Zimride’s Lyft Is Going...

If you’re like me and you live in San Francisco where cabs are few and far between, Uber has been a godsend. But the marketplace for on-demand transportation is about to get a lot more interesting. That’s because there are a few startups that will be doing on-demand, ride-sharing at a much more affordable price point over the next few months. Zimride , which has been around for a few years, will be one of them. They’re coming out of the gate with a product called Lyft today. It’s still in beta (so just friends and family). But basically you can use the app to request a driver immediately and get a ride anywhere in the city for a price that’s competitive to or even cheaper than a cab. Like Uber, Lyft faces interesting regulatory hurdles around doing ride-sharing that arguably competes with professional and government-licensed cab companies. It and another company that’s still in beta called Sidecar are getting around this by doing reimbursements or operating on donations. “It’s reimbursement,” said co-founder and chief operating officer John Zimmer . “Anything above and beyond that is a donation.” Zimride has an algorithm that suggests a recommended donation based on time and distance, but it’s up to the consumer to decide what to pay. Zimride keeps about a 20 percent share. The company is seeding the market with drivers that are willing to do longer shifts that take several hours. They’re using a thorough interview process that includes driving history, criminal checks and car inspections. On the consumer side, it will be easy to pick the app up and demand a ride. But on the supply side, there’s a whole vetting process. ”We just want to be very deliberate about how we build this market,” Zimmer said. Zimmer says Zimride has gained a lot of experience in growing two-sided markets. ”Ride-sharing is often called a chicken-and-egg problem,” he said. “But we’ve learned over time about how to take the right steps at the right time with supply and demand.” (Unfortunately, he didn’t share too many of his tricks as those are proprietary!) The company has actually been breakeven at many points in its life. Zimride is really three separate businesses under one roof. One is a university-focused program where they charge colleges for providing school-specific, ride-sharing programs. A second business is for long-distance ride-sharing. Los Angeles to San Francisco, for example, is a very popular route. Every time they’ve gotten one leg of the business to profitability, they’ve used it to fund the next piece. This one will likely be their most challenging endeavor yet. “There are three variables and each one makes it exponentially more difficult to get critical mass,” Zimmer said. “There’s starting location, ending location and starting time.” Zimride faces a number of upcoming competitors. Uber has mostly stuck to the higher-end of the market with private drivers and black cars, but there are signs it is moving downmarket . There is also another app that hasn’t publicly launched but is in beta around San Francisco called Sidecar. It has an extremely similar model. “Uber is this amazing, luxurious transportation experience,” Zimmer said. “Our vision for Zimride is to have everyone participate. We have to make that as frictionless as possible.” The company has raised more than $7 million from Mayfield Fund, Floodgate, Keith Rabois, K9 Ventures and fbFund.

Nissan LEAF: World With...

Here’s a pretty neat art installation in Sydney for the launch of the Nissan LEAF electric car into the market, illustrating the things we might just be doing with petrol bowsers when there is no future need for them. With almost 40 unique, interactive, re-purposed petrol bowsers on display, people are free to walk up Related Digital Buzz Posts: The Nissan Leaf iAd Demo Video Nissan 370Z Augmented Reality Website (AR) Nissan Juke iAd Demo Experience

It’s Time For A Larger ...

The Wall Street Journal reported this morning that Apple is currently ordering larger screens for the next iPhone. With the usual nonsense, the WSJ cited people familiar with the matter and stated these screens measure at least 4-inches diagonally. Production is set to begin next month, they say. The Journal better be right, though. A 3.5-inch screen is just too small now. At this point to say anything to the contrary is pure fanboi nonsense. The standard argument that consumers don’t want a large phone is tired and overused. Besides, it’s effectively proven wrong by the 20 million Galaxy S II phones sold by Samsung last year. It’s time for a larger iPhone. When Apple debuted the iPhone in 2007 it was a revolutionary device. With a novel interface running on a beautiful 3.5-inch screen, the iPhone rocked the mobile scene. But now, over five years later, the iPhone has changed very little. This is a good thing for the most part. Keep with what works. However, the mobile world has since caught up to the iPhone and started moving forward with risky (read: larger) form factors while Apple kept with the tried and true. This is Apple’s Standard Operating Procedure. Apple is notorious for keeping products on the market for as long as they’re financially viable. The company’s computers often only get spec bumps twice a year while other makers push the latest hardware every quarter. The Mac Mini once went a full year without an update. But Apple can do this. Consumers often buy Apple products ignoring specs, thus allowing the company to see larger margins on aging devices. Eventually moves need to be made, though. The iPhone is still the dominant smartphone on the market. Apple could likely keep selling the iPhone 4S at $200 for the next year and still see iOS’s marketshare pie increase. Consumers want the iPhone that bad. But it’s starting to show its age and consumers are noticing. There is a new report published nearly every other day proclaiming iOS or Android as the dominant platform. But it doesn’t really matter at this point. Both are winning and Android is doing so with large, attention-grabbing screens that consumers clearly want. Of course Apple will always have its base of loyal fanboys no matter what, but the average consumer is swayed by trend — including the trend of large screens. The next iPhone will have a 4-inch screen per the common rumor circulating ’round the Internet. This excites me greatly. My daily driver is a Droid X, which also has 4-inch screen. After playing with nearly every new phone, I still find its 4-inch 16:9 screen the sweet spot between the usability of a small screen and the additional real estate associated with a large screen. Of course there are numerous arguments against Apple employing a larger screen, but a user on The Verge’s forum’s elegantly explained how it could be done. In short, by using a 3.99-inch 9:5 screen, iOS would scale nearly perfectly and add an additional row for icons on the homescreen. It would then be up to Apple’s all-star marketing team to convince the world it’s a 4-inch screen rather than 3.99. There are no doubt blinded Apple zealots absolutely appalled at the thought of a larger iPhone. Ignore ‘em. Change is inevitable. In response to MG’s take on the Evo 4G back in 2010, I wrote “Saying that the EVO 4G’s screen is too big is like saying, “No thanks, I would rather ride in the back of a cab than in your limo. I like feeling cramped and restricted.”” (We both were right about the phone’s horrible battery life, though) That still holds true today. A large screen, if done right, is an amazing feature and one Apple will likely employ in the future. Again, to fulfill its goal of purely making money, Apple does not need to change anything about the iPhone. The iPhone 4S sold like gangbusters on the back of just a trivial spec bump and worthless Siri. However, the iPhone 4 form factor is no longer the single most attractive phone on the market. Other mobile phone companies have caught up with Apple. That can’t sit well with The House Jobs Built. Apple needs to regain its street cred and silence the haters if only for a moment. Sometime later this year Apple will introduce the next generation of the iPhone. As proven by previous iPhone rumors, it’s hard to tell what’s on tap. It might have a larger screen and, quite honestly, it might not. The WSJ’s report could be wrong. That said, there will come a time that Apple rolls out a large screen for the iPhone. Hopefully it’s sooner rather than later.

DoctorsElite Wants To B...

As a culture, we are getting ever-more accustomed to using social networks as our primary hubs for all information, and that trend is leading to the rise of yet more services constructed like social networks to improve accessibility: one of the latest in that line is DoctorsElite , a new site aimed at linking up patients, general physicians and specialists through a social network framework to make it easier for people to find specialists in certain fields when they need them. Started by a group of physicians working with other medical advisors and technology experts, DoctorsElite is entering the market bootstrapped and with a database of some 500,000 doctors and centers for advanced treatment in the U.S. — and with some strong firsthand experience of why the founders think this service fills a gap in the market. What DoctorsElite is trying to do differently is that it is focused on being first and foremost a directory for doctors in specific fields — with that half-million strong database a good start. The database can be searched by diagnosis, treatment and speciality and then, beyond that, subspeciality, and is free to use by patients and their families. Patients also have a secure area where they can store their own medical records to keep them in a centralized place — accessibile by themselves as well as their doctors. DoctorsElite is also offering a secure section where doctors can communicate with each other to find specialty care for their patients and advice from other doctors — which can be done in open forums or through direct messaging. Doctors and patients have free access to their own profiles, with additional services coming with fees. As with many startup ideas, DoctorsElite came out of a direct need that the founders themselves experienced firsthand. One of them, a Gulfport, Mississippi-based interventional cardiologist called Cyril V.K. Bethala, had been working in a hospital that was closed down during Hurricane Katrina — not before Bethala himself got stranded in the hospital for days during the peak of the Katrina crisis. With patients and doctors fleeing the area, it became impossible to track medical histories for millions of patients and for those patients to connect with doctors. Bethala wanted to create a system that could bypass crises like this in the future — and go one better by improving communication in the medical industry, all of the time. “Every area of the country experiences natural disasters or other events that make connecting doctors and patients a challenge,” he said in a statement. “And even under normal circumstances, it can be difficult for patients and doctors to locate the right specialty care, particularly for uncommon or rare diagnosis.” All too true, but whether that will be enough to propel DoctorsElite forward as a company remains to be seen: It’s joining a space more crowded than an ER on a Friday night: other sites offering social networks for patients and doctors include  Sermo ,  Doximity , CareZone and  HealthTap  – the latter  picking up $11.5 million  from Eric Schmidt’s Tomorrow Ventures and the Mayfield Fund, among others, last December. Then on the more general medical portal front, there are more established sites like  WebMD . Other founders include Bethala’s physician brothers Vivian K. Bethala, a gastroenterologist, and Vasanth K. Bethala, also an interventional cardiologist, as well as Yashashree Bethala, an internist.

Fly Or Die: Skullcandy ...

This shouldn’t be the first time you’ve seen Skullcandy’s Hesh headphones appear on TechCrunch , but I’ll forgive you if it is. As a refresh, I reviewed the cans last week and found that it really came down to like vs. love. They’re fine, but I can’t necessarily justify a $60-$70 purchase. John felt the same way when we sat down to chat about the Hesh headphones in this latest episode of Fly or Die. But it extends far beyond that. As John would say, “friends don’t let friends buy bad headphones.” There should really only be two choices: get yourself a cheap pair of earbuds that will last you six months, or if you really enjoy high quality sound, make a solid investment in a set of Grado or Sennheisers or “the upper echelon of headphones” and really enjoy yourself. Either way, mid-range headphones shouldn’t even exist in our book. They offer very little in sound quality and try to make up for it with style and brand cache, like Beats. Beats by Dr. Dre headphones certainly aren’t the best headphones on the market, but the following behind them is huge, based mainly on the fact that Dre’s name is behind them and they look cool. Beats is about status, and the very worst part is that Skullcandy doesn’t even have that going for it. We both give them a die.