WiFi Enabled Ridesharing is a very new and emerging service.
Geographic note: Each service has a dominate geographic location. But with widespread adoption, location matters less and less.
Many are startups, beta programs, or in early phases of development.
Ridesharing Projects Using Wireless Technology
Using Wifi usually means a dedicated computer is not required - only a cell phone - so meeting info can be sent to any location, and optimally, meeting locations do not need to be fixed.
Avego uses the iPhone for now: San Francisco based. Later it promises to work with any cell phone. The company is a very new startup. Video shows how it works. Very impressive and most promising
Piggyback for Android phones (Google) - currently this French team is developing a system to "Share your car and the road, save on gas, meet people" Piggyback’s objective is "to share car-related expenses between users, while reducing everybody’s carbon footprint in the process". Right now this is nearest to an ithumb/wiride service, one hopes they will be device agnostic.
Zimride In the fall when phones hit the shelves running Google's Android mobile operating system - Zimride will be there. We have partnered with Ecorio an environmentally focused development team to bring Zimride onto your phone. The Ecorio mobile application takes advantage of Android's location aware GPS to help people share rides on the go. It also tracks your travel related CO2 emissions and suggests public transit alternatives. Seattle based.
Ecorio Track your mobile carbon footprint. Reduce and offset it. Inspire others to do the same. All from your phone. And all for free. Ecorio is going to be one of the first applications that you can download to run on the new T-Mobile G1 smartphones
Carticipate Another iPhone only service -an experiment in social transportation - Starting promised in October 2008 Currently 850 rides across 1745 places
MyKoolPool the Mumbai, India startup offers trusted connections by SMS text to cell phones. An IBN video describes it well "KoolPool is an organized and secure car pooling system that runs via SMS & the internet. It is an attempt at facilitating carpooling in Mumbai and other large metro cities of the country. With its indigenous technology, KoolPool offers to cut down traffic congestion at the click of a mouse or through mobile phones."
Emerging Technologies, GPS/WiFi Location Aware Applications
A few iPhone Location-Aware Apps mentioned in this O'Reilly overview. If on the iPhone today, expect it on your phone tomorrow. Friendfinder application on Loopt uses Virtual Earth map. free Similar is Whrrl showing friends and businesses on the same map. free Released on Sprint last year Where is a development platform for the iPhone Twittelator and Twitteriffic are free Twitter clients. With Twittelator you can send a link of your mapped location. Also boasts a yellow button "Twitter 911" to blast your followers with a "Help Me" message and a link to your location. Your cell phone helps avoid a traffic ticket. Your mobile phone alerts you as you approach police speed traps. Trapster® works on any mobile phone, and also other devices like navigation systems, laptop computers, and CarPCs. It is a social network information exchange.
Conventional and other rideshare operations