Nine months ago we wrote about Taxi Magic, a nifty service that hooks directly into local dispatch systems to let you book cabs from your smart phone. Since then the startup has been doing quite well — it now supports the iPhone, Blackberry, and SMS booking. It’s also grown from supporting 25 fully supported cities to 40. And tonight it’s launching a new feature that exposes it to an even broader audience: a web portal at TaxiMagic.com
The site features a directory for each of the service’s supported taxi providers, with some cities (like San Francisco and Washington, DC) offering multiple options. Once you’ve picked a taxi service, you enter an address and pickup time. At this point you can’t pay for the taxi online, but you can pay from your smartphone or via SMS using through TaxiMagic if you’d rather not deal with cash or hand over your credit card (the service charges a $1.50 fee for this).
Aside from the new website, TaxiMagic has made quite a few changes since we last covered them. As mentioned above, you can now pay for taxis using your TaxiMagic account that’s been linked to a credit card (before you could only book cabs and would have to pay the old fashioned way). And the service now offers support for SMS, which means you can shoot a text from bascially any phone to TaxiMagic with your current address to request a pickup. TaxiMagic will respond with a text message indicating the cab drive’s name and distance.
Finally, the service’s iPhone application has seen quite a few upgrades, including the ability to actually see where your cab currently is as it drives to pick you up.
TaxiMagic is one of my all-time favorite iphone apps. Love the new features. Very handy.
Now if only the dispatchers actually used it.
wow. What’s funny is that I went to the site just a few hours ago and realized they don’t offer online booking that I’ll hav to use the iPhone app.
Do you mean for your city? There’s a big Book Now button right next to each taxi listing!!!
Nice. Now we need a site to slow down taxi drivers who think they’re in NASCAR.
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By far one of the best apps I use. Thanks, TaxiMagic.
How do you book via the app without giving them your credit card info? If its free to book, why do they need a credit card? The Ride Charge site also says they charge $1.50 per transaction…but the Taxi Magic site says:
“Taxi Magic is the first nationwide free online taxi booking service that is directly integrated with taxi dispatch systems”
I wouldn’t pay $1.50 for something I can easily do over the phone. I think they need to explain things a little better.
The confusion stems from a split offering across our offerings. Right now you can book a taxi as “cash” without the $1.50 transaction fee on the iPhone’s Taximagic app, SMS/Text, or Provider Web Branded Booking (linked to from taximagic.com). We’re currently working on upgrading the BlackBerry, and ridecharge.com to allow the “cash” option too. I don’t have a specific date but both are in the works!
Great app for booking a cab when you don’t have cash. Pay with your credit card securely through the app. The real question is if people can use it when drunk.
Try actually paying with your phone and see how well it goes.
I have yet to find a taxi driver in LA who has any idea what this service is at the time of payment.
Each time I’ve had to spend 10 minutes trying to explain the process which they don’t know about and certainly don’t care about.
If you guys like Taxi Magic, you are going to love Cabulous. Stay tuned. http://cabulous.com
Once again, completely ignoring Windows Mobile users. Well, guess you don’t want our business. *shrug*. I’m guessing only iPhone and Blackberry users take taxis.
I take it back, the link to the Windows Mobile app is so tiny under the link for the blackberry I had to squint to see it. When I emailed the company asking for the Windows Mobile applicaiton, I got the following response:
“… While we certainly would like to be able to support every type of a phone with an app, we have limited resources and direct them toward those mobile operating systems that are most conducive to third party development and where demand has been the greatest. ”
Now, that’s a bit of a stretch to say that Windows Mobile users aren’t using their phones as much as iPhone and Blackberry users are. We’re using them for everything. Well, downloaded the application to my phone (Sprint TouchPro) doesn’t work to be usable. The booking window is shown on my phone’s screen in the upper left-hand quadrant (occupying only 1/4 of the screen). Well, i guess I’ll just hold up my hand the old fashioned way.
Probably the greatest app of all time. Work so well, I don’t want anyone to know about it!
I wished this article never saw the light of day…..
I tried this last night. 45 minutes and two phone calls later, I hailed a cab from a different cab co.
Magic indeed.