DoshTracker

History

DoshTracker was a Web site that allowed Bank of England notes to be tracked around the country. Its concept was based on Where's George?, which follows American currency, and in the same way it allowed users to enter the serial number on notes that they owned and see where it had been.

Dosh is a British slang term for money.

Controversy

The site discouraged marking the notes with any sort of identification such as a URL, as defacing of bank notes is technically illegal. This may be one reason why the site was not as successful as its counterpart in the USA, Where's George?. See also Currency bill tracking.

Current status

This site is no longer in service and was taken down due to lack of free time on the site owner Richard Dutton's behalf, tracking its last note on the 18th May 2006. The current index page on the site states that a site re-build is currently underway to restore the site with additional new features using the original data and based on the ExtJS library^[1].

Press Coverage

Shortly after the site's launch in 2001, its reputation quickly spread and it gained a relatively large amount of media coverage and reviews from both internet, radio and written media, they included;

• 26 July 2001 - St Petersburg Times ^[2]
• 11th Oct 2001 - Computer Weekly: Downtime (printed publication (Back Cover))
• 30th Oct 2001 - Yahoo UK & Ireland Pick Of The Day ^[3]
• 5th Nov 2001 - Yahoo UK & Ireland Pick Of The Week ^[4]
• 14th Nov 2001 - The Mirror - 'Kelly's i' Site Of The Day (printed publication (page 40) & website)^[5]
• 28th Nov 2001 - 103.5 & 95.3 FM BBC Radio Essex's Drivetime Website Of The Week
• 29th Nov 2001 - BBC Radio 5 Live - Simon Mayo - Websites Of The Week: Expert's Choice (radio mention & website)
• 4th Dec 2001 - The Daily Telegraph Website Money Section - City Diary ^[6]
• 16th Dec 2001 - Wales on Sunday - 'G@me On: Keep Track Of Your Cash'

References

1. ^ Discussion by site owner on current Doshtracker index page
2. ^ http://www.sptimes.com/News/072601/Business/Web_site_allows_peopl.shtml
3. ^ http://web.archive.org/web/20021226052614/uk.dir.yahoo.com/new/20011030.html
4. ^ http://web.archive.org/web/20060106095228/uk.docs.yahoo.com/picks/old/20011105.html
5. ^ http://web.archive.org/web/20050223091618/www.mirror.co.uk/kellysi/kellysi/page.cfm?objectid=11422838&method=full
6. ^ http://web.archive.org/web/20061209230546rn_1/www.telegraph.co.uk/money/main.jhtml?xml=/money/2001/12/04/cxdiary04.xml&sSheet=/money/2001/12/04/ixcoms.html

External links

• Doshtracker
• Doshtracker in the Internet archive