Category: Uncategorized

EBay for transport. – You plan a route on Google Maps and click the "Road Trip" button.
– You see a list of other people who are making the same journey, some have space in their car, and some want to join somebody who does.
– Companies can use the service to offer transport for defined journey legs, for a set price.

E.g. A taxi company can give a price from the city center to the airport; a flight charter company can give a price from Miami to Cuba; a guy who commutes every morning can sell seats in his car.

As the service matures more legs will be entered and eventually Google will be able to give you total journey prices comprising multi legs. Ebay style reputation feedback will keep folks reliable.

2011: I type London to Sydney in Google maps. The "Road Trip" options include:
– BA business class direct, 1000GBP.
– A 3 stop journey using Aeroflot and a buss leg between Ulan Bator and Yinchuan, 400GBP.
– An adventure by container ship to Cairo, passenger seat in a Rally car to Dubai, and a final leg on a jump seat in a FedEx plane, 200GBP

Update: this would fit well for a company offering something like this air-taxi idea.

I own the Lord of the Rings DVDs, so what will I do when they are released in HD? It's the same story for my Prodigy CDs and should be the same for my copy of Photoshop CS, all just data on disks. But unlike the record labels the software industry grew up with one click, one to many piracy and has a business model that reflects that. Back in the Golden Age of albums and films, a paradigm changing technology shift would arrive perhaps once in a record label exec's carrier. Now they arrive weekly. So instead of hitting the litigation panic button with each new technology why not adopt software's 'full version' / 'upgrade' model.
Let me buy a DVD, with a little gold leaved, hologramed liscence agreement in the case. I now own the rights to consume that media, where and when I want. Let me download it from bittorent, burn it to Blueray or copy it from a friends iPod. Then sell me the upgrade to HD, then 3D, subjective immersion or whatever comes next… Make it worth my while to buy rather than renting or stealing. People buy software so where is the difference?