Home Ownersite Assists Homeowners With Hurricane Season Preparation By Offering Comprehensive Home Inventory Solution

Tracks Valuables, Ensures Sufficient Insurance Coverage, Speeds Recovery

ROSWELL, GA – June 4, 2009 – Home Ownersite (http://home.ownersite.com), the complete home ownership website created by Ownersite Technologies, is reminding homeowners that hurricane season has begun and there is no better time than now to start creating a home inventory to document everything in and around the home. Not exclusive to hurricane season, Home Ownersite and a detailed inventory add year-round value for homeowners in case of unexpected events, such as fire, theft, or other natural disasters.

According to a May 2008 survey by the National Association of Insurance Commissioners, most homeowners are not prepared if hurricanes strike, resulting in lost possessions. The survey found that 48% of homeowners have no home inventory of their possessions, while 32% do not have inventories with photos, and 58% do not have inventories with receipts to substantiate the value of their possessions. Additionally, of those that do have home inventories, 44% do not have remotely stored inventories and 28% do not have know what type of insurance they have or what it covers.

Home Ownersite offers a comprehensive online approach to managing the complete home ownership experience. Unlike other solutions that may require software, printouts, or trips to a safe deposit box, Home Ownersite makes it easy to securely record all of the important details of home ownership. The online service provides a shareable home inventory, photo album, and file manager that can be used to store important records related to personal belongings, taxes, mortgages, insurance policies, repairs and renovations, and more.

As a featured speaker on consumer solutions for the recent Jefferson Parish Hurricane Preparedness Expo, an area of Louisiana devastated by Hurricane Katrina, Steven Eppinger, President and CEO of Ownersite Technologies, noted, “The Federal Emergency Management Association (FEMA) and the U.S. Department of Homeland Security have publicly touted the benefits of a home inventory. It is better to get prepared now before the hurricanes begin or some other emergency strikes. Having an up-to-date listing of what they own and what it is worth will provide homeowners with peace of mind. Without it, a homeowner may get less than 50% of the actual value of their belongings because there is no proof in terms of its replacement value.”

In commenting on the benefits of a home inventory, Eppinger added, “Having an online home inventory enables an insurance company or government agency to more effectively validate the amount of funds needed to rebuild and replace more quickly than if a homeowner tried to put together a list of everything they owned from memory. With the lack of sleep and emotions running high, no one will remember everything. However, an online record accessed from any computer, PDA, or mobile phone can be provided to an insurance company immediately upon loss. This will mean that claims can be processed faster, perhaps within a matter of weeks rather than months. Additionally, the service also helps homeowners work with their insurance companies to determine if they are sufficiently covered through a customizable, password-protected, and confidential web page.”

The technology behind the Home Ownersite service makes constructing a home inventory quick, easy, and safe. No additional software beyond a web browser is required. Photos can be uploaded and receipts scanned with a thumbnail for each image. There are user-friendly pages that help walk the homeowner through the process, taking as little as 2-3 hours to complete for an average three-bedroom home. The company utilizes a Class A data center, offering large data storage capacity and 256-bit high-grade encryption. Home Ownersite has a clear policy on how privacy is protected. It also adheres to the strict PCI-DSS security and policy standards put forth by credit card companies.

In keeping with the company’s philosophy of offering high value at a low cost, the Home Ownersite service is only $29.95 per year with a 60-day free trial offer. Homeowners can get started right now by visiting http://home.ownersite.com.

About Home Ownersite
Home Ownersite (http://home.ownersite.com) is a web‐based application that makes it easy to safely and securely record all of the important details of home ownership—from a comprehensive and shareable home inventory—to a photo album and file manager to store important home records related to taxes, mortgages, insurance policies, and more. While there are many home inventory solutions available, our comprehensive online approach to managing the complete ownership lifecycle provides subscribers with a unique, year-round value proposition.

About Ownersite Technologies
Ownersite Technologies is a privately held technology company based in Roswell, GA. Founded in 2000, it is the mission of Ownersite Technologies to provide the most comprehensive web-based and mobile solutions to enhance personal asset lifecycles, aimed at increasing the safety, dependability and value of our customers’ homes and vehicles. We do this through direct relationships with the owners themselves, as well as through financial service and insurance providers, automotive service shops, and enthusiast networks. For further information, please visit http://www.ownersite.com.

The migration to the new data center is underway...

The day is finally here. We are looking forward to the growth and expansion opportunities that the new location will bring. Hopefully, downtime will no more than a couple of hours, the majority of that time taken up by the servers in transit. We'll post more about the new data center once everything is tested and back up and running. Thanks for your patience!

Strengthening our Advisory Board with the addition of licensing and consumer brands expert.

I am happy to welcome Pete Canalichio to the Ownersite Technologies team. Pete joins Ralph Petti, an expert in disaster planning and risk mitigation, as the newest member of our Advisory Board.

Pete brings with him a tremendous amount of military and private-sector experience, as both a veteran of the United States Navy and veteran of large and well-respected consumer brands known throughout the world. As our company continues to grow, and demand for our private-label offerings on both the automotive and home side increase, Pete's experience with licensing and brand building will be quite valuable.

Pete's complete bio can be found at http://www.ownersite.com/Management.cfm

Pete's LinkedIn profile can be found here - http://www.linkedin.com/in/petecanalichio

Welcome, Pete!

If Kramer used Ownersite, Elaine's fish might still be alive...

The goal of Ownersite's mobile-device friendly interface at http://mobile.ownersite.com has always been to provide driving-centric resources to the vehicle owner, that are useful while on the road or away from their primary PC, rather than attempt to replicate the entire application.

Keeping with that goal, we have added a fun and useful feature that I really could have used a couple of weeks back when I parked my rental car in the garage at the Houston Galleria. Ownersite Mobile now let's you record where you parked and how much time you have left on the parking meter. While we know this is not exactly ground-breaking functionality, we do hope it will come in useful.

Features include:

1) current date & time automatically selected
2) save parking information by lot, level and/or spot
3) save parking information by cross-streets
4) save parking information by address
5) count-down on main screen for remaining time on parking meter





Please note that we have only tested the functionality on a Windows Mobile device with Pocket IE and Opera 9.5 beta because nobody around here owns an iPhone yet.

Happy Parking!

Ownersite adds better maintenance & reminder integration, mpg per fuel record

We are in the process of wrapping up our customer survey and we wanted to thank everyone for their support, feedback, kind words and suggestions. Several hundred people replied, so I think the information we have collected is going to serve our users very well. Of the suggestions, two items were requested more frequently than any other:

1) add a column to the fuel display page that shows fuel consumption by record
2) better integrate the maintenance record and reminder functionality

I am happy to say that we have listened to your feedback and have made these very useful enhancements to Ownersite as a result.

There is now a column on the fuel display page that shows your fuel consumption by record. (we have maintained this information in the past on the fuel graph and text-based fuel usage report, but not on the main page) The column will include a value only if two consecutive fuel records are both fillups. (if they are not fillups there is no way to know accurately how much fuel was used for the calculation)



In what was probably the number one request, we have enhanced how maintenance records and reminders integrate with each other. Ownersite has been able to detect if a reminder already exists for a maintenance, tire or oil change record that has been added for a couple of years now, but it was handled by popup messages, which we suspect were simply not being seen as a result of popup blockers being on by default in most browsers now. We have done away with the popup and the functionality is now handled by standard screens. Combined with the recently introduced reminder reset feature, we suspect this will accomodate the needs of 95% of our users.

Here is the existing reminder...


Now let's add a maintenance record...


Ownersite detects if there is a reminder scheduled for this service..


The reminder has been updated to reflect maintenance record...


There are a couple of caveats to the integration right now, in that it only works for odometer-based reminders. It will also do its best to detect user-defined reminders, but in some cases differences between the maintenance labels and reminder labels will not be detected.

We hope these features enhance your experience with Ownersite. We are always looking for ways to improve the product and we are listening to your suggestions. (and we have more things in the works) As always, thank you for your support!

Ownersite adds Twitter support for quicker entry of fuel records

A lot of technology and website trends have come and gone since we launched Ownersite back in 2001. We have incorporated some of the more useful ones, like a mobile interface (including a specific iPhone version) and this blog, for example. But we had held off on creating a Twitter interface until now. Some of the more useful fuel logging sites/social networks (like MyMileMarker, FuelFrog & FuelClinic come to mind) have had this kind of functionality for a while, but our users had not requested it until recently. I am happy to announce that we now have it and I must say that it really is a time saver. I may be a bit "old-school" but by using OutTwit (Outlook Twitter client) I can enter my fuel records in seconds, without having to login to my Ownersite account (mobile or otherwise). I believe this functionality may convince some Ownersite users that are not logging fuel economy to start doing so. More information can be found here. Can we say that we are Web 2.0 compliant now?

Ownersite for your Health?

I heard an ad on the radio this morning (while listening to Neil Boortz) for MedsFile.com and I think it sounds like a great idea. In short, MedsFile.com is a web-based application to store your personal health record, including your medications, medical history, etc. I would equate it to Google Health, which launched with tremendous hype, but I don't personally think it has lived up to its initial hype.

What makes it different (other than what I consider a more attractive interface), based on what I can see on their website, they are independent and not affiliated with any particular insurance company or pharmaceutical company and their revenue model is based on subscriptions, like Ownersite and Home Ownersite, and not riddled with advertisements.

Why did I post this when it has nothing to do with cars or homes? Well, I guess when it comes down to it, the biggest personal asset you can manage is your health and this looks like a great product to do that. I wish these guys the best of luck with MedsFile.com.

(disclaimer: none necessary, I am not affiliated with this company in any way)