Ride-sharing is now a bit easier

By Dan Estabrook - November 18, 2008 Many of us learned to live without our cars this summer when gas surpassed $4.00 per gallon - but, are we actually ready to make a change to be green and do good (permanently)?  A company called Mapflow hopes so with its launch of Avego, a new iPhone app that will track your commute to work and help you find riders along the way. The app will utilize GPS-activated iPhones to map your commute every day.  When you get in your car in the morning, you can select which route you plan to take and the app will suggest riders for you to pick up.  It will also show you a photo (to avoid the plot from the film "The Hitcher") of the potential rider and show you a safe place to pull over to pick up the weary traveler.  While drivers will need to own an iPhone to use the software, riders will not. After the commute together, driver and rider can rate each other on a scale of 1 to 5 and the app determines the cost of that leg of the commute so the driver and passenger can split.  Wow - sounds quite sophisticated!  I would just worry about the photo part - I've tried online dating and profile photos do not always match the real thing. Now, all we need is a similar app to track our dating and pick up new mates along the way - which would be especially helpful if that profile photo was taken before your date's botox treatment... Read more here. Via Los Angeles Times