Google Ride Finder is very cool. You can track the real-time locations of taxi’s by provider on maps in 11 major cities in the USA. You can view taxi or shuttle locations in any of the following cities.

Baltimore, MD
Chicago, IL
Cleveland, OH
Dallas, TX
Houston, TX
Milwaukee, WI
New York, NY
Phoenix, AZ
San Jose, CA
St. Louis, MO
Washington, DC

While this is a classic Google Beta that is incomplete. It has a very high cool factor, but unless it works in a mobile device it has limited value. The other thing would be to label the availability of the taxi that may be coming upon your location and also enable you to request a pick-up. Check it out.

I believe that podcasters will find value in streaming the shows they are producing. It is clearly easier for a listener to just click on a link to listen then download to a portable player and the majority of advertisers are placing ads with streaming content.

Two weeks ago WebTalk started streaming the TechPodcasts Network in a live windows media server from a playlist that is being kept up to date by all the podcasters in the network via FTP. The stream has about 8 hours of rotating shows. We plan on inserting sponsor ads within the stream soon. Give it a listen, but be warned that some of the podcasters are still encoding podcasts at 128K. We are working on getting the average encoded mp3 down to 48 to 64K files for greater reach on the stream. It would be ideal if all of the podcasters would make files at about 48k. It is a project in motion. I think it is a first from a windows media server.

Guest: Dan Rayburn, VP of InfoToday - StreamingMedia.com

Topics Discussed:
- Podcasters discovering the power of streaming?
- Cell Phone Streaming
- RSS becoming New Swiss Army Knife
- Europe’s .eu domain coming
- Social-network search engine
- PC-Turnoff Week coming soon

Listen 58 min: Windows (stream) and MP3 (download)