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