments Off
September 23rd, 2008
Logan’s parents tracked their son’s sleep schedule from 1 month to 7 months old. They wrote about their experience on their blog and offered up a few reasons that they loved their tracker:
- Allan could check from work how our day was going
- I could see that the hard work put into sleep training was paying off; I needed all the motivation I could get!
- Even though it only took a few minutes a day people thought was a supermom when they saw our site
- When Grandma and Grandpa babysat I could look at the last few days and say with great accuracy what to expect from sleep, feeding and diapers (’He had a good nap this morning so he’ll likely take about an hour and a half nap around two, around 6:30 he’ll want to cuddle and might sleep for thirty minutes…’) Truly data driven parenting.
- The first three months are fuzzy in my mind. It’s nice to look back and see that we made it through it!
- I love analyzing data and this gave me a little project
These are all great reasons, but I’m particularly partial to the last one. Curiosity is what drove me to create Trixie Tracker, so I’m always thrilled to hear it is helping other parents satisfy their own curiosity.
You can discover amazing patterns in your child’s schedule if you simply observe. Become a parent scientist for a few days and see what you learn. It’s worth trying and it’s free!
Posted in Sleep, testimonials | Comments Off
July 4th, 2008
Trixie Tracker is switching to a new business model this weekend. Up until now, you had to use a free trial or an active subscription to track. Starting today we’re offering a tiered service with a free basic option and a premium upgrade plan.
The completely free option, Trixie Tracker Basic, only includes the diaper tracker. This is the simplest tracker on the site, but also one that new parents want as soon as they come home from the hospital. We hope offering a free diaper tracker will help these new parents, and show them just how useful and reassuring good records can be.
Trixie Tracker Premium includes all the trackers, features and sharing. See a comparison between our free and premium plans.
Here’s how it works
Everyone gets a free Premium Trial when they create a site. After the two weeks are up, the site downgrades to Trixie Tracker Basic. Users can continue to track diapers completely free or upgrade to a Premium subscription and get access to all the features.
We hope this new model will encourage more users to try out the site. We know that once folks try it, they love it. Thanks for helping us grow!
Related: Subscription Type: Premium Trial, Basic, Premium
Posted in Company News | Comments Off
June 15th, 2008
Two weeks ago I came across a fun parenting blog called Game Theorist which covers “musings on economics and child rearing”. The author, economist Joshua Gans, is releasing a book next year called Parentonomics which is described as “Dr. Spock meets Freakonomics”. As a Freakonomics fan, I immediately wrote him to share my experiences with data collecting, charting and parenting.
Joshua blogged about Trixie Tracker a short time later in a post titled Data-driven Parenting. His title struck me as incredibly descriptive and useful in communicating our respective work. In the weeks since then, I’ve seen several other blogs use Joshua’s description in writing about Trixie Tracker. First the Freakonomics blog post Should You “Ferberize” Your Baby?, and then Kevin Kelly’s Trixie Tracker: Data-driven Parenting.
Three blog posts do not a meme make, but I think the term data-driven parenting may become more popular because it offers a convenient, easy-to-understand shorthand for a concept I’ve struggled to define. The best catch-all I’ve come up with is “baby tracking”, but that doesn’t paint a complete picture. So I’d like to say thanks to Joshua for coining the phrase and wish him luck with his Parentonomics release next year.
Posted in Company News | Comments Off
