taxime

We’ve just added Minneapolis as a supported city for getting Taxi estimations. Check it out at http://minneapolis.taxime.ca

It was ever-so satisfying to write the title of this post. The TaxiMe iPhone app has been released! Read more about it at www.taxime.ca/iphone

I thought I’d update you all on something I’ve been keeping a little bit of a secret – I’m building an iPhone app for TaxiMe. Now, I’ve been developing it for about a month and a half now and it’s nearing completion. Here are a few features you can look forward to in the app:

• Favorites: You can add/edit/remove favorite locations and then easily select them from a list when doing your estimation.
• Recent: The app will keep track of recent estimations so you can always go back and view where you were going, how much it cost and how long it was going to take.
• Modify Rates: Just like the website, the user will be able to alter the rates if they feel ours are out of date (pfftt we never are )
• Google Maps integration: Just like the website, you will be able to launch a Google Map to show your starting point and destination.  When you type in something like “McDonalds”, you will get a list of possible locations in your city, you will also have the option to view a Google Map of all possible locations.
• Geo Aware: Since the iPhone has GPS, you will only have to type in your address – no more having to type “123 Fake St, New York, NY”.  Just type in “123 Fake St” and you’re city will be automatically detected.  This is the same with business searches, you can just search “Burger King”.

Those are the main features you can look forward to. I’ve got a few people testing it right now, so assuming all is well after that, I expect to have it launched end of April/early May.  It will probably price around $1.99.

In the mean time, here are a few screenshots of the app in use.

I was checking Twitter this morning and to my surprise, a few of my friends had told me that they heard taxime.ca on CBC radio this morning.  That’s good news!  Free advertising is always good.  I’d like to thank Jith Paul for mentioning it – I’m glad you find it useful Jith!  Not long after the interview Jith had sent me a link to CBC.ca where I could download the interview on CBC’s website or Mac users can download an mp3 version here.

Thank you everyone for the enormous amount of support you’ve given us throughout our rapid growth. We’ve recently been featured in the following design galleries: CSS Mania, CSS Design Yorkshire, Most Inspired, Best CSS Gallery, Stumbleupon, CSS Cookie, CSS Impress and many others.

Some people have been blogging about us at: Addictive Tips, Startup Meme, Killer Startups, Ottawa Blogspot, New York City Events, Ace Startups, Colorado Springs Newspaper, Startup Ottawa and many others.

We’ve also added a few more cities since the last post, http://santarosa.taxime.ca/ and http://denver.taxime.ca/

I had gotten a phone call today with a bug report when you searched something like

From: 10 Albert St, Regina
To: 55 Montreal St, Regina

TaxiMe would come back and say “Did you mean…”

After providing support for major Canadian cities, we’ve just added support for 7 more American cities! View all supported cities here

It’s been a long week so far: working full time, researching taxi rates and tweaking/adding new features. Well this one is one that I know a lot of you have been waiting for.

Now if you type in your starting point and we support the rate for that city, TaxiMe will automatically adjust the fare settings. I know some of you live in the cities that aren’t supported, so I’ve offered a temporary solution until the list grows. If you know the rates in your city you can click on “Adjust fare settings”, punch in your rates, check off “Use custom rate” and click save.

The neat thing about this is that if your city isn’t supported, take Scarborough for example, TaxiMe will attempt to find a city in that province/region and use that fare. In this case, it will use Toronto’s fare. It looks at all the cities in that province/region and uses the fares of whichever city is closest to the one you typed in!

Click here for a list of all supported cities.

This morning has been an exciting one, Tracey Tong from the Metro decided to write an article about Taxi Me. The article can be found here http://www.metronews.ca/ottawa/local/article/155596

I’ve scrapped the previous feature I posted about – why you ask? Because it was starting to turn a simple app into something more complex. This app does not require presets for different cities, if you know what your city’s cab fare is then you can enter the fare and save it. It should not be harder than that.

I do agree that we should have a list of different cities and cab rates for the user to get an idea what they should plug in. This is in the works.

I’ve been getting requests from people to buy the app or ask if they could integrate it into their site. That got me thinking… Why not? I should create a little web widget for blogs and what not.

I’ll keep everyone posted on the progress!