Help

Overview

Carpoolworld.com looks at exactly where everyone lives and works to find perfect carpool matches for everyone. Our exclusive TripMatch^TM; process uses advanced computing technology to make perfect carpool matching easy, fast and precise. Please read on for more carpool information.

Frequently Asked Questions

1. Start by choosing your traveler name and password on the login page You can also take a look at a preview of the trip form that you will need to fill out to get your trip listed and matched in our system.
   
   
2. Confirm your email address (we will send you an email with a Registration Confirmation Code that you will need to enter on our web site to confirm your trip).
   
   
3. View your matches and contact the other travelers by phone or email. See a sample matchlist
   
   

• Passive (if you would like to re-activate at a later time, other travelers will not see your profile in their matches).
• Deleted (we purge trips flagged for deletion 30 days after your last log in date and other travelers will not see your profile in their matches).

Geocoding

Carpoolworld matches trips by using the exact latitude and longitude coordinates of the trip origins and destinations. Every point on Earth has its own unique latitude and longitude coordinates, and these coordinates never change. Latitude says how far North or South a place is from the Equator, and Longitude says how far East or West a place is from Greenwich (London), England. Our Links page has more information about how latitude and longitude work.

Translating a street address into latitude and longitude coordinates is called 'geocoding'. Carpoolworld.com automatically geocodes street addresses in the following countries:

• Australia
  
• Austria
  
• Belgium
  
• Brazil
  
• Canada
  
• Denmark
  
• Finland (Uusimaa, Hame and Pirkanmaa regions)
  
• France
  
• Germany
  
• Greece (Athens only)
  
• Hong Kong
  
• Italy
  
• Luxembourg
  
• Netherlands
  
• New Zealand
  
• Norway
  
• Portugal
  
• Puerto Rico
  
• Singapore
  
• Spain
  
• Sweden
  
• Switzerland
  
• Taiwan
  
• United Kingdom
  
• United States of America

Entering your Geographical Coordinates

Our system will find the latitude and longitude coordinates for your home/origin and work/destination addresses automatically in all of the countries listed above. But if you want to find and enter your own geographic coordinates, please note the following:

Most Internet map sites show latitude and longitude in the user-friendly decimal format, instead of the traditional 'degrees-minutes-seconds' format. We use the decimal format also.

You will see that some available geocoding information is very precise. The latitude and longitude numbers can go to 6 positions after the decimal point, which is a precision of about 5 inches, or 11 centimeters! When we calculate the similarities between trips we round off to 3 digits after the decimal point, which is precise to about the nearest yard, or meter, which is extremely precise for our needs.

All points in North America have a negative longitude (negative numbers indicate that a place is west of Greenwich, England), and a positive latitude (positive numbers indicate that a place is north of the Equator). So if you live in the U.S. or Canada, make sure your longitude numbers include the minus sign. Similarly, if you live in Australia or New Zealand, remember that your longitude coordinates are always positive, and your latitude coordinates are always negative.

Our latitude and longitude data entry windows expect the numbers to be in the decimal format,
where latitude is between -90.000000 and 90.000000
and longitude is between -180.000000 and 180.000000.
We strip out any non-numeric characters. You can use your browser's 'copy-and-paste' tool to copy the latitude and longitude coordinates for your home and place of work from an Internet map site into our data entry windows. You'll have a latitude and longitude for your home and a latitude and longitude for your place of work, so that will be four copy-and-paste actions altogether. If you use some other method for getting your latitude and longitude, such as using an automotive or hand-help GPS receiver, just type the numbers into the data entry windows. Remember that Western longitudes (as in all of the U.S. and Canada) need a minus sign in front of the longitude number, and the latitude number is positive (you do not need the plus sign). In Australia and New Zealand, longitude is positive and latitude is negative. In Europe, the latitude is always positive, but the longitude can be positive or negative depending on whether your are East or West of Greenwich (London), England.

Viewing your matches

After you put in your coordinates, click the button to find matches. View a sample match page here The patented TripMatch^TM process then shows you the other trips in the database that are the most similar to yours, ranked starting with the closest, as follows: The system adds the distance between your home/origin and the matched home/origin to the distance between your place of work/destination and the matched place of work/destination, to calculate the total distance difference between the trips. As a result, when you look down the list of matches, you may see people whose trips start a little closer to yours but end farther away, or maybe start a little farther away but end closer. We call this calculation the 'difference between trips'. We also calculate 'your detour' and 'their detour', which show you how far out of the way you or the other traveler would need to go for you to pick him up and drop him off, or for him to pick you up and drop you off. We let you re-sort the list by any of these calculations. If you are the first person in your area using this system, you may not see many (or even any) matches yet. If so, just try to tell other people about us! Here's a poster.

Sending Emails

When you send your emails, tell the other traveler that you are looking for a carpool, and tell him/her approximately where you work, and ask for a response. In fact we provide standard text so you will just need to click 'send'. Please see our Safety, Privacy, and Terms of Use Agreement page for additional information.

Sending/Receiving SMS messages on your cellular phone or pager

When you create your trip, you have the option of specifying your SMS address. This address is composed of your 10 digit cell phone number or pager number and cellular phone company domain name (see below for a list of commonly used suppliers). This will allow you to receive text messages (up to 150 characters) on your cell phone or pager and to send messages to other travelers that have provided their SMS addresses. This address is not shown to the other travelers. Some cell phone providers charge additional fees for messages received and/or sent.

© 2000-2008 Datasphere Corp.