Uber: The Perfect App for the Uni-Lingual, Socially Awkward Geek on the Go

I travel to Chicago often enough that this iPhone app (also on Android) has saved my pasty white ass a dozen times. Seriously. My Chicago office is located in that one part of town where the tollway dumps a bunch of occupied cabs on my street, and its impossible to flag down one that’s empty. I have to walk two or three blocks in the wrong direction of my destination to catch a yellow. Normally, this wouldn’t matter, but try doing this with a briefcase, wing-tip shoes, and a 27” iMac under your arm during a slush storm when your train leaves in seven minutes. Ish is tough, dude.

This is where the Uber app comes in. You set up an account, which takes a total of three minutes (including credit card information), and the app uses your GPS location to call a cab to you. You get a picture of your cabby’s face and an approximate time of arrival, and all you have to do is sit in the lobby and watch his GPS location change on your map.

Then, when your off-the-boat Trinidadian cab driver pulls up, you get a text message telling you to come outside, and instead of being forced to converse with a guy who’s speaking a language you couldn’t even begin to guess, you can just jump in the back of the car, blurt a destination loud enough to hear over his National Public Radio blaring through blown speakers, and go back to searching backpages.com for a date to whatever half-cheap restaurant you think you can get away with expensing.

Honestly, if you travel enough that you spend over $50 a week in cab fare, do yourself a favor and give this app a shot. I’ve been using it for a couple months now and swear by it. If it hasn’t come to a city near you yet, email their people and let them know you want it. Do me a favor and send an email on behalf of Milwaukee, too. I would, but I’m just too damn busy writing nonsense like this.


Edit: Less than a week after I posted this, I got an email from Uber informing me that it was officially in Milwaukee. I got a laugh out of that.