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Billy Chasen, an artist and software engineer, says he hopped into a New York City cab one night and found an error message displayed on the Windows touchscreen machine in the backseat. Cabs have begun installing the screens to provide passengers with news, advertisements and a GPS map to follow their trip progress. The touchscreens are also used by passengers to pay for their trip using a credit card.

Chasen was able to open Internet Explorer and initiate an internet connection through the connection wizard using a Sprint card that was already set up in the system. He was also able to navigate through the system and get full administrative access.

He posted photos of the screen on his blog here. You can also see a video interview with him here.

As an added bonus to leave with you before I sign off for 2007, here are some random cool photos of Chasen's exploded iPod, which still works after being encased in resin.

Happy new year, Threat Level readers. See you back here in 2008.