Tag: cab

Tips about getting a taxi in San Francisco at night

Forgot I shot this video ages ago about trying to flag down a taxi in the mission district of San Francisco.

The other night I spent 45mins plus trying to flag down a taxi on mission street. There were tons of taxis and lots had there lights on to say their for hire, but would they stop for me? Hell no!

So in the end I walked back to the hotel at 2am. Now although 10 blocks doesn’t sound a lot. Bear in mind its 2am, I don’t know San Francisco at all and I had only flew in that day. Its like someone saying you should walk from Chancery Lane to Aldgate. It maybe not be far but it can be scary at least, specially if you don’t know the area.

In the video it takes me 5mins to flag down a taxi while the night in question, it was 45mins…

Anyway someone called arctother kindly left me some helpful tips for next time I’m in San Francisco.

  • In SF, just because the for hire light is on doesn’t mean the cab is available. That only turns off when the meter is running. If you had called a cab from the house on South Park, that one would also have shown up with the light on.
  • Try walking over one block to Third, a busier street with more traffic heading into downtown. Or at least stand on the northbound side of Second, so the cabs heading downtown, which are more likely to be empty, don’t have to turn around to get you. Also, standing on the southbound side sends the message that you are heading south, when you want them to know you are going north.

Thanks…! Can’t believe it was only 2007 when I went to California and came back with those bloody iphones.

App sharing

Android phone

App referrer sends app links to your friends via qr codes via Lifehacker

We’ve all been in that situation: you’re sitting next to your friend, with both your phones out, and you tell them about this "awesome new app you found". Then he or she has to pull up the Market and manually search for the app ("What’s it called?" "Space or no space?" "It’s spelled with leet speak?"). There are a number of ways to share files and apps between phones, but App Referrer keeps it simple—you don’t need to set up any kind of connection between the phones, just open it up, tap the app you want to send, and it’ll generate a Market QR code that they can scan right then and there.

I stood up at Mix 2009 (the Microsoft developer conference in Las Vegas) and said to the Windows mobile team,

One of the benefits you have with Windows Mobile is the CAB format (Cabinet). You can share the CABs with friends over email, email, bluetooth, etc… Yes its not as sexy as the apple store but when you want to share an app it just works and you don’t want to give directions on how to download it on the app store. Microsoft should keep that format and allow people to share apps if there free on the app store.

Did they listen to me? No… They followed the Apple model and forced people to download from the app store. I told them they were crazy, people were using bluetooth to share apps and media. Anyway, I’m happy that I wasn’t the only one thinking this.

App referrer is interesting but one thing I noticed on my Android phone was an app (HTC or Orange) called App sharing. You can share via,

  • Bluetooth
  • Evernote
  • Facebook
  • My Friends Stream
  • MMS
  • EMail/Gmail
  • Text
  • Twitter
  • Read it Later
  • Delicious
  • WordPress

I guess when you do any of these it sends a APK file, just like I suggested to Microsoft back in Las Vegas…!

Fact is App sharing makes sense (specially when the app is free), why force people to the app store to get the same app as there friends…? Crazy! I swear theres some lessons which can be learned from the pirates dilemma.