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Google Ride Finder Announced
nthitz writes "Need a ride? Now Google has included the ability to lookup where taxis are in real time! The new service is called Google Ride Finder. Using a combination of Google Maps and Google Local you can see where certain taxis are at the moment. Currently there are only 11 major cities that are supported, and there are still only a few cab companies that are involved. The service is pretty cool, but if they don't add more cities/companies, who knows how well it will do. For more info check out Google's Blog."
I can do something close in Portland, Oregon... Accessing the Tri-Met website (www.tri-mer.org/wap) on my cell phone tells me how long until the bus I'm waiting for reaches my stop...
Actually, March 31st. Check the date on the blog. Not a gag.
You have to see how they're doing it. Earlier when I checked, I was up to 1100 something. I just checked again, and it's 1114. It looks like they're doing the reverse of nibbling away, by giving everyone 1 extra MB at a time, and then when they reach the end of the userlist, starting over.
I'm not making this up, if you have a gmail account, go see it. Mod me down if you look and it's a joke.
Oh, up to 1116... I'm never going to get to sleep tonight, I have to keep checking.
Does NOT require ActiveX. It does require one of the following:
IE 5.5+ (Windows)
Firefox 0.8+ (Windows, Mac, Linux)
Netscape 7.1+ (Windows, Mac, Linux)
Mozilla 1.4+ (Windows, Mac, Linux)
Probably because the code makes extensive use of the XMLHttpRequest feature (""Ajax" to some), though that doesn't explain why it doesn't work with Safari outright. Through a quick view source, I can detect they're using XSLT, and that's probably why Safari can't. But none of this matters, as Tiger's coming out very soon and we can expect Safari 2.0 to support a lot that it couldn't before.
"Victory means exit strategy, and it's important for the President to explain to us what the exit strategy is." G.W.Bush
Actually, a few years ago when I was at Virginia Tech, Blacksburg Transit had GPS units mounted on their buses which enabled the realtime display of the location of their buses. This was particularly neat because I could check at anytime from the website of where their buses were and I could run time my run to the bus stop. Unfortunately, they don't have this running on their site anymore... very sad :-/ Talk about 'big brother'.
From http://www.google.com/googlegulp/faq.html
11. When will you take Google Gulp out of beta?
Man, if you pressure us, you just drive us away. We'll commit when we're ready, okay? Besides, what's so great about taking things out of beta? It ruins all the romance, the challenge, the possibilities, the right to explore. Carpe diem, ya know? Maybe we're jaded, but we've seen all these other companies leap headlong into 1.0, thinking their product is exactly what they've been dreaming of all their lives, that everything is perfect and hunky-dory - and the next thing you know some vanilla copycat release from Redmond is kicking their butt, the Board is holding emergency meetings and the CEO is on CNBC blathering sweatily about "a new direction" and "getting back to basics." No thanks, man. We like our freedom.
That's an excellent point. Actually, unless Super Shuttle has changed its operations, the only regular stops here in Dallas, TX, are D/FW airport (I don't think it does Love Field) and several hotels. Anywhere else, you have to call the dispatcher, to send the shuttle by. So seeing who's near you is somewhat useless, for this company. Still, it's beta, and soon they may have some of the taxis on here, also.
You know, some of these companies do already use GPS and radio uplinks to track their vehicles, so they don't have to calculate anything.
Many cities that use the Siemens TransitMaster system have this capability. Here in Long Beach, Ca, we're getting it implemented within the next few months.
t iswork.htm
t isbus.htm
http://www.ilgsystems.com/productservice-transit-
http://www.ilgsystems.com/productservice-transit-
Some of our busier stops, and the main transit hub downtown already have live feeds updated in real time displaying the next bus arrival & departure time. The system is dynamic, and figures in delays due to traffic, detours, or if the bus is running late for any other reasons. It is basically a stripped down version of the software used by our dispatchers.
Where I live, having GBS on the busses would be redundant and fairly useless.
If I'm at the bus stop, I can look at the sign and printed there it tells me that the bus will arrive at 9:53 am. I check my watch and at precisely 9:53, the bus pulls up. Every time.
When friends are at my house in the evening, they may hop onto the web to see what time the subway is leaving. Not just the last train, but any one before that.
When I lived in the states, in Washington DC, there was no attempt at keeping a schedule at all. I was on the subway one time, in the first car, when the driver stopped for a few minutes in mid tunnel, to chat with another driver who had also stopped. Since I was near the front, I could hear it and it wasn't safety-related or anything justifiable, it was all "Hey, girlfriend, how's your Momma doin'?"
Here in Tokyo, they move about twenty-seven million people around on mass transit every day. (Compare that with NYC's daily 3.1 million.)
I guess to do that you have to be pretty precise about your timetables.
Strangely though, last night there was a one hour delay on my usual train. Somebody had jumped in front of it. That's about the only reason things get slowed down.
-- My Weblog.
Actually it is fairly acurate (usually to the minute). The bus drivers have a little computer in the front of the bus that they are constantly punching stuff into... it seems to relay the info, via radio (?), back to the 'headquarters'. I've been wondering about this for a while, but it seems to be so acurate that it would have to be real-time info and not just schedules. I guess I could start comparing their estimated arival times (from the web) to the scheduled times to get a real answer.
Jeremy Logan's Website.
Note: It says "taxis available". Also, that number is updated. Hence, one can draw the conclusion that the "taxis available" are taxis that are not currently occupied, meaning this is practical value.