Is it possible for the holiday season to get even more jolly?
The answer is YES, because San Diego’s USA Cab will be on the Cabulous map between now and the end of the year. If we manage to deploy in time, smart partygoers on New Years Eve will have an easier time catching a safe ride home thanks to USA Cab and Cabulous.
We’ll be sure to let you know as soon as we’re officially deployed in SD! In the meantime, grab a ride with our friends at USA Cab by calling (619) 231-1144.
We are very excited to announce that we’ve had 50,000 hails through the Cabulous mobile and web apps as of today!
On top of that, we just passed 15,000 active users in San Francisco alone.
Also, come to think of it, the one-year launch anniversary of our launch should be coming up soon. All the more reason to celebrate. Who wants to throw us a party? I do!
Tokyo is a city notorious for both its tech consumption and its lack of free internet access, so needless to say, it’s very exciting to hear that over 800 taxis are now equipped with free WiFi courtesy of mobile company NTT DoCoMo. On top of that, 100 of the connected cabs will even offer Sony PSP Go devices so customers can play games while they speed – or crawl, if it’s rush hour — toward their destinations.
Within a few years, the current iconic New York City taxi will have a totally different look — Ford Motors is ceasing production on the Crown Victoria, which makes up about 70% of NYC’s fleet and a big chunk of taxi fleets nationwide.
Although the yellow isn’t going away anytime soon, the City of New York has selected three finalists, one of which will have an exclusive 10-year contract over all of the city’s taxicabs. They’re even letting New Yorkers weigh in on their favorite design and the features they want. We sure hope New Yorkers like vans though, because here are the three models they have to work with:
The Ford Transit Connect has already been approved for taxi use by Boston, and needless to say Ford has more experience supplying the taxi industry than any other company.
Nissan’s model can be quickly made available as a fully electric vehicle as well, unlike the other contenders.
The third finalist, by Karsan (who!?), a Turkish company, is the smallest of the three and has many taxi-specific special features, although it is at a disadvantage due to the fact that it doesn’t exist yet.
(photos from http://autos.aol.com/article/taxi-of-tomorrow/)
Starting in January, you’ll be able to hail the best fleet in Portland from your Cabulous map!
Radio Cab has great drivers, an awesome team, and one of the largest taxi fleets in the Pacific Northwest. They also stay involved in their community through green initiatives and the Radio Cab Foundation — needless to say, we’re proud to be working with them.
Check out their site at radiocab.net!
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
Here is a video with UpStart Mobile Team Member, Tal Flanchraych, talking about the future of the Taxi industry.
A study of London cab drivers has found that the hippocampus – the part of the brain associated with navigation – is larger in people who have memorized detailed mental maps of a city. And the more years of experience a cab driver has, the more growth in grey matter his brain experiences.
This is an important breakthrough not just for cab drivers, but for the rest of us; our brains are not just end products of our genetics and our childhood experiences, but an aspect of us we can develop and improve – with lasting effects – even in adulthood. There are a quite a few activities that have also shown to lead to brain growth, including playing music, face to face interactions, and even juggling!
These studies also have big implications for people with brain damage or diseases such as Parkinson’s, who would greatly benefit from rehabilitating brain exercises that increase grey matter in damaged areas.
Read more at http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/677048.stm.
Check it out here. I’d give a kidney to drive people around in a Lamborghini taxi all day – anyone hiring?
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