Rent bikes by text message in London
It sounds an awful lot like Germany's Call a Bike
service, but there's a new company in Britain called Oybikes that is renting bicycles via text messaging. They put rental stations with locked up bikes near cinemas, train and tube stations, and other places around town, and when you want to rent a bike you text them with serial number of the bike you want, they text you back with a PIN to unlock the bike and a second one to lock it up when you're through with it. The service costs £2 for the first hour with a £10 yearly fee.