UberCab

Despite the fact that I live and work near Times Square, and that around a million people gather annually in the heart of New York City to ring in the New Year, I’ve never been inspired to stand outside till midnight to watch the ball drop in person. Now — whether you can’t make it to Times Square or just don’t want to — there’s an app for that. (Obviously!) First introduced last year, the Times Square Official New Year’s Eve Ball App — 2012 shows a live stream of the Times Square Ball atop One Times Square, as well as video content leading up to and during the event. I’m told there will also be a live stream of Lady Gaga flicking the switch with Mayor Mike Bloomberg, to get the ball rolling, literally, at 11:59 pm ET. With the app, users can share photos of themselves via Facebook and Twitter. They can also vote on photos — the photos with the most “likes” will be showcased on the giant Toshiba sign in Times Square that night (so if you’re at home partying in your pajamas and snapping self-portraits, you might want to think twice before sending your photos through the app). The free app runs on iOS and Android devices, and was created by the Times Square Alliance and Countdown Entertainment, along with Toshiba and Livestream. And because few things are ever truly free, ads will run at the bottom of the app interface. Last year’s inaugural Times Square New Year’s Eve app was downloaded 174,000 times by users in 163 countries, during a two-week period. An estimated one billion people worldwide watch the ball drop on television each year. And 30,000 New Year’s Eve kiss photos were sent through last year’s version of the app. Unless you’re certain you’ll want to use it again a year from now, this one can go on the short-shelf-life list of phone apps. Meanwhile, there are a few other apps you might check out for New Year’s Eve, to ensure the evening goes off without a hitch. Like Uber, the free iPhone and Android app for calling a car service when all of the taxi cabs are taken. Uber is currently only available in seven cities, including San Francisco, Boston, New York, Seattle and Paris, and the company also sometimes adjusts pricing for holidays, like it did on Halloween this year. Uber Read More

Uber, the private car share service that allows you to summon town cars via an iPhone, has opened up shop in Paris in time for international Internet conference LeWeb. Adding context to the jumpy video of the very first Parisian Uber ride above, Uber CEO Travis Kalanick, who was on my flight from SFO, tells me that there are a few Uber-enabled cars in the city of Light currently, and tomorrow that number will start steadily increasing. I’m still waiting for confirmation of pricing and other details (I’ll update this post as soon as I know). Sure there are already many options for those seeking taxi service within Paris, but Uber, with its appeal to the tech-savvy and fashionable, has a good chance of gaining a foothold in the class-conscious international capital. “This is going to end the monopoly of the taxis in Paris,” said LeWeb founder Loic LeMeur,”You will have models here, not like Geeks in San Francisco.” In an effort to preserve today’s Uber supply for customers, Kalanick took a regular taxi from Charles De Gaulle airport. You can find Uber in the App Store here. Read More

Uber is a service that connects an iOS app to a car booking network, so essentially you can use your iPhone to signal that you need a car, and then one shows up, complete with a driver ready to take you to your destination. We've seen taxis do this with Taxi Magic, but Uber is designed to not only set up people who need transportation with their own drivers, but also car services with new customers. Now Uber is headed for an even bigger test in New York, after launching in the San Francisco market. The New York Times says the company is set to take on the Big Apple, where taxis and public transportation options usually hold sway. It'll be interesting to see how this all works. I expect more of these kinds of services to hook into smartphones in this way. Of course, using a car service will always be more expensive. But for those few times in urban areas where you need a car fast, what better way than a geo-aware smartphone to set up the connection? Read More

The idea of using the Internet to parse out small jobs is not new. But a new crop of businesses has popped up that use the iPhone to help people find and perform small tasks near them. One of the most ambitious of these projects is Gigwalk, which lets anyone with an iPhone sign up to perform tasks such as photographing an intersection or documenting a restaurant using nothing more than the camera on their device. Although the tasks performed by each individual are small, the idea behind Gigwalk is to find large companies that need tasks performed that would otherwise be to costly and laborious to complete. In private beta for the last few months, the service is already being used by GPS mapping firm TomTom and restaurant listing service Menupages to crowdsource tasks that are core to their businesses. “You can take care of a lot of scenarios that were too expensive or too slow,” says CEO Ariel Seidman, who left Yahoo and started Gigwalk with two other former Yahoo workers last year. Part of the impetus, he said, was the fact that everyone at Yahoo seemed to bemoan the cost of doing local products. “I was so frustrated by everyone saying local is so expensive,” Seidman said. “That was one of the inspirations.” Gigwalk lets iPhone users see available tasks near them and decide whether any are appealing enough. If they want a task, they have to go to the location, to avoid one Gigwalker claiming a bunch of gigs all at once. The pay ranges from $3 to $90 per task, with the amount varying based on the amount of work involved. Users start out being able to perform only the simplest and lowest-paying gigs, but with each completed task they earn a “street cred” reputation score that qualifies them for higher paying opportunities. Gigwalk is announcing on Wednesday both its exit from beta and that it has raised $1.7 million in seed money from investors including Michael Dearing of Harrison Metal, Mint.com investor Jeff Clavier of SoftTech VC and LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman. The initial funding, though, came from money the founders got as part of the Microsoft-Yahoo search pact. “I was, like, something good should come of this because not much good has,” Seidman said. The company isn’t saying how many workers or companies are taking part so far, but Seidman said that “many thousands” Read More

This post is part of Mashable’s Spark of Genius series, which highlights a unique feature of startups. The series is made possible by Microsoft BizSpark. If you would like to have your startup considered for inclusion, please see the details here. Quick Pitch: UberCab is an on demand car service that allows you to request, track and ride with ultimate convenience. Payment is cashless and hassle free. Genius Idea: It’s not as if urban cities such as San Francisco are ever devoid of cabbies or car service drivers — they’re out there, just never when you really need a ride. And then when you do manage to hail a ride, you better be carrying cash lest you want to get the evil eye from the driver. Young startup UberCab has set out to tackle these transportation travails one city at a time, starting in San Francisco. UberCab is equal one part iPhone app, one part web service and one part SMS command-driven operation. Once you register for the service, you can then use either option to request car service, get a speedy turnaround pickup, track the progress of your pending ride and automatically pay via the app with the credit card you have on file. UberCab rates are typically 1.5 times the cost of taxi fare, but the service guarantees prompt arrival within minutes and delivers a much more luxurious vehicle so you can ride in style. What’s interesting about UberCab is that the iPhone application [iTunes link] experience extends in both directions — passenger and driver. Here’s a breakdown of the process: you use the iPhone app to pinpoint your whereabouts on a map and request pickup. Your request is routed to the nearest available driver, who can then accept the request via the driver’s version [iTunes link] of the iPhone application. Once the driver confirms pickup, he will see your name and your rating — one through five stars, with five being highest. On arrival, the driver initiates billing and tracks the ride via the app. The driver closes out the fare via the app, at which time both driver and passenger can rate each other. Of course, we recognize the service is severely limited by its singular operations in San Francisco. Plus, in this transportation seeker’s neck of the woods, Taxi Magic is all the rage. It too offers mobile phone booking via iPhone or SMS, real-time tracking, Read More

Finding a cab, especially during peak travel times or in less-traveled areas, can be an incredibly frustrating task. But car services are often much more expensive than the average cab ride. Enter UberCab, a new service that offers an on-demand car service via an iPhone app or SMS. After signing up for an UberCab account and downloading the free iPhone app, you can then set your location and request a car service from the application. The app will determine your location and you can set your exact pickup location. UberCab will then send your request to their network of drivers who happen to be in the area. The driver will accept your request and you can then input your end location. The driver will alert you when arriving, and once you entire the car, you hit begin trip on your app to begin your fare. The driver also has a connecting app, which he will use to input the end of the trip. At the end of the trip, your pre-set credit card that you input when you set up your account will be charged and you won’t have to dole out any cash. Of course, convenience has a price. You may pay any where from one and a half to two times the price of a cab fare (but two times less than a traditional car service fee). But you are receiving better service, a nice black limo and an on-demand solution. UberCab calculates the cost of your trip based on milage and time in the car, similar to the way other limo companies calculate fares. However, the startup says you are able to get better fares because its drivers perceive these on-demand trips as extra money in addition to their regular full-priced trips to and from the airport. Interestingly, UberCab asks that both passengers and drivers rate each other, Yelp-style. This helps UberCab ensure that passengers and driver are using the system properly. Unfortunately, UberCab is only available in San Francisco (although UberCab’s site says it will also be beta tested in Chicago). That being said, if UberCab were in the city that I live in, I’d probably use it. I’d definitely be willing to pay a little extra to ride in a nice car with the convenience of door to door service. And initial reviews from local San Francisco users on Twitter seem fairly positive. UberCab as a Read More