Tom has figured out a new use for Treo 600 — hailing a cab.

I switched on the screen, which is quite bright and large on a Treo 600, and waved it high above my head. Within seconds the taxi flashed back a response, and it had time to move across two traffic lanes, and I was in the cab and on my way. “That was the first time I’d seen anybody do that,” Chuck Walker, the cab driver said. “That was very effective, I could see you from a long ways away. Otherwise, it’s difficult to spot people unless they step out onto the road. I told him that it was a spur of the moment thing, but that maybe we were both present at the creation of a new thing, and maybe we could launch it as a meme. But what to call it? The taxi beacon? The taxi flash, or flash a taxi? Or, the “San Francisco wave,” which would likely be shortened to the “Frisco wave” by outsiders, much to the annoyance of San Franciscans, who generally hate the term “Frisco.”