DISQUS

Pleasure and Pain: My Beef with the NYC Taxicab Touchscreens

  • david cushman · 1 year ago
    I was in NYC briefly last month. I liked the touch screen sat nav. What blew me away is that I get sat nav as a passenger - and the driver doesn't?
  • Michael Leis · 1 year ago
    Cushman! We were just talking about the touchscreens, and I have to say they're a bit much. They seem much better in theory than in practice.

    First, concentrating on watching them makes me a little queasy. Second, who else touched this thing?
  • Marc Fein · 1 year ago
    I really like the ABC screens. I think they are designed well and have some trusted names for each respective content catergory. New, Weather, Sports, Business News and restaurant info is certainly something I would grab on my Blackberry, Newspaper, the Internet or Tv during the course of my day so why not pass the time in a ridiculously long cab ride getting better informed. They could improve some things but overall I think it's great and use it often. the other ones NBC and DDS are a mess and provide no useful information (or don't even work) whatsoever. So when you say they are all "pretty pittifully designed", I have to respectfully disagree. ABC/Verifone has done a nice job.
  • david cushman · 1 year ago
    Hi Michael! hadn't thought about that touchscreen superbug transfer mechanism. Perhaps a sanitiser courtesy wipe, like an airplane toilet, is in order?;D

    I like that I get to see where I am going. Would like the driver to be afforded the same luxury...
  • Arthur · 1 year ago
    Your article is dated July 8, but I wonder when the pictures were taken. Particularly the pictures of the DDS project, since I heard that they changed their user interface at the end of May, 2008.
  • whitney · 1 year ago
    Arthur, you're probably right. I did take these photos quite a while before I wrote the blog post. I, too, have noticed changes to the DDS screen lately, but not enough to actually change this evaluation ;)