Posts Tagged ‘iPhone’

Invisible Cabs!

July 12th, 2010

We debated long and hard about whether to show occupied taxis in the Cabulous Map.  It would sure fill the map with cars, and that would make us happy on days (and nights) when most of the cabs are filled up with passengers, but what would it accomplish for the passenger?  It would add inevitable confusion, that’s certain.  ”Why is that cab red?  Why can’t I select it?”  All things we could answer with a more complicated user interface, but that would go against what we are all about – keeping things simple…just cabs on a map.  Or rather, just cabs that you can actually hail on a map.

Tonight I thought I’d show you what we see behind the scenes.  Here are two pictures, separated in time by just a minute or two.  The one on the left shows you the cabs one of our dispatch centers can see – just their cars, but all of them (whether they are available or not).  The available cars are in green, the occupied ones in red.  Note that there are far more occupied cars than available ones.

Cabuous Dispatch ViewCabulous WebApp

And on the right…what you see on the iPhone or web map at cabulous.com. Just the ones you can hail. It doesn’t look like a lot, but wait for it….by the time I finished writing this post a few minutes after taking the first shots:

Announcing Cabulous for the Web!

April 19th, 2010

New Web Service Transforms the Way San Francisco Hails a Cab

Cabulous.com allows consumers to see, hail, and track nearby taxis on the web for free

SAN FRANCISCO, CA – April 12th, 2010 — UpStart Mobile, makers of the popular Cabulous iPhone app, today announced the launch of Cabulous.com, a free service that helps consumers instantly hail and track cabs from the web.

With over 300 licensed taxi drivers across more than 25 cab companies participating mainly in San Francisco, passengers have already begun to take advantage of the service to painlessly hail taxis from their homes, offices, and on the go.

“It is so much fun being able to watch all the cabs driving around on the map, then just clicking on one and seeing him come to you,” says John Wolpert, CEO of UpStart Mobile. “It’s like having a fleet of personal drivers.”

Cabulous, which has been available as a free iPhone app since December 2009, is the first GPS-based service that allows consumers to see available cabs nearby on a map and hail the driver of their choice with just a touch. Once the driver confirms that s/he is on the way, the passenger can track their cab’s progress on the map.

The hailed drivers, in turn, can use their own smartphone’s Cabulous application to see the passenger’s location on a map. To prevent no-shows and increase efficiency, passengers and drivers can call each other directly through Cabulous when they are having difficulty finding one another.

In one popular feature currently available only on the iPhone app, passengers bookmark cabbies they like as “Favorite Drivers” in order to easily spot them the next time they need a cab – a plus for drivers who want to build customer loyalty and get more regulars.

Cabulous drivers are mostly local to San Francisco at this time, but any driver in the world can sign up and tell passengers to hail him or her through Cabulous.com or the iPhone app. Participating drivers can already be found in Austin, Miami, Chicago, San Jose, Zurich, Sydney and Barcelona.

About UpStart Mobile, Inc.

UpStart Mobile develops location-based mobile solutions. Cabulous, UpStart’s flagship product, was conceived and developed in a Best Buy incubator program in 2008 and spun out in 2009 to be incorporated under UpStart Mobile. The company’s leadership team has direct experience in the commercial transportation industry, a history of working with governments in the US, Asia and Europe, and 20 years experience leading startups and creative development teams.

For further information, please visit http://www.cabulous.com

Women 2.0

April 13th, 2010

Here is a video with UpStart Mobile Team Member, Tal Flanchraych, talking about the future of the Taxi industry.

MacWorld Coverage of Cabulous by Teencastic

February 20th, 2010

Here’s a great video clip covering Cabulous at MacWorld 2010.

Cabulous @ MacWorld 2010

Welcome to Cabulous – The Video

February 11th, 2010

Cabulous on the Radio

February 10th, 2010

Here’s a late-night talk radio interview with John Wolpert and Kieran Farr about Cabulous on San Francisco station KPOO:  Cabulous Interview on 89.5 FM KPOO San Francisco

It’s pretty funny, and a pretty good overview of what Cabulous is all about – why it is important for taxi drivers.

This Taxi is Groooovy, Baby!

February 7th, 2010

San Francisco’s Haydar, known for his famous Disco Cab (part of the Town Taxi fleet), can now be found wherever he is in the city with Cabulous!

Welcome Disco Cab!

We’re Showcased on a San Francisco City & County Official Site!

January 23rd, 2010

You can now see Cabulous on DataSF‘s App Showcase. DataSF is a resource provided by the city that helps residents access quality public data, and they’ve created the App Showcase to highlight mobile applications taking advantage of this data.

Some other neat apps being featured on DataSF are Crimespotting, an interactive map of crimes across the Bay Area, and Routesy, a Muni/BART trip planner that uses algorithms to make predictions about real-time arrivals.

Cabulous Featured in XMPP Case Study

January 14th, 2010

Our VP of Development was just interviewed on metajack.im about our use of XMPP in Cabulous.

If you have no idea what XMPP is, you should probably start here before you mosey on over to the case study above.

December’s Cabulous Top Driver On His Regular Customers

January 10th, 2010

Cabulous is all about giving drivers the tools to build deep relationships with their customers, leading to regular repeat business.

Will – who drives for Luxor in San Francisco and is one of four Cabulous Top Driver award winners – is shown in this video talking about his repeat customers.

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