A maintenance update has already been submitted for review; it addresses some rare situation where the iMiles app does not resolve your GPS signal in a timely manner.

While we love your emails and Tweets, we’d like to encourage you to use our GetSatisfaction powered support site.

Using the community allows us to share questions and answers which will ultimately benefit all iMiles partners and members.

After the online world picked up the news, all hell break loose and – sorry folks – our servers experienced a 7.5 minute downtime.

Our team has been working hard to keep the outage short and, even more important, to prevent iMiles from going down anytime again in the future.

While we were pretty sure that a truly independent affiliate program that rewards mobility could be a cool service, what we did not expect where the many information requests we received from the international press. One recurring question we’ve been asked relates to the very nature of iMiles, its central underpinnings:

Why did we chose to build a location based affiliate program as opposed to a “nearby-friend-and-places-finder”?

The short answer: At the heart of iMiles is our fundamental believe that in an increasingly mobile world, location becomes your currency.

If you do a quick check on the most reported mobility related news stories in the past couple of weeks, you will find that the vast majority is about location based social networks (Brightkite, Foursquare and others), established services adding native support for location (the most prominent one being Twitter) and services extending their location-related feature set.

As another good example, Google Latitude recently added the ability to let Google store your location.

There seems to be a rapidly increasing number of companies and services asking you to conveniently send your location to their servers.

Why?

Chances are, they want to use it for what they call targeted advertising. Some might not use the word ad, but consider the tiny messages that hint you to a potential point of interest recommendations. And quite obviously there are parties that are willing to pay – in exchange for your location.

Don’t get us wrong: We clearly believe in location based advertising, if it’s done right. In fact the team members at iMiles are also heavy users of Brightkite, our favorite location based social network.

We do, however, also believe that the time has come for giving users something back for the new mobile currency without compromising privacy.

And that’s exactly the mission of the iMiles program: To create an independent location based affiliate system, that truly rewards its users and orchestrates between location providers, YOU and its affiliate partners.

We’ve come a long way and the release of the iPhone application marks an important step for us to get some feedback from other users, than our private beta group.

Be aware of some fantastic announcements that will bring together the complete picture about what iMiles is and how we are planning to fulfill our mission!

We are now working on finishing the parts that will let our affiliate partners integrate conveniently into the service. Don’t worry, though! As to our very simple and short Privacy Policy (compare that with the one of your favorite social network!), we do not share your location.

We don’t have to, because we simply don’t return ads for the mobile world’s new currency!

Though, what we do allow our partners to do is to access your current iMiles balance.

The API that will further allow program partners to request a specific amount from your account is currently in private beta.

Redeeming your iMiles will be a seamless, fully transparent process, all done right on your phone. (Yes folks, we are working on an Android version, too!)

We believe this to be a true win-win proposition and are excited to having you here!

Thanks again for joining the iMiles Mobility Rewards Program.

For the past couple of months we’ve been working hard to bring to you iMiles, a membership rewards program that truly rewards your mobility.

Joining is 100% free and easy:

1. Get the free iPhone application. (direct iTunes link)
2. Register right from your device.
3. Check your inbox and confirm your registration.
4. Start collecting miles!

We’ve made iMiles easy and fun to use: Once you’ve joined the program, you simply swipe your personal, virtual iMiles card whenever you’re on the go and we take care for the rest.

Flip to the backside of your card to

• Get details about your current status and how much it takes until you’ll be upgraded.
• Publish your status to Twitter or Facebook.
• Recommend iMiles to your friends and gain bonus miles once they sign up.
• See how you’re ranking compared to other iMiles members. (Expect many more stats on the iMiles website soon!)

Our privacy policy is easy: We don’t share anything.

We are feeling honored that you’ve decided to join our program. We don’t share your data with anybody outside the iMiles Mobility Rewards Program. Period.

Collecting miles is cool, but what about the rewards?

We are currently working with selected partners to start offering real-world benefits in the very near future. These range from allowing you to access your favorite night-club’s VIP area (based on your iMiles membership status) up to exchanging your miles for exclusive discounts.

While the details are still being worked out, we didn’t want to hold iMiles under the radar anymore. Our beta testers loved it – and hopefully so will you.

Is there an API?

These days, every service has a public API. And so do we.

While we provide absolutely no access to our members data, we allow you to check the current mileage balance and status for any given email address. Please check out our API page for details. We’d love to see you using iMiles membership levels as part of your next Web mash-up!

What’s next?

During the past couple of months, our team has been working night and day to get iMiles up and running and might take a little break (say, some ten hours or so).

The two areas we are focusing on next will be to bring more partners to the program so that we can start giving away real-world rewards and to add sophisticated statistics to the iMiles website. The latter will allow you to see who’s doing best in your country, how many iMiles members have been at Times Square the last time you’ve walked by and start competing with your colleagues.

Thank you for visiting our blog and happy swiping!