Normally, tourists at the airport of a big city carrying armfuls of luggage and a tourist map are easy targets for dishonest taxi drivers – and Madrid is no exception. So to make your visit a little less stressful Alberto Naranjo, an internet entrepreneur and mobile technology director from Barrabés Internet, has developed Taxi Madrid, an iPhone app [link to iTunes] that calculates taxi fares. The app uses GPS to determinate your current location and will calculate the expected fare, time and route to your destination.
The app has been developed in English, but there will be future versions in Spanish, German, French, Italian and Japanese, new cities supported, and – more interestingly – a social review system for Taxi Companies, which actually has a lot more potential that you might think. Imagine if you could rate and share info on Taxi services globally?
The app uses GPS to determinate your current location and will calculate the expected fare, time and route to your destination. It includes a useful guide for using Taxis cabs in Madrid for tourism and business. Next week the Taxi Barcelona app. will be released. The app has been developed in English, but he is already working in future versions in Spanish, German, French, Italian and Japanese, new cities support, and a Social review system for Taxi Companies.
Taxi Madrid’s main features include a phone listing of the better taxi companies in Madrid; a complete Madrid “official fares” support (even with special airport supplements, trade fairs etc); multi currency support; location; integration with iPhone Maps and a bunch more.
Taxi Madrid for iPhone is the first app from a collection of Taxi Fares Calculator applications for smartphones as iPhone, Android, Nokia and next Palm Pre, designed to make tourism in Madrid much easier (and cheaper).
If you want to try the app for free, we have 10 Promotional coupons for Taxi Madrid, which will go out to the first ten people to comment on this post (but they are only for the US Apple store so far, alas).
However, there is if course one small issue. We can’t vouch for what will happen to your iPhone when you show it to the taxi driver to try and negotiate the bill down…