Searching for a Zipcar with the company's new iPhone app.
(Credit: Zipcar)SAN FRANCISCO--It's like the ultimate yuppie geek convergence: there's finally an iPhone app for car-sharing company Zipcar. To put it in the most stereotypical of terms, you now no longer need a computer to book that Prius for your weekend Whole Foods run.
Apple gave a green light to the free download earlier this week, so Zipcar members can now use the app to find and book available cars using GPS-enabled maps, access account and car database information, contact the company's headquarters, and use a "virtual key fob" to lock and unlock their reserved cars. It's the first-ever mobile endeavor for Zipcar besides text-message alerts, something that may be surprising considering the company's outside-the-box, next-gen image.
"This is an entirely new channel of communication with members," Zipcar Chief Technology Officer Luke Schneider told CNET News in a meeting at the company's San Francisco office, adding that over a quarter of the company's 325,000 members (which it calls "Zipsters") own iPhones. Applications for more mobile platforms are tentatively on the way, he added, as another quarter of Zipcar members own non-iPhone smartphones. But he said the company hasn't decided which to develop next.
Zipcar, founded a decade ago in Cambridge, Mass., is designed as an alternative to car ownership and rental. You pay by the hour, gas and insurance are included, and cars are scattered in parking spaces across cities and university towns (the places where living without a car is most feasible) so that once you've booked a vehicle, you can show up and unlock it with your membership card. Schneider came on board when the company merged with a rival, Flexcar, about two years ago.
With its iPhone app, Schneider said, Zipcar hopes to achieve a twofold goal: first, making the membership experience easier by allowing for mobile reservations and database information; and two, attracting new customers by letting them toy with the app even if they aren't already members. Load up the "virtual key fob" without logging in or having a reservation, and a pop-up message will appear saying, in quirky Zipster fashion, "You do not have a current reservation, but you can make fun sounds anyway." In other words, you can push the horn-honking button until your friends want to wring your neck. It's about "the experience" of the Zipcar brand, Schneider explained.
For the company's management, the mobile app can also fine-tune some of the data that Schneider says they're "constantly obsessed" with: which car models are in demand at which times of the day and year, which locations seem over- or under-served, and so forth. It doesn't collect any sensitive personal data, he assured me.
I had a chance to test drive the new iPhone app on Wednesday, when I picked up a Zipcar to drive to Mountain View for the TechStars Investor Day event. The app is extremely well-designed, and making a reservation is a no-brainer. It's overall terrific branding for Zipcar: newcomers will certainly get the idea that this is a company that's tech-savvy, rooted in convenience, and has a sense of humor.
And Zipcar needs to keep up that image, now that the car-sharing trend is catching on with rivals from both the nonprofit space (like the Bay Area's City Car Share) and the mainstays of the rental car industry.
The Zipcar iPhone app's 'virtual key fob' is cute, but more gimmicky than convenient.
(Credit: Zipcar)"Zipcar established a category that didn't exist yet," Schneider said of competition in the market. "It validates the space when bigger competitors come in."
My gripe with the app, unfortunately, is with the nifty part that everybody's talking about. The unlock-by-iPhone feature is more of a fun toy than a utility; it simply isn't as convenient as it should be. First, you've got to load up the app and let it log you in--which takes a few seconds, enough time for me to fish around in my wallet and find my "Zipcard," the ID card that also locks and unlocks reserved cars. Then, upon hitting the lock or unlock button, the app has to communicate with Zipcar via data connection--not a short-range signal like an automatic door opener--and sometimes that can take another second or two. (Once, in fact, it just didn't seem to want to work.) Typically, I just got impatient and dug out my card.
Additionally, the app won't replace the credit-card-sized "Zipcard." They'll still need to use the card, not the iPhone interface, to unlock a car when they initially pick it up.
But that's a security regulation more than anything else, Schneider told me: "We don't want you to be stranded if your battery's run out."
Your decaf caramel macchiatos and no-whip pumpkin spice lattes are going mobile.
In a double-shot launch (sorry), coffee giant Starbucks unveiled late Tuesday its first two iPhone apps. The first one, called MyStarbucks, is a no-brainer: you can use the phone's GPS capability to find nearby stores (previously, this was available via text message), search ingredient and calorie information for Starbucks beverages, study coffee bean varieties, and build virtual drinks to see what exactly would be in one if you ordered it.
But it's the second app, called Starbucks Card Mobile, that could be worth a double-take. The app allows for balance check and refilling of Starbucks gift cards, which the company has expanded into a customer loyalty program by offering discounts, free refills, and two hours of free Wi-Fi to cardholders. And in two experimental test markets, the Starbucks Card Mobile application can use a barcode to replace the plastic gift card altogether.
As far as mobile e-commerce is concerned, this could be a big deal.
Mobile retail promotions, from text-message codes to redeem for free drinks to the nascent pop-up deals in geolocation app Foursquare, are nothing new. And mobile payments are commonplace in countries like Japan and South Korea. In the U.S., they haven't caught on yet. But having a ubiquitous national retailer like Starbucks in the game could change this.
The barcode-based electronic gift card from the new Starbucks iPhone app.
(Credit: Starbucks)
"We're really venturing into new waters in terms of mobile payment," Stephen Gillett, senior vice president of digital ventures at Starbucks, said regarding the Starbucks Card Mobile app.
"The mobile app is really the powering of some of our most frequently used functions on (the Starbucks card's Web site) and our in-store activity in terms of balance and payment and favorite orders," Gillett said. The app was developed internally with some help from third-party companies like mobile billing start-up mFoundry, he said.
Unless you're geographically very lucky, you won't be able to pay for a venti frappuccino with your iPhone just yet. Only 16 Starbucks outlets, eight in its home turf of Seattle and eight in Silicon Valley, can currently handle the barcode-based gift cards. These are stores already internally designated as test spots for new Starbucks technology, Gillett said.
"In some of these Seattle stores we've tested store manager laptops, allowing them to get instant messaging, full access to e-mail, and conferencing," he said. "These are some of the stores that got the new AT&T Wi-Fi earlier."
As a result, that means the integration process may be smoother for the test stores than it would be for a random Starbucks elsewhere in the country. "The store employees are used to getting new kinds of technology, new kinds of services earlier than most markets," Gillett said.
Estimates vary on just how big the U.S. gift card industry is, but according to the Federal Reserve, it's certainly well into the billions and continues to grow. As for Starbucks, already one in seven transactions at the coffee chain involves its array of gift and loyalty cards, Gillett says. "We see a significant amount of our traffic represented by loyalty cards of some sort," he said.
And eliminating that need for a physical gift card is a pretty obvious next step, especially if you've ever spent any time fishing around for one in a handbag.
The question is whether a new concept like barcode-based gift cards can easily scale to a chain as widespread as Starbucks. Mobile barcode systems have typically been rolled out in far smaller contexts--short-term advertising campaigns, for example, or companies with far smaller reach such as Equinox, a high-end gym in a handful of U.S. cities that recently began letting members check in with an iPhone-based barcode. And while Starbucks has been battered by the recession and has closed several hundred stores in the U.S., it still operates or licenses over 10,000 outlets in the U.S. and thousands more overseas.
So Starbucks is taking a slow approach to mobile payment testing, which means that customers outside of Silicon Valley and Seattle might not be seeing it any time soon.
"We're really working on getting that (customer) feedback before we put any long-term plans in future markets," Gillett said. "This really is a consumer-driven app in so many ways. This is an app that we need the customer experience to have a very strong influence on."
He was equally mum om whether Starbucks Card Mobile will offer advance mobile ordering options or other potential features. "Again, we're really looking to this app hitting the real world before we lock in future functionalities," Gillett said.
The same goes for taking the app beyond Apple's handset. Apple and Starbucks have a years-long and complicated history encompassing both iTunes and AT&T wireless service, but a mobile payment option ideally wouldn't be restricted to the iPhone.
"We are definitely interested in non-iPhone based platforms, particularly Windows and Android and BlackBerry," Gillett said. "But at this point we're just really focused on the launch for this."
Music service iLike, best known for third-party applications on platforms like Facebook, made its big iPhone app launch today. The company has rolled out an app for alerts about local concerts, and also launched its previously announced program for bands and artists to create custom fan applications.
Apple still has to approve the "Local Concerts" app, according to a release, but iLike is excited about its potential impact regardless.
"It's something that we really felt was a good idea on paper as we started developing it," iLike CEO Ali Partovi told CNET News, "but as it reached completion and we started using it ourselves it really started seeming like a killer app."
iLike already has had a concert app in the iTunes Store. The company didn't promote it much, Partovi said, because the iPhone 3.0 software was what really made the app worthwhile, and so iLike was waiting until that came out.
"We found that there really were a few key capabilities that the iPhone OS didn't support at the time," he explained, referring specifically to push notifications and some software tweaks that enable better personalization. So the revamped iLike concerts app, thanks to iPhone software upgrades, will scan the music selection on an iPhone or iPod Touch, and send pop-up alerts when a band or artist that the user listens to will be in town.
"It turns the iPod into much more of a live device to be connected to the world of live music," Partovi said of the free app.
The custom artist apps, meanwhile, haven't changed much from when iLike originally announced the program in May. Over 250 artists have signed on to the program, the company said, including Pete Yorn, Reba McIntire, and Enrique Iglesias. iLike takes half the revenues from sales of the apps, and charges a $99 fee with the right to serve ads if the artist in question decides to offer its custom app for free.
CNET News reported last month that iLike was also in talks with the major music labels to open a download store, after a deal to offer full-length songs through subscription service Rhapsody failed to materialize.
The city of Boston is set to launch an official iPhone application for residents to file complaints about "neighborhood nuisances--nasty potholes, graffiti-stained walls, blown street lights," according to The Boston Globe.
Called Citizen Connect, the app will let Bostonians send pictures and tips right to City Hall.
The app was built with the help of a New Hampshire mobile development firm called Connected Bits.
Citizen Connect has been submitted to Apple but hasn't made it into the iTunes App Store just yet. When it does, it will be free.
Beware, Citizen Connect: complaints about this 'Aqua Hunger Teen Force' ad campaign turned into a huge mess for Boston two years ago.
(Credit: Boing Boing)The Boston Globe said Citizen Connect is the first app of its kind, but other cities have also been turning to new technology to make the minutiae of municipal government run more smoothly. New York's 311 nonemergency hotline for residents now has a presence on Skype and Twitter. New York also now accepts photo and video submissions for 911 and 311.
But the iPhone app has a few advantages. Per the Globe: "The application, which will be free to download from Apple, will allow residents to use the Global Positioning System function on their iPhones to pinpoint the precise location of the problem for City Hall. After submitting a complaint, users will get a tracking number, so they can pester city officials if the problem persists." Ooh! Pestering city officials sounds like fun!
That said, the idea of a complaint-filing iPhone app for Boston is particularly hilarious: the most famous instance of Boston municipal complaints in recent history happened when people started calling in concerns about suspicious-looking devices that turned out to be an ad campaign for the cartoon flick "Aqua Teen Hunger Force." This fact, however, did not come to light until the city had already shut down all traffic on the Charles River.
Or, as one blogger has pointed out already, the system could easily get flooded with photos accompanied by captions like "Please send a cop over to make these Yankees fans leave this bar."
I ended up spending the Memorial Day holiday weekend in Las Vegas, a city in which I do not set foot particularly often. When I wasn't partaking in my preferred activity of lounging by the hotel pool with a good book and a pina colada (yes, that's right, I don't gamble), I decided to test-drive a new iPhone app. Namely, it's the free app from lifestyle e-newsletter UrbanDaddy, which hit the iTunes App Store earlier this week.
UrbanDaddy--which operates city-specific newsletters for New York, Chicago, San Francisco, Las Vegas, Miami, and Los Angeles, as well as a "national" edition and a weekly travel guide--targets the young, louche, and well-moneyed, or at least those who want to be. Its newsletters frequently cover high-end restaurant and bar openings, as well as exotic vacation destinations. For its iPhone app, the company opted to build an automated "concierge" that will suggest activities for you if you fill in what you're looking for.
The interface and concept are very, very cool. It's like playing a Mad-Libs game to find out what you can do that day or night: the app will fill in your time and location, and then you specify what you're looking for (dinner, drinks, dancing, etc.) and who you're with (parents, friends, boss, ex) and then a few options for the situation. When I was looking for a Sunday brunch in Vegas, for example, the options included "and we want great bacon," "and we want champagne," or "and we're hung over." Like I said, very cool setup.
The results, however, were lacking. UrbanDaddy CEO Lance Broumand told me that the directory has been curated to only include establishments that fit the tastes of the newsletter's discerning target audience, which meant that my "and we want great bacon" brunch selection would not be bringing up the local Denny's. That said, the app only brings up very basic contact information for the restaurant or bar it's chosen for you--no hints at prices, no reviews from users, no tips like "the drink menu is really girly," "crowd is full of d-bags on Friday nights," or "vegetarians need not apply."
I realize that both the serendipity factor and the "money's not an issue" overtones are part of UrbanDaddy's carefully constructed image (complete with a Lexus sponsorship), but it certainly puts a damper on how helpful it can be when you're in an unfamiliar city.
These things, obviously, can come in version 2.0. But for now--especially in Vegas, where things can be alternately rock-bottom-cheap or unexpectedly expensive--it was too much of a gamble (ha, ha) for my tastes. After an unsuccessful quest to find great bacon, I went right back to the lounge chair by the pool.
This post was updated at 3:50 p.m. PT to correct the list of cities for which UrbanDaddy publishes newsletters.
A look at the new 'Nearby' feed on Yelp's iPhone app.
(Credit: Yelp)A full five percent of reviews site Yelp's traffic comes from its downloadable iPhone app, the company said Thursday. In response, it's revamping the iPhone app, originally launched last year, to add new features that place a fresh emphasis on location awareness. The new download will be available in the iTunes App Store in a few days.
The most significant upgrades are the ability to post 140-character (read: Twitter-length) "quick tips" from the iPhone, a wholly new feature, which other members can give a Digg-like thumbs-up to. Popular ones may eventually be displayed on that business' review page on Yelp. Also new is a "Nearby" feed of what's accessible and recommended around you, as well as from your friends on the service. Yelp's original iPhone app had been juiced up with location awareness, but was light on the features--you could find out what was nearby and see what reviews had to say about it, but little else.
One more new feature: you can't publish full Yelp reviews from the revamped iPhone app but can draft them there and publish from its PC interface later.
The new app from Yelp comes just days after News Corp.'s MySpace announced a potentially strong rival to Yelp. Called MySpace Local, it's in partnership with the IAC-owned Citysearch--which is still the biggest name in business reviews. While MySpace Local doesn't have a mobile strategy in place, yet, it's on the road map.
And it's probably just a coincidence, but the new Yelp app's Twitter-like "tips" are a diversion from the five star scale of reviews that made Yelp famous, and which recently have been coming under scrutiny by some businesses who claim they get gamed in order to draw in new advertisers.
Kevin Rose, flesh-and-blood iPhone rumor factory
(Credit: Caroline McCarthy/CNET News)AUSTIN, Texas--So the real star of the South by Southwest Interactive Festival has been Apple's iPhone. For better or for worse.
Facebook's big announcement at the annual geekstravaganza, for example, was that its Facebook Connect log-in product would be coming to the iPhone. Most of the products debuting in conjunction with the festival, including location-based mobile apps like Whrrl and FourSquare, are partially or entirely iPhone-centric. And if you happen to be a poor, unfortunate BlackBerry or Treo user, you may get some disapproving looks when you whip your handset out of your pocket around some judgmental SXSWi-goers.
It's not particularly surprising. This is, after all, the first SXSWi since the debut of the iPhone 3G. While the original iPhone was an instant hit, plenty of people in the tech industry (myself included) held out for the second generation because the first didn't have 3G data access or GPS capabilities. Not to mention there's now the App Store, which has meant the iPhone is a huge priority for developers and designers everywhere.
But on the flip side, there has been such a saturation of iPhones at SXSWi that the network for AT&T, the exclusive carrier for iPhones, promptly floundered (or, to use the geek slang of choice, "fail-whaled"), with conference-goers encountering poor service, weak Internet connections, and dropped calls left and right. iPhone problems were so prevalent that AT&T upped its coverage in Austin for the duration of the festival.
"To accommodate unprecedented demand for mobile data and voice applications at SXSW, we are actively working this afternoon to add capacity to our cell sites serving downtown Austin," a statement from the telecom giant read. "These efforts are ongoing, but we anticipate that customers should see improved network performance this evening and for the remainder of the event. We will continue to monitor network performance throughout the event, and will do everything possible to maximize network performance throughout."
Ouch.
The iPhone's ubiquity at SXSWi is especially fitting because on Tuesday, the final day of SXSWi, Apple itself will be making some kind of iPhone software unveiling.
The Apple announcement, in the company's hometown of Cupertino, Calif., will be far, far away from the bars and barbecues of Austin. But word travels fast here, and speculation has already reached a fever pitch. On Saturday night, during a live taping of his Diggnation podcast, Digg founder Kevin Rose said he anticipates copy-paste functions to come to the iPhone for the first time, and the geek press went wild.
Granted, Rose typically tapes Diggnation with a healthy amount of beer in his system, and he likely wanted to drop a couple of zingers to satisfy the hundreds of excited fanboys who were surrounding the stage with cameras in hand.
But it's about time for copy-paste. And I already feel bad for any SXSWi panelists and speakers who happen to be presenting at that time. As soon as word gets out about Apple's announcement, they'll probably lose the attention of their audiences altogether.
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