Digital Interactif

Car Pooling via the Internet

Last week I went to the Massachusetts-based Web Innovators Group conference.  One of the companies presenting was GoLoco, a Car-Sharing service that connects you with friends and strangers in an attempt to save both the environment and your money.  GoLoco was founded by Robin Chase, co-founder of ZipCar, and it is based out of Cambridge, MA.   

I am pretty skeptical of GoLoco's business plan itself.  They have successfully established a presence on Facebook with a Facebook App but their plan for monetizing the service is weak because it is limited to a niche of people that can't build up the courage to ask people for money. 

Their monetization plan is to charge a 10% transaction fee when users pay each other through their Facebook Application via PayPal account.  The rationale is that friends typically don't ask friends to chip in $2.46 for a ride to the NH State Liquor store, and when they do ask, the normal response is "yeah, I'll get you back later" because it's such a small, inconsequential amount of money.

The potential situation arising from friends using the GoLoco service to pay each other is pretty awkward:

Driver: Hey dude, mind tossing me some gas money for the ride to Walmart?
Friend 1: Sure no prob man, is it cool if I get you back later? 
Driver: Errr, that's not gonna work.  I'd like you to sign into GoLoco and pay me through paypal real quick if you could.
Friend 1: Sure, no problem.  Dick...

This situation would be even better if there were even more people involved.  Yes there are people that are early adopters out there and it might seem cool to pay each other online, but who in their right mind would do so if it meant that some random company, GoLoco, got 10% of money rightfully owed to the driver. 

The cool thing about the service is that it calculates how much money the trip will cost for gas and tolls and therefore it provides you with a concrete amount of money to ask for.  I like the service but I am not convinced by their plan to make money off of it.  For more info on GoLoco, check out this New York Times article.

GoLoco is not alone in the market for Car Sharing via the Internet.  Ride Amigos is a similar service and it currently operates in New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, and San Francisco.  This company does not to seem to be aiming to make a profit on the service but instead is more interested in making a positive impact on the environment, or at least that's their marketing spin.  Unlike GoLoco, this service doesn't provide a mean to exchange money and it does not have a Facebook widget.  But it is noteworthy all the same.  For more info, check out this TreeHugger post.   

As for you Europeans out there, I came across the German website Mitfahrzentrale which translates into "agency for arranged lifts" (thanks Babelfish).   When I used this website last year it only had a German version and I was still able to navigate it which just goes to show how easy and straight forward the service is.  Thankfully though the site now allows you to translate it to English .  It appears this site is used mainly within Germany still.  I like the social networking functionality of the site and it's great how the homepage shows which cities are most actively using the service.   

So go sign up for GoLoco, add the Facebook widget to you profile, and go on n' get your carpool on.

 

Jaxtr and a big thumbs up!

I recently came across the Jaxtr service and I am pretty impressed by its offerings. 

Essentially, friends can call eachother via cellphone or landline through the Jaxtr service.  The service currently works in 43 countries:

Australia, Austria, Belgium, Brazil, Bulgaria, Canada, Chile, China, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Guam, Guatemala, Hong Kong, Hungary, India, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Jamaica, Japan, Latvia, Luxembourg, Mexico, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Pakistan, Poland, Portugal, Puerto Rico, Romania, Russia, Slovak Republic, South Africa, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, United Kingdom, United States and U.S. Virgin Islands

I tried out the service for the first time on Friday and I was amazed at both its ease of use and sound quality.  My friend who lives in Poland signed up for the service and all I had to do was click on his "Call Me" button located on his Jaxtr profile.  (for reference, this mine: http://www.jaxtr.com/digitalinteractif).

About 5 seconds after I clicked on his "Call Me" button, I received a phone call on my cell phone from Jaxtr.  A voice on the other end of the telephone line said "Please hold, connecting your call..." or something to that effect. 

I was on hold for about 10-15 seconds before I was connected to the sound of a phone ringing (it was actually more like "beeping" but that is just because I was calling a polish phone).  After the 3rd ring, my friend answered his Polish cell phone in Warsaw and we were talking...for free. 

Our conversation lasted about 20 minutes and not once were our voices cut out as had happened with the Mobivox service.  The sound quality of the Jaxtr service is truly incredible!  I give the service a big thumbs up and recommend checking it out. 

Currently Jaxtr is marketing itself to social networks because it allows anonymous calling, but Jaxtr needs to market itself better to international communities.  For instance, a big improvement would be to have pages created in the different languages that their service works in, such as French.  There is a large growing community of American's who have lived abroad and know people around the world, and thus this great segment of the population to target.  I have a few friends in France who don't speak English and cannot read it either, so navigating Jaxtr's site is a daunting task for them.  If Jaxtr took the time to create mini-sitelets which would act as simple sign up pages for various languages, this service would transcend some of the potential cultural/language barriers that definitely exist in international communication.   

I have been disappointed by Jaxtr's widget though.  I have had it located on this blog for the past week and not once has it worked correctly.  It is always in the "loading..." window which I find extremely annoying.  If the widget function doesn't work, please don't take it to market! It's just a waste of my time and it looks bad.  But as soon as the widget starts working, you will see my a functional button on the top of the right column that says "Call Me".  If you are a registered Jaxtr user and click on that button, we will be connected seamlessly and for free.  Pretty cool.

UPDATE:

Thanks for the fix Jaxtr!  Unfortunetly the Jaxtr widget isn't easy to get onto Typepad's sidebar, there is no Typepad option within the 'Post It' options but I look forward to the day that your engineers get it up and running.

Also, a friend of mine had added the Jaxtr widget to their facebook profile and it appears that her widget also belongs to Odessa the Engineer. 

But no love lost, I made another call with Jaxtr today and it was just as great as the first time I used it!   

Prank Calling The Brits

I don't know about you, but I plan on prank calling a couple of British folk I know this 4th of July.  Normally I wouldn't do such a thing, but this 4th of July it will be for free and from my cell phone thanks to MOBIVOX.

MOBIVOX offers to anyone who is registered to the service $10 US worth of free international calls from anywhere in the United States this July 4th. Users will be able to make their free calls from the United States to anywhere in the world on mobile or fixed lines anytime from midnight EDT to 11:59:59 pm EDT July 4 for a value up to 10$ US of MOBIVOX credit. At 11:59:59 pm EDT the unused portion of the gift in dollar value will be put back to zero.

MOBIVOX's Independence Day promotion is a way to connect friends and family separated by oceans, continents or simply national frontiers who can't make it to Fourth of July picnics or barbecues, and to thank its growing user base for choosing the MOBIVOX service.

THANK YOU MOBIVOX.  I truly appreciate the gesture and this promotion will be the first of many times that I use your service.  You are terrific...

But, I expect more.  Essentially you dial up a local access number and then from there you are connected to the number you are trying to reach.  Currently, Mobivox allows one to only call landlines in the following countries:

Argentina, Australia, Austria, Belgium, Chile, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Iceland, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Luxembourg, Malaysia, Mexico (Mexico City, Monterrey, Guadalajara), Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Russia (Moscow and St. Petersburg), South Korea, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Taiwan, Turkey (Ankara and Istanbul), United Kingdom and Venezuela-Caracas.

While this is a nice selection of countries, all of my friends currently over in Europe only own mobile phones.  I have no one to call on a landline in Europe so I will be forced to call random british people who I will thank for losing the war of independence a few hundred years ago...all from my cell phone with a beer in hand.  So cool.

And just in case you are curious, here are the countries in which you can call Mobile phones  for free through the Mobivox service:

Canada, China, Guam, Hong Kong, Puerto Rico, Singapore, Thailand and United-States (including Alaska and Hawaii).

Seriously, Guam? Ok whatever, it's cool.  But do they even have cell phones in Guam? If you're reading this, you're not from Guam.  I'd say that last one is true.

UPDATE:

Great News!  I was wrong! You can INDEED call cell phones AS WELL AS landlines, no matter where on July 4th for free.  Now just to clear it up, it's not unlimited FREE, but instead you receive a $10 dollar credit.  This is cool but the rates are pretty expensive. 

For instance, I am calling a friend in Poland on July 4th(don't get me wrong, I wouldn't be calling him if it wasn't for Mobivox's promotion, so again, thanks Mobivox, you rock!) but it is $.26 per minute.  This works out to be a 40 minute phone call which is pretty sweet...but its too expensive to make it a habit.