March - Update from the team.

51'19N 0'33W, (somewhere south of London) 20th March 2008

Blimey, we've had a rip-roaring month! It’s been very busy with work on the ambulance, the website, media relations and raising money all take up our time. This update might bit a bit disjointed, but now we've fixed up a fantastic way to blog we'll post news almost very regularly. The Gobi Ambulance is officially road worthy and legal to drive. Stu managed to get her though an MOT and after £100 on tax we can now start road trials with the old girl. We've got a few videos on our Facebook group of drive-bys with the blues and twos on (private road, honest guv'). We've stripped all the graphics off the side of the ambulance so with the help of a local sign writer we'll get her badged up and looking the part by mid-April.The website has now started to take shape. After the initial shell Mat's been very busy getting content online. Let us know if you spot a typo, we’ve tried to find them all.It started with an interactive map; we're going to update our position at least daily but sometimes more frequently.

We’ve got some fancy technology that will track us every mile of the journey using GPS (global positioning), GPRS (internet via mobile phone) and a bit of software on a mobile phone. The problem with it i the possible lack of mobile phone coverage, so whilst we might use it as much as we can; we might have to fall back to the original daily updates. We’ll test it before the rally but either way you’ll know where we are on a daily basis.
Next up we put a Flickr gallery in, it's a simple slideshow but you can stop it and scroll though thumbnails of the trip. Mat's toying with technologies that will "geo-tag" photos using GPS and upload them to the Internet via a mobile. There are some snags though, plus it costs a fortune so depending on support from sponsors we might take the technology on. Then the news items you're reading now. We have a problem in that good Internet access may be a little difficult once we're on the road. We needed a simple solution that could get around that lack of good connectivity. When Mat sailed across the Pacific he used Blogspot and it did the job, so the team chose to stick with it. We can send emails to a secret address and they appear on the website - cracking! You can also subscribe to an RSS news feed to your computer or even your mobile.The Goby Ambulance HQ has kept Royal Mail busy recently. We've started to receive all sorts of gear. Water/fuel carriers, camping gear, electrical gizmos and other important bits required for the trip.Russ brought the first bit of tacky rubbish in the form of a singing, dancing camel. It plays some really awful music, it seems to have set a president - we'll be collecting junk en route! Media coverage is starting to pickup. We've featured in a few papers, the East Anglia Daily Times, Wanstead and Woodford Gazette, Essex Life Magazine, the Essex Chronicle and Russ is lined up to do an interview with Dream FM in Chelmsford. Thank you to our good friends at St John Ambulance whom just donated over £120 of medical kit to the project. It's important we're well prepared and we're very grateful to SJA for helping us on this front. .