In live in DC and I wish we had a well functioning taxi system here. The airport is about the only place you can reliably get one. If I want to get picked up at home there is no one number to call since every taxi is independent and the Curb app is worth shit. When I do get a cab from the airport the experience is on par with Lyft and usually cheaper.
The Cuecat: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/CueCat
Came at a time when there weren’t barcodes everywhere and QR codes didn’t exist yet. Companies had to publish Cuecat specific barcodes, it was much easier to just type in the URL by the time you figured out you could use it at all.