We debated long and hard about whether to show occupied taxis in the Cabulous Map.  It would sure fill the map with cars, and that would make us happy on days (and nights) when most of the cabs are filled up with passengers, but what would it accomplish for the passenger?  It would add inevitable confusion, that’s certain.  ”Why is that cab red?  Why can’t I select it?”  All things we could answer with a more complicated user interface, but that would go against what we are all about – keeping things simple…just cabs on a map.  Or rather, just cabs that you can actually hail on a map.

Tonight I thought I’d show you what we see behind the scenes.  Here are two pictures, separated in time by just a minute or two.  The one on the left shows you the cabs one of our dispatch centers can see – just their cars, but all of them (whether they are available or not).  The available cars are in green, the occupied ones in red.  Note that there are far more occupied cars than available ones.

And on the right…what you see on the iPhone or web map at cabulous.com. Just the ones you can hail. It doesn’t look like a lot, but wait for it….by the time I finished writing this post a few minutes after taking the first shots: