Category Archives: SoLoMo
An Idea to Encourage Exercise and Wellbeing using GPS Tracking
I just read a story about someone who has cycled every road in London over a period of five years. He used a combination of GPS and colouring in the A to Z Map of London. On this video you … Continue reading
Where’s My Phone? How to make sure you can find it when it is misplaced or stolen.
People misplace their mobiles often. I challenge you to say that you have never ever spent time trying to remember where you left it. The industry does really well out of mobiles that have been lost on public transport, airports, … Continue reading
Life List #6/150 Write a Sequel to Unleashing the Roadwarrior
It’s been 15 years since I wrote and published Unleashing the Road Warrior and it’s interesting both how much has changed and how little has changed. I was planning on writing a book about traffic congestion on our roads and … Continue reading
Animated Maps Illustrate the Hell of Bay Area Commuting
Your hellish commute has never looked so pretty. A new set of animated maps plots the commutes of 3.3 million Bay Area residents commuting to 110,000 destinations. Sourced through Scoop.it from: http://www.wired.com When was the last time you looked at … Continue reading
San Francisco firm Uber to bring private car-hailing app technology to Taiwan – WantChinaTimes
Whilst WantChinaTimes San Francisco firm Uber to bring private car-hailing app technology to Taiwan WantChinaTimes The apps, when downloaded to the user’s smartphone, detect the Global Positioning System’s (GPS) space-based satellite navigation system and…
Source: www.wantchinatimes.com
Whilst legislation may need to catch up, the reality is that this is a new wave of transportation.
I hear and understand a lot of complaints from the existing industries, but there are many arguments in favor of this evolution. It could mean fewer cars on the road. That has to be good from a green perspective.
One way the existing taxi industry could compete is by allowing passengers to rate existing taxi drivers, because there are drivers who take their customers ‘the long way round’ and this is one of the reasons that the whole industry gets a bad name.
A classic example I hear frequently is asking the passenger which route to take. This is a way of letting the driver off if they take the longer or more congested route. They should all be using solutions such as Waze or TomTom with real time traffic. If they are professional, then most of the time they know the fastest route at any time of day
Taxi companies should read ‘What Would Google Do’ by Jeff Jarvis. If they uniformly provided a great service, people would not be wanting other services. These new services could not get off the ground or survive if the existing ones were providing a great solution.
Just like book stores, record stores and other industries, the taxi industry needs to keep reinventing itself or others will take over. That is the nature of change.
With my tongue firmly planted in my cheek, I believe there is a global conspiracy. There is a central location on the planet where they send taxi drivers to countries where they don’t speak the local language and don’t know the local road network.
SoLoMo Consulting 