UPDATE 01/21/09:
Okay, okay. A lot of you seem to like the site...I'm going to bring it back. Moving back to MySQL though. Stay tuned.
Well, it was a fun while it lasted. Unfortunately, I’ve decided to close the doors of MoosTrax permanently.
It started with BlackBerryTracker.com, which I had set up in Fall of 2007, to provide a site to track BlackBerry GPS-enabled devices. Prior to starting the site I had got my first BlackBerry, the 8800, and also my first GPS enabled phone. I decided to to learn a little J2ME and BlackBerry device programming, while trying out the GPS functionality of the phone. The end product of this was BlackBerryTracker which was relatively well received by the community and I believe provided a good service to a lot of people. The site grew to just over 10,000 people in the following year.
After this, I decided to redesign the site, use a new database system(CouchDB), and choose a new, less specific name(MoosTrax). I was very happy with the new site, and especially the database, CouchDB, because of its less relational nature and document-oriented architecture(and who doesn’t love map/reduce).
Unfortunately, with CouchDB came extremely large database sizes. So large, in fact, that my 80GB hard drive became quickly filled. It filled so fast that I couldn’t even compact it, or make it smaller. My only option at this point was to move the 80GB database to another, remote server, compact it, delete it from the server, and replace it with the smaller copy. This proved to be more work than it was worth, and my interests in MoosTrax had been declining, so I have now decided to end it all here.
I thank everyone who helped me in testing BlackBerryTracker/MoosTrax and those who supported the progress of the site!
It was a great run and I hope to begin working a new project that will hopefully serve a new community.