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SF's Yellow Cab blames lawsuits, Uber and Lyft for bankruptcy
San Francisco's Yellow Cab Co-op has filed for bankruptcy, a few weeks after the first reports came out that it was on the verge of doing so. According to San Francisco Examiner, the biggest taxi company in the city blamed two things in the documents it submitted: 1.) lawsuits and 2.) ride-sharing services. Yellow Cab President Pamela Martinez wrote that the Co-op is self-insured unlike other cab companies. "On a short term basis, the ability to self-insure resulted in lower operating costs," the document read. "However, self-insurance exposed Yellow Cab to risks of catastrophic losses, which ultimately occurred."
San Francisco's biggest Taxi company to file for bankruptcy
If the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency's word isn't enough, take it directly from taxi companies: ride-sharing apps like Uber and Lyft are taking business from traditional cab drivers. According to a report from the San Francisco Examiner, Yellow Cab Co-op, the biggest taxi company in the city, is on the verge of filing for bankruptcy.
Amazon's one-hour deliveries expand to San Francisco, San Antonio
Amazon continues to expand its Prime Now one-hour deliveries. The online retailer has announced that the service is now available in San Jose, San Francisco and other places around the Bay Area, including Mountain View and Cupertino -- Google and Apple's home, respectively. Prime Now's also hitting San Antonio, which joins Austin, Dallas and, most recently, Houston as the Texan cities where Amazon's ultra-fast delivery offering is live. In case you're not familiar with Now, it lets Prime members receive select orders in less than 60 minutes for a $7.99 fee, with an app that's available for iOS, Android and Kindle devices. Or, if you're not in a rush to get the items, they can be at your doorstep in about two hours free of charge.
San Francisco's 311 app allows residents to report troubled homeless
Mayor Ed Lee unveiled a new feature for the city's 311 public information/assistance app that will allow residents to report homeless people in need of assistance to city officials. The feature is reportedly designed to better help San Francisco's sizable homeless population receive the enormous number of health and well-being services that the city offers. "We will follow up," Lee said during a press conference Tuesday.
TwitchCon made me a Twitch convert
I'm going to admit this right up front: I wasn't looking forward to covering the first-ever TwitchCon. Sure, I co-host our weekly Playdate broadcasts and absolutely adore talking with our community of regulars who show up three times per week to watch us play games, but outside of that, I didn't spend time on Twitch. My worry for TwitchCon was that I'd be trapped inside Moscone West in San Francisco with thousands of screaming "personalities" -- like the guy I'd watched (for approximately 45 seconds, max) shout and swear his way through Choice Chamber, for an entire weekend. That all changed after attending a number of panels and talking with some of the biggest broadcasters on the service. This first show was one of the best events I've been to for work, period. And I recently found myself doing something I never thought: watching Twitch for fun.
I found a secondhand telescope, now what?
It's amazing what you can find on the streets of San Francisco. No, the actual city streets, not the '70s cop drama starring Michael Douglas. I recently came across a scavenger's treasure in the city's Sunset neighborhood: a fully operational Meade NG-70 Altazimuth Refractor Telescope. It was just sitting there on the curb with a handwritten note simply stating "Free" taped to its barrel. Now, I'll tell you, I'm not much of an astronomer -- inasmuch as I have never used (even touched) a telescope or ever had much interest in learning. The idea of standing around outside in the dark, fiddling with dials always seemed too much hassle to make very distant sparkly objects to appear slightly larger. But what I am also not is a sucker -- and a free telescope is a free telescope -- so into my car's trunk it went.
Watch the first-ever TwitchCon keynote right here!
What do you do when you're a burgeoning video game start-up that gets bought by Amazon for just under a billion dollars? Well, if you're game-broadcasting platform Twitch, you take over the Moscone Center in San Francisco for a few days and host all manner of panels featuring the top people in your community, game developers and maybe even a few musical guests. TwitchCon kicks off with a keynote address at 1 pm ET / 10 am PT today and you can watch it below via, you guessed it, a Twitch streaming window. In addition to the opening address the weekend's panels and interviews will be broadcast as well.
Google Search starts connecting you directly to plumbers, locksmiths
Amazon launched a home services directory in 41 cities a few months ago, and now Google is dipping its toe in the water. According to the Wall Street Journal, for those "in and around" San Francisco, searching for terms like lock repair or clogged toilet will bring you a list of prescreened professionals in the area prepared to take care of those problems. As you can see in the screenshot (after the break), we gave it a try with "clean house" and got not only the list with contact info, but a way to send a few interesting parties a request quickly. The key here, is that you never have to leave Google.com for any of that, and the people listed pay for the privilege (plus screening for licenses and background checks) through Google's AdWords Express.
Uber's background checks reportedly missed criminal records
Los Angeles and San Francisco are convinced that Uber's background checks aren't as good as the company claims they are, and it looks the two cities might have ample proof that this is a real, consistent problem. Their district attorneys have amended a lawsuit against Uber to provide evidence that the ridesharing outfit didn't unearth the criminal records of 25 drivers between the two regions. Several of those drivers were reportedly convicted of extremely serious crimes, including murder and sex offenses. The attorneys argue that this is proof that Uber is making "false and misleading" claims. It's touting a tight screening process, but genuine threats to passengers are slipping through the cracks.
Yahoo revives its signature San Francisco billboard
Have you missed seeing Yahoo's distinctive billboard while driving along San Francisco's piece of Interstate 80? So has Yahoo. After a 4-year hiatus, the internet giant is bringing back its iconic signage to "surprise and delight" (read: advertise to) commuters heading toward the Bay Bridge. Unfortunately, though, it's not going to maintain the same 1960s motel charm that you remember. The whimsical design you see above has been replaced by the slightly lifeless billboard pictured below, at least for now. Still, this is both a good way to mark Yahoo's 20th anniversary and remind locals that Google isn't the only '90s-era web pioneer in town. [Image credit: AP Photo/Russel A. Daniels]
San Francisco is serious about Airbnb regulation
Since San Francisco is all about startups, it's no surprise that the city changed its laws to accommodate one of its most successful: Airbnb. Last year, officials passed the so-called "Airbnb law," legalising short-term rentals of private property with a lot of caveats. Hosts complained that the new rules were inconvenient, so the city is creating a new taskforce to make the regulations easier to follow and catch those breaking the law.
Google's unique self-driving cars hit the streets of Mountain View
Google has been testing self-driving cars on the roads of Mountain View for a while, but now the company's own models are hitting the streets. Last month, Google announced that its rather unique vehicles that were built specifically to drive themselves would begin testing on public roads this summer and now they're logging miles. During the trials, speeds are capped at 25 MPH and all of controls you'd usually find in a car (steering wheel, accelerator and brake pedal) are on-board in case the driver passenger needs to take over. However, these cars were designed to not have all of that stuff, so perhaps we'll see testing sans controls soon enough -- if the state of California allows, of course. The software that handles the navigating is the same tech that powered the company's fleet of Lexus SUVs outfitted to drive themselves. If you'll recall, that stable of vehicles tallied over a million miles, so the technology has quite a bit of road experience already.
Apple WWDC 2015: the numbers you need to know
It's Monday. The work week just started and the last thing you need is to spend two hours of it watching Apple's WWDC 2015 keynote address. But fear not, even if you missed it, you can still get all the juicy rumors, teasers and event highlights right here. Think of it as a tl;dr but, you know, for press conferences.
Google wants you to buy Big Macs with your face
Google may have been the first big tech company to push NFC payments, but it was Apple Pay that got the public excited about buying things with your smartphone. At a Google I/O session for Android Pay, the search giant announced that it was partnering with McDonalds and Papa John's Pizza to launch Hands Free, a payment system that looks suspiciously like the Pay with Square app (later called Square Wallet and discontinued). Customers walk in a store and say, "I'd like to pay with Google," and the cashier will see a photo of the customer and their name on their point-of-sale system. The service is initially launching in San Francisco in the coming months and those interested can sign up for the beta here. Details about the geofencing payment service are sparse, but it should use cards stored in the upcoming Android Pay.
Apple Store app offers same-day delivery in select locations
The Apple Store app now offers same-day delivery service through Postmates, the same company bringing Big Macs to New York City homes and Starbucks coffee to households and offices in several US cities. To be clear, the two companies have been working together long before this, and you can actually order Apple products from Postmates' iOS app if you live in one of the many locations where the company operates. This new on-demand delivery option, however, is available only to San Francisco Bay Area residents willing to pay a fee to get their items ASAP.
Sidecar is starting a weed delivery service in San Francisco
Your next Sidecar ride could be carrying more than passengers and parcels. The ride-sharing company announced that it is teaming with local cannabis service Meadow to bring same-day weed deliveries to medical marijuana patients in San Francisco. The new service will reportedly fulfill orders through the Apothecarium dispensary. Package deliveries already constitute about 10 percent of Sidecar's ride volume in San Francisco. However, carrying cannabis poses a number of unique challenges -- such as ensuring that the person taking delivery is the same person that placed the order.
This $8.6 million mansion is actually a giant Faraday cage
If you've ever wanted to live in a fancy Faraday cage, here's your chance. An $8.6 million condo for sale in San Francisco has walls thickly covered in semiconductive graphite paint, floors connected to the walls with wire tape, and walls connected to the ceilings with wire strips. Oh, and its windows are coated with EMF-blocking polymer. All these are courtesy of the people who snapped up the condo, which was then a fixer-upper, back in 2007. They basically wrapped the whole place in aluminum foil-like substance in order to keep out any EMF radiation emitted by phones, GPS devices, WiFi routers and other electronics.
White House to announce it's buying 50,000 police body cams
According to The Hill, President Obama is reportedly set to announce a nationwide body camera program on Monday. This pilot project will purchase 50,000 body-worn police cameras at a cost of $20 million and distribute them to law enforcement agencies in a dozen cities. Over the following two years, that figure will balloon to $75 million as the program expands to additional agencies and police departments.
Comcast's gigabit internet hits northern California in June
Comcast is bringing its twice-as-fast-as-Google-Fiber internet service to northern California. Potential customers will need installation of professional-grade equipment to access it and, you'll have to be near its fiber network -- Fresno, Monterey, Sacramento and the San Francisco Bay Area are among the places on the list -- to qualify. That's not all, either. Statewide, it's rolling out a 250 Mbps "Extreme 250" speed tier for cable internet customers. The telecom giant's also boosting speeds on its existing tiers as well, with lower priced-plans getting jumps from 25 to 45 Mbps depending on the package at no added cost. Perhaps the best news about all this is that you won't have to wait too much longer for it all to take effect. Comcast says it'll start the cable internet upgrades in May with continued rollouts taking place the rest of the year, while the 2Gbps fiber service starts rolling out in June. And just like that, there's another gigabit competitor in Google HQ's vicinity with Fiber nowhere in sight. [Image credit: Shutterstock]
San Francisco mayor proposes 120 day caps on Airbnb rentals
As San Francisco's housing crisis continues to pit long-term residents against the recent influx of affluent tech employees, Airbnb and other short-term rentals have become a source of tension. Today San Francisco Mayor Ed Lee and Supervisor Mark Farrell hoped to ease some of that tension by introducing reforms to the city's short-term rental laws that put a 120 day yearly cap on all short-term rentals. The package of amendments also introduced the creation of a new Office of Short-Term Rental Administration and Enforcement for the city staff to "coordinate in the administration and aggressive enforcement of the law."
