The Taxi Cab Internet

If you've been in New York or several other cities and be in a cab, you've not doubt seen this:

That gizzmo above and to the left of the touch screen is a Paypass terminal along with a standard swipe device for taking credit cards. The screen, as I mentioned, is a touch screen. Those tabs above are hot and that map is live/moving, along with the news feed from Ken and Lori.  There is an ad above the news video.

I asked the particularly friendly cab driver a few questions:

How long is the average cab ride during the rush hour, inside the city. This was to exclude the Airport runs.  He said can be 7 - 15 minutes based on traffic.  Said some people commit time suicide (his words, awesome, eh!) by attempt to go cross town or this side to that side, etc.  We didn't count them.

Do people futz with this device and/or ask him questions about it? Friendly guy so I thought people might talk with him.  He said that on airport runs, they are very popular (outbound for news/inbound for tourist going "cool!" in 100 languages).  In the city, not so much that he could tell. He made a point of assuring me that he really doesn't know what goes on (wink, nod, smile).  He said 90% of his clients (his word!) knew where they were going or were using their Blackberry (his words, eat THAT Apple :-p ).  At night drunks or people making out so it's ignored.

I have a start-up class to teach later this month and will be interesting when I present the following situation:

What would you do to maximize this opportunity from an advertising or usage perspective?  Is it an opportunity?

It will be interesting to hear what the students have to say,

Comments

[Craig Plunkett]

The drivers have been pretty much universally against this device because they have to pay to have it installed, and the latency on processing the credit card transactions sucks. Plus they have to eat a percentage of the processing fee.
When I was doing my wifi to WWAN router for the Hampton Jitney, we considered bidding on this RFP, but the taxi meter companies had it locked in.

If you tried to get to any of the other content, did it work? Every time I have tried, the sites have timed out.

[Robert]

You might be interested to know that the gizzmo is made by an Canadian Company, Mobile Knowledge. They had a tough sell in the taxi cabs in NY as the drivers could no longer rip of out-of-towners by taking longer routes.

[ns]

I think the other vendors on this are Vivotech and Verifone.

Sure they pay the interchange fee, but some cab drivers are finding the passengers tip more which ends up paying for the interchange fee on CC and Debit transactions.

I know for the photo above the pre-set options are $2, $3 and $4 for tips -- for a $10 cab ride the $2 is plenty. It also makes it a quick and easy exit when you have a preset tip amount and done have to use an on-screen keypad.

I only wish there were fewer "OK" buttons to punch and a % based tip button rather than a fixed $ amount tip based button.

I will the that the reciept talks longer to print than cash my clicking through the screen options and tuhorization time. I don't think it start printing until after autorization -- why can't it print the trip details pending authorization and then afterward print the rest -- it ouwdl speed it up.