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  D Henkel-Wallace, 22 Jan 2002 @ 5:56pm

  
  

  Big deal

  So what? Taxis in Paris have had this for years. Surely other cities too.

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• 

  Wklink (profile), 23 Jan 2002 @ 5:36am

  
  

  Should have patented it...

  If this were an internet venture, they would have patented their "business method" and locked out the competition.

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• 

  Anonymous Coward, 23 Jan 2002 @ 7:08am

  
  

  keitai-l@appelsiini.net

  My perfect example of a geolocation service desperately waiting to
  happen involved cab/taxi service in Australia. As you may or may not
  know, cab service involves an autodispatch service to which almost
  every cab subscribes (priced at ~AU$500/month). For this, the cab
  drivers are automatically fed fare data from those fares who have
  taken the time to call the phone number. GPS information is fed from
  the cab to the dispatch service. My dilemma usually involved needing a
  specialized cab, not knowing where a good spot was to hale cabs from,
  not having a phone or not wanting to call the fscking dispatch service
  (usually busy *and* nosy). I would have killed for a simple web page
  (WAP) to which I could have surfed that shows *exactly* where the cab
  meeting my specifications was waiting for a fare. It would have been
  so extremely simple for the dispatch service to add to their menu of
  services (allowing them to split revenue with the carrier). Alas,
  cab service in Australia is it's own little legal mafia and extremely
  adverse to change. Indeed, after talking with cabbies, I learned
  that all the new guys like the autodispatch service (it kept
  expectations to a minimum and allowed them to be "lazy"); the old
  cabbies were generally resentful and thought that the autodisptach
  services limited their ability to use their "knowledge" to achieve
  above average performance (the new guys referred to this a "cheating"
  due to the fact that under voice disptach, older cabbies would
  often lie about their location to pick up a fare before the new
  guys even though the new guy was "closer" (by position, not by
  time to find the fare)). A very few of the independent (owning
  their own cabbie regos) had both voice and automated dispatch...
  which brings up yet another facet of .au cab operations; most of
  the cabs are owned by large conglomerates and the drivers are
  merely keeping the front seat warm 24/7 (hence the need to keep
  the cab fleets staffed with the low paid young and dumb recent
  imports with few employment prospects).
  
  ...anyway, that's probably more than you wanted to know.
  
  I guess the point is that information services shouldn't necessarily
  try to change the way things are traditionally done (like haling a
  cab, or even driving one for that matter)... and this is particularly
  likely to be true with respect to how we manage our daily life in the
  geographical confines of meat space.
  
  BTW, I just saw an interesting BSTV piece on job location services
  for freeters. All the services featured show the freeters hanging
  out in dingy waiting rooms at 5:30am waiting for jobs and getting
  their pay handed over in cash after inconning the paperwork. The
  staff at the placement agency seemed to outnumber those getting
  placed... odd that. Also detailed was the ability for the placement
  agency to "grade up" (prefect for the video game generation now
  just beginning to reach the age of employability) or exit the freeter
  from their service in a seemingly graceful manner. Hey, maybe this
  will provide JIT payroll *and* eliminate middle level management!
  I particularly like the fact that the age of the "fitter" was about
  the same as the "freeter" (that's gota' require some cultural
  adjustment).

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  • 

    tod, 23 Jan 2002 @ 7:21am

    
    

    old news

    The SF taxi market is so backwards that only there would this be news, Mike! In Chicago, we've had GPS-based dispatching since 1993, and as another poster pointed out, other cities have had same for years.
    
    I would love to see a cabs-per-capita index of major US cities, just to see if any city could be worse than SF...
    
    T

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    • 

      InChicago, 23 Jan 2002 @ 8:58am

      
      

      Re: old news

      We may have GPS-dispatching here in Chicago, but they sure don't use it to find the best route once we're in the cab.
      Why is it that they almost always end up on Michigan Ave, no matter where you want to go :-)

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