London Taxi App for Android

We have just published an Android version of London Taxi App to the market.

It's priced at £1, and it is similar to the iPhone version, i.e. it will give you an estimated price for your taxi trips in London, with some enhancements. We've taken the opportunity to include support for the Mayor of London's new bike hire scheme. This app will tell you whether you can make your journey by "Boris bike" and what the current availability is at your nearest hire stations.

We're excited about our first release on Android - the platform is growing and we want to be there with it.

We hope you like it - we'd appreciate any feedback you have. There is an option to email comments within the app (by pressing menu) or by leaving comments here, or to london.taxi.app@googlemail.com.

Some of the features include:

- Uses current location

- Save Favourite Locations

- Choose from an extensive list of stations, and points of interest

- Auto-suggests street names as you type

- Find out distance to nearest bike hire stations and availability

Enjoy

London Taxi App

Is no news always good news???

Just really interested to see if anyone has any feedback on the new version of the app? Been out a few weeks, and although we've had some decent comments in person there's nothing official on the app store. If people are liking some of the new functionality don't be shy, on the other hand if there is still room for further improvement (always?!?) then please let us know and we'd be happy to try and incorporate it in version 1.2.

Otherwise we'll assume no news is good news....

Version 1.1 in the App Store now!

Hi all,

We're very pleased to announce we've now released a new version of London Taxi App! We realised early on that the original version wasn't perfect, especially since not everyone knows the postcode of where they are travelling from or to. The alternative, typing in a street name, is not foolproof either as it's very difficult for the app to know whether you mean High Street - Wembley, High Street - Wimbledon, or even High Street - Winchester. So we've done the hard work for you by putting the locations of all streets in London into the app, and auto-suggesting them when you type into the input boxes.

We've summarised the improvements below:

- Automatically suggests street names and local attractions or stations as you type, improving the usability and accuracy of the app

- Improves the address entry system to give better accuracy when searching for specific addresses

- Improves the GPS current location finding system to locate you quicker, and avoid some of the errors of the previous version

- Rounds to the nearest 20p (especially important for the taxi fare purists!)

- Updated the fares to match the latest April 2010 TfL tariffs.

- Added additional points of interest such as sporting venues

Bug fixes

- Reduced data caching to avoid problems when doing multiple searches.

Day in the life of a London Cabbie

Hi all, I know our blog has been slightly .... absent ...... recently, what with all the excitement of the election and that, but catching up with the world of the London Taxi, this oldish post caught my eye. It's TLC coordinator "Cabbies Capital" who's kindly given us a rundown of "a day in his life". There could be some interesting analysis of the more general patterns if data was available for every cab driver's day (anonymised of course). Particularly like the map graphic Richard, wonder where it's from?

Taxi NYC!

There's a really cool map visualisation of the density of cabs in New York at any given time of the week over at: http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2010/04/02/nyregion/taxi-map.html .

Accompanying article is at: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/03/nyregion/03icab.html?ref=nyregion

How did they get all this info? Apparently the city has fitted all its cabs with GPS equipment. Rather neat! Of course, someone has released an iPhone and Android application to take advantage of this and tell you where you're best off hailing a cab. It's called Cabsense.

Can we do this for London please TfL?

Bugs, problems and fixes

After 2 weeks of sales, feedback and speaking to friends about the app I think there are a couple of things that have kept coming up:

1) That the app can't find simple destinations like Euston Station, or Paddington. Although this is valid, if you simply type in these place names it will come back with an error, the best advice we can give is to use the points of interest to cover the more common destinations, for other destinations a postcode is the best way to avoid the error. Clearly this isn't ideal, however, we are working to improve it and hope that v2 will allow more flexibility when entering destinations.

2) Even when you exit the route, having received an error message, and re-enter the destinations, using preset locations or postcodes, it still returns the error message. Or the app tends to hold the previous routes in it's memory meaning that sometimes, even if you change the route the original route and cost will come up. Both of these issues are the result of a bug and we are working to fix it, however, in the meantime the only advice we can give is to quit the app completely and re-enter - not ideal, but we should have this sorted soon.

In the meantime we are working on some exciting upgrades and hope to have more information soon, ahead of a planned launch of v2 at the beginning of April to coincide with the increase in rates!

Cheers for purchasing, and happy journeys to all!

ES writes about London Taxi App

The Evening Standard has written a piece about the app.

It's clear that this article has already aroused some passions in Londoners - we're not about to wade into the debate on whether black cabs are expensive or not - we're just here to give you the cost of using one in advance of actually hailing it. Of course we're not saying we get it spot on every time - as someone mentioned things like the recent closure of 5 crossings of the Thames will have an impact on journey times. However, we think that for the vast majority of journeys we're within a few quid or so, and it can get even more accurate. A cabbie recently posted on Twitter that his journey with a meter showing £64.40 was just 30p out. We're obviously looking for feedback as well about how good (or bad) your fare estimates have been, with as much detail about the journey as possible.

Safe journeys to all

Need a cab and on Twitter - use TweetALondonCab

Just a shout out to @TweetALondonCab who, like us, are trying to use technology to improve taxi journeys in London. If you follow them on twitter and direct message them with your journey details and phone number they will do their level best to get one of their many drivers to come and pick you up. More info on their blog: http://tweetalondoncab.wordpress.com/

I guess the times have a-changed!

If you've downloaded our app, we hope you're enjoying using it, and if you've had any problems or have any queries please get in touch. In the meantime, here's a link about "exorbitant" fares of £3 and over charged by taxi drivers taking air passengers from Heathrow Airport into central London........

I guess things were different back in 1965!

www.itnsource.com/shotlist/BHC_ITN/1965/08/11/X11086501/

London Taxi Fare Calculator 1.0 released!

We're very pleased to announce that the London Taxi Fare Calculator is now on sale at the Apple Store, for 59p / 99 US cents. You can buy it on your iPhone through the app store or your PC through iTunes - http://itunes.apple.com/uk/app/londontaxi/id353591595#. If you're already following us on Twitter, you can get a free copy of the app by retweeting our release announcement tweet to your followers. Unfortunately, we can't do this for any new followers.

Free iPhone app

For a free copy of our iPhone app on the day it's released all you need to do is sign up to follow us on Twitter (click on the link to the right of this post), and when it's released RT (retweet) our launch tweet to your followers, and we'll send you a promotional code to download a free copy of the app.

You need to follow us as soon as possible, as the app could be released at any time, and as soon as it's available we'll do a launch tweet, and it will be too late to sign up then - don't let that happen to you!!

Cheers.

Update 9th Feb --------
We're very sorry, but what Apple don't tell you about promotional codes until you look deep into the support docs is that they're only available for the US store. So we can't give them out to our friends in the UK, but feel free to retweet us if you're in the US, and we'll send you over a code

Screenshots...

See above some screenshots of our upcoming app.

1. Shot one is the input screen where you can select or enter your start and end points, and the time and day you wish to take your journey.
2. Shot two shows the preset location categories that we have in the launch version.
3. Shot three is a list of DLR stations that are listed if you touch the DLR icon on screen two.
4. Shot four is the final results screen, showing the route, time for the journey, and the cost.

Just a little taster - the real deal is coming soon....

Help - you need somebody...?

..Not just anybody?!?!

Good news, we're here to help with some FAQs, and a worked example.

FAQs

Q: Can I put in postcodes in the route start/end/via fields?

A: Yes, we would actively encourage you to use postcodes to search for location as they tend to be quite accurate and simple to find.

Q: What does the blue arrow button do?

A: This button gives you the option to choose from 3 location categories:

• Current location - which will use your phone GPS to determine where you are (note: the app does take a little longer to calculate the fare if you use this option)
• Recent Location - this saves your 10 most recent search locations so that you can reuse these in the future
• Points of Interest - gives you preset locations broken down into Rail, Tube, DLR, Airport and Tourist Attractions

Q: Is there an ongoing charge to use this service?

A: No! There is a one off charge for the app, but that's it.

Q: How does it work?

A: Effectively the app works by taking into account the route you wish to take, the time of day, and day of week you wish to take the trip, and adding a series of formulae to determine an estimated price for your route

Route example

1) Press 'London Taxi' on your iPhone screen

2) In the 'Start' box enter your postcode, or press the blue arrow to use the 'Current Location', 'Recent Locations' or 'Points of Interest' options

3) Ditto for the 'End' and optional 'Via'

4) Adjust the 'Time' and 'Day' in Journey Time boxes to the time when you would like to take your trip. Note that this is defaulted to the current time/day.

5) Hit the 'Calculate' button to calculate price, time and see a route map

6) Take note of the Time just above the map on the next screen, and the fare, at the bottom of the screen in a taxi meter and then let us know here or on twitter how you found the service. Thanks!

For any other questions or help, please do feel free to e-mail us anytime with your comments, ideas and feedback and we'll try and respond to you directly as soon as possible.

London Taxi App 1.0 Features

We are putting a lot of effort into developing an iPhone application that is easy to use and useful to people visiting or living in London.

FEATURES:

• Calculate an estimated taxi fare between any 2 points in London.
• Gives an estimated distance for your route.
• Utilises your phone's GPS to use your current location as either the start or end point.
• Preset London points of interest including airports, tube and train stations, famous landmarks and tourist attraction.
• Saves locations used in the past in case you need to use them again.
• Optional feature to go Via another point on your journey.
• Calculate journeys leaving now, or at any time in the future.
• Integrated with Google Maps so that you can see the likely route to your destination - but remember cabbies usually know best!

Please remember that the fare calculations, timings and route are only estimates and actual details will vary depending on traffic, weather and other unforeseen conditions. The information provided is intended for guidance purposes only, so please don't threaten the cabbies with the information. But we think it's pretty good!!!!

Coming soon...

A new app to assist you with planning your journeys around London. We have developed an iPhone application designed to provide an estimated cost, time and route for any taxi journey around London. This is based on the TfL Taxi Tariff and estimated traffic congestion in London by time of day and day of week.

This is the culmination of many months work and we hope to launch it on the App Store soon. So follow us here on the blog, or for more regular updates on twitter.