Hey, we’ve been getting tens of thousands of visitors and page views in the last three days since we launched. It’s great to see that much interest in this new technology.
While this technology works, as you can see in the videos (and anyone who has a MAJOR interest is welcome to come visit us in Ireland or the SF Bay area in the US to get an in-vehicle demo), we are still in the early days, here, so I think it’s important we communicate where we are.
Let me put things in perspective:
- until there are drivers with the iPhone client (which is in a limited, alpha release right now), there is no way to be matched for a ride in your area.
- you should still sign up for an account (or, at least, for the “newsletter” notification when the iPhone client launches), as that will enable you to find out really quickly what the transit network in your area is beginning to look like (we build a model of all the covered routes in your city based off the information as it is created and driven by drivers, this then tells us which riders are likely to have routes available to them. We’ll share this information with you periodically).
- the iPhone driver & rider client are both the same application. they will be available as a free download on the iPhone Appstore as soon as the software is available for general release.
- we are going to *try* to hold the general release until *after* the Apple Push becomes available. Apple push was originally scheduled for availability in September 2008; it has been held back for a bit. The system definitely works better for both riders and drivers with Apple Push enabled. (Apple Push is a technology that brings the application back to the frontmost application… we really think this is important in terms of the overall quality of the user experience). If Apple Push is delayed too long (more than 2 months), we will probably release the beta without Apple Push.
- when Avego does ship it will still be in beta for several months after release.
- Avego requires certain geographic information to be loaded for every metropolitan area it encompasses (the locations where it is safe and expedient for Avego Riders and Drivers to meet). Users can help generate this information by suggesting stops with the Avego client in their car. So, as you begin to use Avego, it will know certain places, perhaps in your metro, but over time, it will get better and better with the routes and the pick-up points it operates, depending on the quality of the other user/driver participation, as we are using the wikipedia/crowdsourcing/web2.0 model to gather this information.
- we expect it to take years and a lot of involvement of concerned people and organizations in order to really have a tremendous impact with this system. 20 years ago, the first company I formed, MapInfo, was the first to introduce and popularize interactive street mapping (where you type an address on a computer and it instantly shows you a street map). It took nearly 8-10 years or so for the first million users to do this… Over the subsequent 10-12 years, over a billion people have used this technology… we expect it could take as long for a billion people to be on the Avego network, but we think that day will come. If you’re reading this post, you’re one of the first people to be in on the ground floor on this. 🙂
Thanks for your interest, for your support, and we hope to learn from you how best to grow this opportunity. The safety and security and economic and environmental well-being of the planet are truly at stake in all of this.
Best,
Sean