rebecca LANDO

evangotlib:

dbreunig:

Respite!

In a nod to years of griping from captive passengers, taxi officials agreed to let the owners of the new cabs decide whether to install the screens, which are required in the city’s 13,000 yellow taxis.

“With Taxi TV, there’s a diversity of opinion as to the value for passengers,” David S. Yassky, the taxi and limousine commissioner, said rather delicately. “So it makes more sense to leave it up to the taxi owners.”

Translation: no one liked them except for the media companies who drove their adoption. File Taxi TV with QR codes, Cuecat, mobile TV, TV check-in apps and other products spurred by marketing and media company desires rather than actual consumer demand or use cases.

I’d argue NFC payments (in their current form) fall under this umbrella as well. But that’s a longer post. (Via NYT)

Taxi TV can not disappear fast enough.

The most uncomfortable experience of my life was when I climbed into a cab, super drunk, alone, at like 4am one awful night/morning, and saw myself blabbering away about gazpacho on Taxi TV. I couldn’t make it turn off (faulty touch screen? me being really really ridiculously drunk?) so I had a really uncomfortable ride home trying not to fixate on how stupid I look when I talk, etc.