Puebla, Mexico, is the latest city to offer a taxi service exclusively for women. Intended as a safe means of transport, the thirty-five strong fleet of bright pink Chevys are driven by women only and will not stop for men. For further female appeal, the cabs are equipped with beauty kits, GPS and emergency panic buttons. Pink Taxi de Puebla has privately financed the initiative, according to an AP report. The regional government, which is licensing the service, has trained more than 60 Pink Taxi drivers (aged 25-45) in driving theory and practice, as well as aspects of car maintenance, such as changing tyres.

Despite the best intentions of the scheme, some local women's rights campaigners claim that the girly vehicles are promoting harmful female stereotypes. Still, they are certainly eye-catching and for women who have experienced harassment by male drivers in the past, the 24-hour service is sure to offer peace of mind. Similar operations have already proved successful in places from London to Teheran. Mexico City proposed it in 2007, but settled instead for female-only buses and subway cars. If this service in Puebla is successful, there are plans to expand to other cities. If your own town doesn't yet have a fuchsia fleet, now's the time to launch one.

Website: not available

Spotted by: David Licona

Back in 2007 we covered Hitchsters, the New York site that combines social networking with ride-matching to help airport travellers share taxi rides and split the expense. Now, along very similar lines comes Taxi2, a beta project from Virgin Atlantic that's currently being tested in New York and London.

Touting the financial and environmental motivations for sharing a cab, Taxi2 is a free service for passengers of any airline. Users simply log on to the Taxi2 site and input their flight and destination details. From there, the system matches them with suitable cab-sharing companions and provides a protected way to contact them, allowing the travellers to decide whether to agree to the match. The system offers a way for female travellers to be matched only with other female travellers; it also protects all personal details. Once travellers agree on a match, Taxi2 even provides a printable and foldable sign to help them find each other at the airport. A mobile version of the technology is coming soon.

Much the way carpooling makes sense as a way to reduce the cost and impact of commuting to work, so cab-sharing seems like a no-brainer for all the many travellers heading in the same direction. One to emulate at a heavily frequented airport near you...? (Related: Londoners share lifts to Luton airport — Tweet to hail a green ride in London — Nationwide taxi booking & payment via mobile phone.)

Website: www.taxi.to
Contact: info@taxi.to

Spotted by: Raymond Kollau

P.S. Hitchsters is either temporarily offline, or permanently out of business. We'd love to know what happened to the company. If you have any information, please leave a comment. Thanks!

Aha Mobile is an iPhone app that offers drivers location-based information and entertainment. A personally tailored audio stream not only provides up-to-the-minute traffic info, but also features "shouts"—15 second snippets recorded through the application by other drivers in the area. The idea is that drivers can help each other out by sharing reports on road conditions, extending the real-time connectivity that people have on Facebook or Twitter. Furthering the social element, drivers can belt out tunes in the Caraoke Room, or vent their road rage in the Bad Driver Shout Room.

Aha Mobile's on-screen information is designed to be easily navigable and digestible at a glance; although for safety reasons, people should of course keep their hands off their iPhones while driving. Roadside services can be located with the help of Yelp and SitOrSquat by answering simple on-screen questions: "Hungry?" "Need coffee?" "Need a bathroom?" Drivers can also get alerts when they're approaching red lights or speed cameras.

Aha Mobile's service is available across the US, with special emphasis on the most heavily trafficked urban areas. One to bring to highways and byways in other parts of the world?

Website: www.ahamobile.com
Contact: support@ahamobile.com

Spotted by: Cecilia Biemann

This Smarter Cities post is supported by IBM. Read more about building a smarter planet on IBM's A Smarter Planet blog.

The world of iPhone apps is increasingly crowded. And while there are several that help users to find convenient meeting points, MeetMe is the first one to integrate both Google Maps and Yelp reviews.

In order to find an appropriate meeting location, users input Point A and Point B, and the type of venue they'd like to meet at. For instance, users can pinpoint the best sushi restaurant halfway between Boston and Philadelphia, or a romantic hotel between York and Manchester. The USD 1.99 app then provides a list of suitable locations complete with Yelp recommendations. Once a location is selected, MeetMe emails both parties a map complete with driving directions. If users prefer to meet closer to one point or the other, the distances can be adjusted. MeetMe points out that the app can also help plan road trip stopping points. MeetMe works worldwide and, according to reviews, has fewer accuracy problems than most mapping apps. It's also ad-free, so users can be sure the recommendations they're receiving aren't promos in disguise.

In theory, the app could help cut down on miles traveled because both parties will be encouraged to drive the shortest possible distance, instead of relying on meeting points that are familiar to both, but might not be most efficient. Mobile applications like MeetMe aren't just convenient tools for consumers—if widely adopted, smart navigation can reduce miles travelled and hours spent on the road. It can also help prevent congestion by feeding commuters real-time and predictive road data about potential traffic jams. As our everyday tools become ever more sophisticated at navigating cities, opportunities abound for entrepreneurs than can help us unlock location-based data in useful and intuitive ways.

Website: www.aboutmeetme.com
Contact: ideas@aboutmeetme.com

Spotted by: Adam Finkle

As the number of people who are twittering continues to rise, more and more businesses are adding to their existing methods of communicating with (potential) customers. An innovative example was recently introduced by London's eco-taxi service greentomatocars. The company, which we covered when they launched back in 2006, claims to be the first private hire service in the UK to take bookings via Twitter. Users simply send a direct message to @greentomatocars with the booking details, receive a tweet back with a unique booking reference, and wait for a Prius to pull up. Besides using Twitter for bookings, greentomatocars also hopes to encourage debate about environmental issues.

Although Twitter hasn't released hard data on how many active users it has, the service seems to be having a profound effect on business-to-customer communication, enabling companies to engage in an immediate, ongoing and intimate conversation with customers and potential customers, creating a better mutual understanding and forging brand loyalty. (For more, see our sister-site trendwatching's briefing on foreverism.)

Website: www.greentomatocars.com
Contact: mail@greentomatocars.com