iPhone Hits the Road with Avego's Shared Transport Application

DUBLIN, Ireland and SAN DIEGO, Sept. 8 /PRNewswire/ -- DEMOfall -- Debuting at DEMOfall, Mapflow Ltd. today announced Avego, a new technology designed to reduce wasted seat capacity in cars and dramatically expand commuting options. Avego [pronounced a-vay'-go] pairs passengers and drivers through an easy-to-use system using iPhones and other mobile devices.

A cross between carpooling, public transport and eBay, Avego matches a driver's wasted seat capacity-those seats which are unoccupied-to passengers, reducing commute costs for all participants. Avego automatically apportions the cost of the commute, providing a key financial incentive to commuters frustrated by high gasoline prices.

"As someone who drives in the San Francisco area, I am well aware of the wastefulness and congestion caused by single drivers clogging up three lanes of traffic," said Chris Shipley, executive producer of the DEMO Conferences. "The Avego paradigm optimizes the daily commute by consolidating riders into fewer vehicles. It's a new way of thinking about commuting, offering more efficient transit options, lowered gas costs and environmental benefits."

Described simply as "shared transport," the Avego system enables a driver in transit to advertise excess capacity in the car using the new iPhone's GPS feature. This capacity is then matched to riders who need to go in the same direction. Drivers and passengers who want to join the Avego shared transport community can sign up for the beta at http://www.avego.com. (Drivers only require an iPhone; passengers can use either an iPhone or a regular mobile phone).

"With both a tech savvy population and some of the country's worst commuting problems being right here in the San Francisco Bay Area, a system like Avego could get more people to try carpooling," said Susan Heinrich, 511 Rideshare and Bicycling coordinator, Metropolitan Transportation Commission. "It appears to be an easy-to-use system and we look forward to seeing whether commuters embrace this new technology."

Arriving in the midst of a global green movement, Avego intends to capitalize on social networking to encourage more responsible and environmentally friendly behavior. Developed by Mapflow's team of experts in geographic information systems, Avego combines GPS technology and mobile phones to provide both riders and drivers with reduced transport costs. Leading the Avego project is Sean O'Sullivan, executive chairman of Mapflow and co-founder of MapInfo, the company which first popularized street mapping on personal computers in the 1980's.

"Public transit is great, but let's face it, most of the U.S. doesn't have the public transportation system in place to take people from where they live to where they work. Our goal with Avego is to turn every empty seat into a transport option for passengers...extending, feeding and augmenting the existing transportation network," said O'Sullivan.

Features in the upcoming Avego system include:

-- Enables drivers to automatically advertise excess capacity that can be filled by paying passengers.

-- Provides voice response, text messaging and Web interfaces with real- time information for drivers and riders to investigate and define the available transport capacity.

-- Allows communities of users (e.g., a corporate or educational campus) to self-restrict matches to their own community.

-- Offers a self-correcting feedback mechanism for drivers and riders to rate each other, and subsequently restrict matches to those within the user's criteria. For example, a female driver may choose to only accept female passengers.

-- Monitors positions of riders and drivers to ensure reliability of service and provide safety warnings.

"We've finally reached a point where the world is aware of our supply problem with oil, and a frustrated public has said they're willing to make a change," said Bart Anderson, coeditor of the Energy Bulletin. "There is no cluster of solutions that do not involve some major changes in lifestyles, especially for the global affluent. Peak oil presents the potential for catastrophic upheavals, but ultimately also some more hopeful possibilities: a chance to address many underlying societal problems, and the opportunity to return to simpler, healthier and more community oriented lifestyles. Avego could represent this hope."

About Mapflow's Avego

Avego is a method for dynamically matching available transport capacity with transport demand. Avego combines GPS devices and mobile phones to provide both riders and drivers with reduced transport costs, while expanding transport options for riders. Led by a team with an extensive history in geographic information systems and GPS technologies, Mapflow has offices in Dublin (Ireland), Kinsale (Ireland), London (UK), the San Francisco Bay Area, and will be opening up an office in Washington, DC later this year. For more information, please visit www.avego.com

About DEMO

Produced by Network World Events and Executive Forums, the semi-annual DEMO conferences focus on emerging technologies and new products, which are hand-selected from across the spectrum of the technology marketplace. The DEMO conferences have earned their reputation for consistently identifying tomorrow's cutting-edge technologies, and have served as launch pad events for companies such as Palm, E*Trade, Handspring, and U.S. Robotics, helping them to secure venture funding, establish critical business relationships, and influence early adopters. Each DEMO conference features approximately 70 new companies, products and technologies. For more information, visit www.demo.com.

    MEDIA CONTACTS:
    Sean O'Sullivan                          Whitney Phaneuf
    Mapflow                                  Schwartz Communications
    Kinsale, Ireland: +353.21.477.3833       415.512.0770
    US: 202.470.0467                         Mapflow@schwartz-pr.com