First to try Uber’s cash payment?

Uber Lux in Amsterdam

Last week Sunday 9th October, Uber really wound me up on the way to a dinner with Herb, Amber and Rick. The Tram didn’t seem to be going to Castlefield and I was late for the dinner, so I decided to use Uber. That was the idea but I spent about 20mins trying to enter in my new credit card information into the Uber app while it complained my postcode wasn’t a zip code.

Yeah thanks for that Uber! No idea why its forcing me to enter a zip code when it knew I was in the UK, had a UK credit card and lived in the UK. Most of the world uses postcodes not zip codes by the way.

Anyway, I tried connecting my Paypal account via the already installed Paypal account. But nothing happened (I wonder if my 2 factor auth was confusing things). So I saw the option to use cash.

Usually I don’t have cash on me but this one time I did; and I ordered the Uber with the cash option, the same way you order it normally. When the Uber came 5mins later (I did think, I could have walked there in the time I spent doing all this) the driver took me to the restaurant and I handed over £20 to which he struggled to get the change for. So I ended up giving quite a large percentage tip, no problem.

Honestly I was surprised it worked, as I always thought of Uber as credit card only. While waiting for the Uber, I did search for using cash with uber. But didn’t know till Chris tweeted tonight, I might have been one of the very first in Manchester to try the option.

From the MEN piece.

The cash option has already been trialled in Singapore in a bid to attract more users, and now Manchester is set to be the first city in Europe to undergo the experiment.

In a statement, the private hire firm said: “We’re excited to announce that Manchester is one of the first cities – and the first one in Europe – to offer cash as a payment option for all riders in Manchester.

Looking at my Uber app, Cash is an option just as it was over a week ago.

I have given up telling Uber support the difference between a postcode & zip code. I found I could edit the old credit card entry rather than add another one. This meant the postcode would be set already and the other things I could enter without causing validation errors.

Early adopters still have a place

Ericsson mp3 player

Early this morning after Silicon Drinkabout Manchester, two friends had a long argument about the need/lesser need for early adopters in developing new products.

I won’t go into details but I’m certainly side on the side of the need for early adopters.
During the argument, Apple, ipod and the iphone came up (interestingly the iMac never comes up anymore). I made the point that Apple generally copy things and improve on them. This reminded me of my first proper owned and bought mpeg3 player. I bought a Samsung Yepp32 from my friend, but about the same time I saw the Ericsson HPM-10  and a few months later I bought one on Tottenham court road.

Ericsson T28 and HPM-10

For me it made perfect sense, why have a separate device when my phone has most of the capability? I swore by the Ericsson HPM-10 and ended up buying only ericsson phones, so I could keep using it. I remember squeezing 2 whole cds of music on to the 32meg MMC card for my ride down to Bristol from London on the scooter. I must have encoded it at 16kps!My friends didn’t get it, why a music player on the phone? It took about 5-6years before the idea of using the mobile for music playback really started to happen.

Without early adopters, I feel the almost relentless push forward into the currently unacceptable and questionable unknown. Just wouldn’t happen.

To be clear I’m not saying early adopters are the reason for why a product or service crosses into the mainstream. But I am saying they/we have an effect which can be quantified and should not be written off.

One of the reasons why I always wanted to go to Tokyo is to explore the vast electronic markets of failed products. Everything from robot dogs to things which never made it out of Japan. I would contest that kickstarter is the new electronic market now? There will be popular products like the pebble smartwatch but theres products only early adopters would consider. Once considered and used, they share.

That sharing is where the norm starts to shift.

Remember having a discussion with a colleague at my then work place, the Odeon Leicester square about what is mpeg3 and what was that funny thing sticking out my Ericsson t28 phone? She had just bought a Sony minidisc and I was explaining why mpeg3 was the future? Years later at a reunion she remained me as she bought a 1st generation iPod a few years later based slightly on that afternoon sitting in the box office listening to badly encoded music.

Her perception of music had been shifted enough to early adopt the iPod before it really hit the mainstream.

The HTC, slowly feeling their way around

All my current phones

HTC you got to love them

From obscurity they rose via Microsoft’s Windows Mobile platform. I’ve always been a fan because frankly they packed in a ton of technology into their devices and then sold them at a reasonable price. Mainly because they signed exclusive deals to the likes of Orange in the UK.

When they started producing Android devices, things really picked up and HTC started making a real name for themselves with the general public. Hackers also enjoyed Android HTC devices because they were more like a PC than anything else. HTC must have understood this when they jumped on the Social media bandwagon…

However they may not have expected the 2 way nature of the early adopters. Here’s their backtracking in action

First caseHTC decides to lock all there bootloaders on future devices

Then… HTC changes its mind after all the comments on its own Facebook page

Second caseHTC says the Desire won’t get Gingerbread

Then… HTC backtracks, says the Desire will get Gingerbread after all‎

Flickr reaches 250,000,000 photos

Found via BoingBoing

On February 15, 2006 I discovered that the photo sharing site Flickr had reached 100 million hosted photos. Today (September 22 2006) at 11.18 PM CET, only seven months later, Flickr passed the quarter billion mark – 250 million photos.

It maybe that Flickr is doesn't have the number of people that Yahoo Photos might do, but I very much douht that the quality and quanity of photos is anywhere near flickr. I do wonder the percentage which are creative commons licenced however.

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