Here is a iPhone app scheme that is trying to save the environment, reduce traffic, save commuting costs and ... scare the hell out of us.
First here is the quote from their website:
"Avego.com is where travelers cooperate to make the whole transport system more efficient, saving us all money, wasted time and reducing pollution.
A 5-seat car traveling with only a driver is inherently inefficient, and yet 85% of the time, that's how cars travel in much of the world. With our iPhone GPS technology, web services and your participation, we can fill up those empty seats."
This is just creepy. What actually happens is the app tracks your movements through GPS and builds a profile on the route and area that you are traveling often. It does the same for all the other users. Then it matches people up looking for a ride. Yikes. I don't want to be tracked. I don't want strangers knowing my route and most of all I don't want to matched up with anyone for "rides" or carpooling. This is inviting the trouble of wackos, criminals, stalkers and lowlife characters to do something dangerous.
There is a video on their website if you want to find out more, the app is called Rideshare and will be live in 10 days. Screw the environment, give me a V12 gas guzzling car, a private jumbo jet and coal fired heating any day over this crazy scheme. This app won't be coming with reach of a 10ft pole of my phone, that is for damn sure.
- Twittown Editors's blog
- 4 points
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Comments
No Fear Carpooling - Maybe.
See, I think that an application like this could work, if there was some way to "vote" for your favorite fellow passengers, a simple "thumbs up, thumbs down" system (anonymous, of course). That way users would feel more inclined to carticipate, knowing that other carticipants have been "vetted" by the community.
If we're going to harness the power of digital social networks to organize offline activities, we should harness the full power of that online medium - including being able to share user reactions about other participants...
Carpool on the iPhone: don't live in fear
Avego is our competitor, so it is not my place to defend their app.
It is a valid lifestyle choice if you don't like being tracked by a service provider, however, your post is about a fear based on a perceived non-existent danger.
Consider the 41k fatalities on US roads in 2007 according to the National Highway and Transportation Safety Board (http://www-fars.nhtsa.dot.gov/Main/index.aspx) and compare that to the number of victims from homicidal carpoolers. Even if everyone carticipated, I doubt it would be anywhere close to 41k people. If you made rational decisions based on the real danger, you shouldn't come within reach of a 10ft pole of getting into a car ever again.
The security question came up when we gave a talk on carticipation at the Silicon Valley iPhone Developers' Meetup in Palo Alto last week and posted the video here (recommend "high quality" mode):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kaphdB6Wafs
There are dangers for not carticipating as well, such as the danger to our economy of rising fuel prices and to our national security of having to import 70% our fuel.
Carticipate is a social network app for carpoolers on the iPhone and is already available as a free download.
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