Steve Saunders: I am Steve Saunders and I am the host of Web Wide World, Internet evolution's whistle-stop tour around the globe that how different countries and cultures use the Internet. This is London, home to 7.5 million people, more than any other city in Europe, and it's also one of the most important cultural, business, and financial capitals in the world.
Speaker: London is very mixed.
Speaker: It's very busy.
Speaker: Very beautiful.
Speaker: You can see it's the center of Europe.
Steve Saunders: In the last ten years, the Internet has changed everything here. The London's $30 billion a year tourism industry for example, it's been something of an eye opener. A 125 meters tall, the London Eye was launched in the year 2000, quickly grew to become the UK's number 1 paid tourist destination, attracts more than 3.5 million people a year. Now the company that runs the Eye says the Internet was absolutely fundamental to its success. In fact, it says many people use the Internet than any other media to plan their trip to the Eye. Getting a cab in any city can be a real pain, but now a company based in London called Zingo is using a unique combination of mobile Internet technology that the GPS tracker in your handset will send you a cab wherever you are.
You know London is one of the few cities where it is actually easier to get around by car now, than it was four years ago and that's thanks to the Congestion Charging Scheme that's designed primarily to discourage people from bringing their cars in Central London and it has actually worked. Traffic is down 25 %, the only time they are faster, carbon emissions are down in Central London too, and it's all running on an incredibly complicated, sophisticated Internet application and network.
Collin Hooker: The Congestion Charges makes extensive use of Internet in particular to it's main sales channel, in fact accounts for 40 % of the sales from the 100,000, 110,000 metered taxis per day.
You know, if you are not familiar with the city, and sometimes if you have a challenge to work out with things like eating and drinking, that's why in London, the Department of Trade and Industry is funding a new project. It's called Urban Tapestries that combines wireless connection for structure with an experimental Web 2.0 application that basically turned one of these into a universal information portal, gives you information about, just about anything that's happening in London. You know, London used to be considered a bit of a technology backward, but it's now a complete opposite. In fact, in terms of Internet penetration, it's number 10 in the world, and number 6 in Europe. Alright, it's just behind places like Denmark and Korea, but it's well ahead of the US, and it's a bit ahead of France, let's face it, that's what's important. So when it comes to our Web Wide World, it's for the UK and it's capital city of London; they are well connected.
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