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A High-Tech Pedicab Dispatch System at SXSW in Austin (Video)

It's Austin, where people are proud to be weird -- and are more environmentally aware and more concerned about energy use than in the rest of Texas. Add SXSW, with its combination of techies, musicians, film people, and general hipsters. What could be more natural at SXSW than combining a pedicab (called a bicycle rickshaw in Old Delhi and other Indian cities) with Uber's smartphone-based dispatch system? Hook Uber up with local pedicab company Easy Rider, get Samsung to sponsor it all, and you are environmentally conscious, high tech, and (possibly) hip all at once. Totally Austin. Totally SXSW. And totally promotional for all three companies involved.

7 of 66 comments (clear)

  1. SuxBySuxWest by Seumas · · Score: 2, Funny

    Bunch of self-indulgent, over-important, overly-commercial, self-involved hipsters.

    And I'm from Portland, so that's saying something.

  2. Not new by i+kan+reed · · Score: 2

    This isn't novel. I live in a regressive-as-hell southern city, with tons of sprawl, that isn't even all that large, and we've had this exact service for over a year. Yet another super-positive review of a particular company dealing in a not-all-that-interesting product.

    Thankfully buzzword free, but still quite shillish.

  3. At SXSW, I SWSXed with other SWSXers by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Funny

    who told me that the key to really SXSWing is to SXSW when I can and not SXSW about missing a day or two of my SXSW routine. I think I really SXSWed a lot at this years SXSW and look forward to SXSWing more in the future. #YOSXSWO

  4. Or you could just walk by grag · · Score: 2

    The Austin downtown area is where most of the SXSW action occurs, and Austin's downtown really isn't that big. People needing cabs or pedicabs to move six blocks is a simple 10 to 15 minute walk.

  5. Re:*General* hipsters? by MightyYar · · Score: 2

    artisinally-sharpened Blackwing 602 pencils

    Oh my God, you made me look this up and you are right... there is a scruffy, hipster underground paying $20 for an "original" or about $1.25 for a recreation of a commercially unsuccessful soft-lead pencil. Then, when they find out that their soft-lead pencil doesn't last very long (which is why most people don't use them), they invent a two-step pencil sharpener that lets you start with a longer lead.

    --
    W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
  6. Re:*General* hipsters? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Funny

    I wonder what you have to do to get promoted to Hipster General

    You must wear the plastic frames that out-of-date are quite ironical,
    And scribe in Moleskine notes a zombie fiction most rom-comical:
    In short in matters independent, artisan, and cynical
    You'll be the very model of a modern Hipster-General. ... you know, before it was mainstream.

  7. How we look at Austin from Houston... by VAXcat · · Score: 2

    The motto in Austin is "Keep Austin Weird". The motto in Houston, seen on T-shirts and posters - "Keep Austin 163 miles from here"

    --
    There is no God, and Dirac is his prophet.