Famous Taxi Transformed Into Driving Political Force

ASPEN, Colo., Oct. 8, 2004 -- The Ultimate Taxi, the world famous 1978 yellow Checker taxi, transformed by cabbie Jon Barnes into an Aspen, Colorado tourist attraction, has turned the car and the 6,000-page web site built from the taxi, into a rolling political action committee supporting John Kerry for President.

Barnes began building The Ultimate Taxi, now with lasers, digital keyboards, mobile computers, digital cameras, fiber optics and wireless Internet, to have fun at work, and to "have an excuse to buy the greatest inventions of the 21st century." The Ultimate Taxi received worldwide media exposure on dozens of national and international news shows including CNN, Dateline NBC, and USA Today, in the late 1990s with "The World's First Internet Connected Taxi" story.

"Because of all the links to The Ultimate Taxi's website (http://www.ultimatetaxi.com/) from newspapers and magazines, the search engines place a similar value to the pages in ultimatetaxi.com as say, Newsweek.com or washingtonpost.com. Barnes cites as an example that a search for the term "world famous" in Google returns over 7 million pages, with ultimatetaxi.com positioned in the top ten.

"Since The New York Times won't give everyone an online opinion column that is found by the search engines and widely read, I will," says Barnes. He hopes people will use his offer to publish their positive content and opinions because that might achieve the result of changing a potential voter's mind, or at least getting people out to vote. Before driving off, Barnes said he felt that this was the best way he could help empower those who feel they have no voice, and to use the current technology to put democracy into action.

For additional information or photos, contact Jon Barnes (who gives a great interview):

   Jon Barnes
   The Ultimate Taxi
   Aspen, Colorado
   970-927-9239
   jonbarnes@ultimatetaxi.com
   http://www.ultimatetaxi.com/

   Photo For Story:

   TIFF Photo: http://www.ultimatetaxi.com/theultimatetaxi.tif
   Photo Credit: Copyright 2004 David Hiser

   JPEG Photo: http://www.ultimatetaxi.com/theultimatetaxi.jpg
   Photo Credit: Copyright 2004 David Hiser

   Interior JPEG Photo:
   http://www.ultimatetaxi.com/ultimatetaxi_interior.jpg
   Photo Credit: Copyright 2004 Alice Koelle

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