News

This page will help you stay informed of our progress as we continue to develop this site. As we make changes, we will post the changes here, so you know what new features are available to you.

9/12/2005 - Important Changes to Terms of Service
For the past several months, we have been investigating alternative geo-mapping systems, to circumvent the rather significant cost of going through a proprietary 3rd party solution. We believe we may have found one that will be very low cost, which is very exciting!

In addition, we have made two changes to our terms of service - both of which are fairly significant. We are now requiring proof of organization and non-profit paperwork - and we will be charging a modest $30/year fee for organizations to use the service. I will address both of these changes individually, since I realize they may be upsetting to some of you - but please be assured that there is good reason for both of them.

Documentation: The sad reality is that while you and your organization are no doubt committed to the rescue and welfare of animals, there are too many individuals and organizations out there that are masquerading as rescues while they sell animals to research labs or breeders. Animal "rescue" has become a lucrative career for society's ilk, and we wish to ensure that we in no way contribute to the actions of these monsters.

Yearly Fee: After researching this extensively, we feel that this monthly fee will help insure that we are always able to provide you with the best service and technology available. While we do 90% of the application development in-house, which keeps our costs very low, the overwhelming response from the groups we polled felt that a $30 a year membership fee was fair. In addition to the technical services provided, we will be heavily promoting this service and using our resources to actively recruit new transporters on a constant basis. We are confident that the benefits you will gain from using this system will more than compensate for the modest membership fee.

While we feel that most responsible rescues and shelters will find these new terms acceptable, if for whatever reason you wish to withdraw from the RescueTransporters.Com service, all you have to do is reply back to me with the name of your organization - no questions asked.

We appreciate your patience during this growth period. Nothing quite like this service has ever been attempted, so this is all new territory from a technology standpoint. We are committed to serving the rescues and shelters, and the animals they care for - and I can assure you that your patience will be rewarded. If nothing else has made it clear that a service like this is needed, the recent Hurricane Katrina crisis certainly has. I only wish we could have had the system running in time. Since we realize that many of you have your hands full handling the four-legged refugees from the gulf coast, we are allowing 60 days for the documentation and yearly fee to be submitted before we suspend organization accounts.

7/10/2005 - Testing MapQuest API
In an effort to find the most cost-effective way to provide the additional mapping features we wish to offer, we are testing the commercial MapQuest API. If this proves to be a good tool, the benefit will be a lower up-front cost, with the disadvantage that there is a yearly fee of $8,000 rather than an outright purchase (one-time) fee of about $20,000. There are pros and cons to this, and if the MapQuest API looks as if it will be a good solution, we will address yearly fundraising possibilities.

7/3/2005 - AOL email problem fixed!
The issues we were having with sending email to customers of AOL and AOL-subsidiaries has been resolved and all emails should be working normally.

6/7/2005 - We're almost there!
Transport posting capability is about 60% done! The zip code lookup functionality is working marvelously, so the only pieces that remain are to provide the ability to edit posts, associate transporters and upload a photo of the animal. We're almost there!

6/5/2005 - Organization logins are now working.
When new organizations sign up, they are now asked for a username and password. Organizations that signed up before this feature was finished will have a username and password generated for them and they will be emailed with that access information. (They will then be able to change their username and password to something more familiar to them.)

6/5/2005 - ** IMPORTANT ** Problems with AOL users.
Due to a configuration issue with our server, many of our emails to users of AOL and AOL subsidiaries(including the confirmation request emails) are bouncing back to us. While we have taken steps to correct this problem, the changes will take several days to propagate. If you are an AOL user and have not yet received your confirmation request, please email us and we will manually confirm you.

5/30/2005 - Transporter profiles expanded.
Transporter profiles now include: contact info, animal experience, transport summary, profile photo, active status, travel distance and more. If you are a registered transporter and have not updated these areas, please consider logging in and updating them now.