Slashdot Mirror
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."
Neat idea, but I'd like something that tracks public transportation vehicles. Accessible via a WAP browser, it would be a great thing to have while waiting at a bus stop at 3am wondering WHERE the frigg the bus is!
Looks like they are getting closer and closer to being able to locate my keys in my house for me. Awesome.
Sometimes I think Google is running too much and too fast.
:(
Google Maps and Google Local (thus Google Ride Finder too) are available only for US citizens.
Services are fine, are good, are nice, and I'd like to see something similar for my area too (I live in Italy).
My not-so-secret dream is that one day they'll extend all those great services to the rest of the world, maybe before launching tons of other services I would only look at saying "it would be nice to be able to use it..."
Oh, well, I feel like I live in the third world
-- Personal Blog: http://www.delymyth.net/ (italian)
Did anyone else see the GMAIL login page become this: well i'm not good enough to download the page, there's a funny handdrawn picture, but here's the text: Welcome to Gmail A Google approach to math. On the eve of Gmail's one-year birthday, our engineers were toiling away furiously. Notes scribbled all over the walls. Complex calculations on napkins and empty pizza boxes. Millions of M&Ms. The result?... starting today, we're beginning the roll-out of our new and top secret Infinity+1 storage plan. The key features are: Write, don't worry. You want to stop caring about storage. We want to keep giving you more. Today, and beyond. The gift that keeps on giving. 1102.353769 megabytes of storage (and counting) for every user. No complicated equations. No tough algorithms. Just this one graph: Gmail turns 1 today. And we've always loved a good joke. We know we won't reach infinity, but check out what we will do ...
Gmail Sign In
Username:
Password:
Don't ask for my password for 2 weeks.
Forgot your password?
Learn more about Gmail.
Check out our new features!
A few words about Gmail and privacy.
There are three types of people in the world.
1. People who don't get April Fools jokes
2. People who get April Fools jokes, and laugh at them but don't tell.
3. People who get April Fools jokes and shout out "OMG I BET THATS AN APRIL FOOLS JOKE". They're incapable of running with a joke, they insist on pointing out the joke, and are also the same people who tell you your shoes are untied, and when you look go "HA HA GOTYA". They also get beaten a lot at school.
Actually, March 31st. Check the date on the blog. Not a gag.
I'm coming back tomorrow when all the bogus crap is over.
:)
Ahahah, you must be new here, you'll be waiting alot longer then a day.
Your hair look like poop, Bob! - Wanker.
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.
I've contacted Google numerous times about the problem of no distance scale on Google Maps and yet still no distance scale; I mention this here since the Taxi finder feature is using Google Maps.
... without a distance scale on the map, the user is left wondering how far two points are - distance is important in determing whether one has enough gas, money, time, etc to get to the intended destinaton.
Map makers, the ones that actually collected the data for the maps Google, etc uses, know how important scale is for both creating an accurate map *and* as well as for the user of the map
In short, Google Maps is nice, but without a distance scale, it's of limited usefulness.
If anyone from Google is reading this, please chime in regarding this matter - thanks in advance.
Ron Bennett
Screw the Taxi tracker. I'm looking forward to a Google Gulp, found here. My favorite bit:
From forest to freezer: A Google Gulp history
It is estimated that nearly half of Planet Earth's plant and animal species live in tropical rain forests, the vast majority of them undiscovered by humans and therefore not yet subjected to commercial exploitation. For Google, this cornucopia of undigitized data represented an irresistible acquisition target. So, for the past two years, as his 20% project, VP of operations Urs Hoelzle has spent one day a week collecting flora samples in several Bolivian sub-equatorial rain forests. For the most part, the compounds he returned with were nothing special - the usual grab-bag of future steroids, muscle relaxants, skin care appliqués and long-shot cancer drugs.
I bet Google Gulps are good with vodka. Shit, anything is good with vodka.
porp
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
I'd like a search engine for car pooling. The only reason 90% of the cars on the road have no passengers is the inability to organize a more efficient scheme; this would require only centralized planning. A computer service would be ideal for the task, so long as it had sufficient start-up popularity. Google does. Get on it, Google; save us some gas money.
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.
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.
I seriously hope this one is an April Fools joke too: HTML formatting in gmail. I can't believe they did it. the scourge of email has made its way into the best webmail there is.
yes >
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.