New version coming soon....

Any ideas on what new features, upgrades or general ideas that you would like to see on an updated version of the app.

We're hoping to introduce some form of booking process, perhaps via twitter if possible, we'll also be updating the fare information, but we'd really like to hear ideas from users of the app if you have some.

Thanks!

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!