A cab with a view: two TVs, a laptop and a PlayStation 2
If New York is the business center of the United States and California is its imagination, then Austin, Texas, is the home of its tinkerers.
Ricky Gray's tricked-out cab
(Credit: Michael Kanellos/CNET Networks)Exhibit A: cab driver Ricky Gray. Gray owns his cab--a minivan--but he doesn't want it to be ordinary, so he's outfitted it with a widescreen LCD TV in the backseat area that lets passengers watch TV shows, surf the Internet (with assistance with a wireless laptop beneath the front passenger seat) or play games on a PlayStation 2 wedged in the well between the two front buckets. There's also a flat-screen TV for passengers in the front. He wants to get a bigger one for the back and upgrade to a PlayStation 3. The TV gets only local shows right now, but he's contemplating getting a satellite dish.
Gray installed the equipment himself with help from a friend as part of an effort to differentiate himself from the rest of the cabs in town. People who ride in his taxi, he hopes, will remember the experience and call him again. American ingenuity (i.e., marketing) at work.
