Thanks to a new app, Bing Maps now calculates the cab fare on a route between two points.
The Taxi Fare Calculator was developed by Ricky Brundritt as a submission to the King of Bing Maps competition.
The app is available at the Bing Maps website right now. Just pick a region (results are best within a major metropolitan area, such as New York or London) and type in two addresses. The app gives the shortest route and a fare estimate based on normal rates for cabs in the area. The pick-up charge, time charges and by-the-mile costs are all factored in where applicable.
This tool should prove helpful to users who want to save some cash by comparing routes or who need to make sure they have the money on hand for a trip they intend to take.
Taxi Fare Calculator is one of many apps being considered for Microsoft’s King of Bing Maps title. The winner will soon be selected by a panel that includes CNET’s Josh Lowensohn, Search Engine Land’s Greg Sterling and Directions’ Joe Francica. Expect the announcement to show up on the Bing blog August 20.
The Bing blog already features a few other candidates along with Taxi Fare Calculator, including World of Football, Random Location, Ricky’s Data Viewer, Apo-AT, Festivals de Theatre, GeoSalesTax and Microsoft Regional Directors. You can use some of the candidates in Bing Maps right now.
Microsoft has been using this competition and other initiatives to tout Bing Maps’ development API and snazzy Silverlight 4 bells and whistles. This product needs to compete in a market already dominated by more entrenched applications such as Google Maps and Mapquest. It’s not easy to beat the reigning champions, but Foursquare integration and apps such as the Tour de France map and the street level stargazing feature are as likely to offer a formidable challenge as anything we’ve seen.
What do you think of the competition apps so far?
(from Mashable)
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