I want to tell you about this neat app that came to my attention via the Twitterverse. It’s a new app for an on-demand car service that lets you not only book a ride through your iPhone, iPad or SMS, but also pay for it that way. It’s called UberCab, and it’s currently taking the San Francisco bay area by storm.

Unfortunately, UberCab is only a San Francisco treat for the moment, as the city by the bay its surrounding areas are the only place that this ubercool app is offered. Ubercab’s website does state that Chicago is in the works for beta testing, so maybe it’ll be available in your neck of the woods, sometime soon. So if you’re not put off by the "Bruce Willis was a ghost the whole time" reveal, then by all means please read on.

If you have an iPhone and a set of thumbs, then you have all the tools you need to the headache out of booking a cab. UberCab is the perfect travel companion for traveling business people and your typically carphobic city dweller. It’s just three easy steps: sign up for an UberCab account via the website, download the app (which is free, by the way), and set your location. Easy as pie.

Just imagine, no more rude or unintelligible cab dispatchers, no mad dashes for an available cab, and best of all, no more frustrating searches for a ride while stumbling out of a bar at 2 A.M. Not that I would know anything about that, of course.

And to touch on that last point, not about the poor soul trying to hail a cab who obviously has a drinking problem (allegedly), but another fantastic benefit of this app is that all payments are made online. So don’t worry about whether you have enough Lincolns (or in my case, Washingtons) in your pocket to make it to your destination.

Your online account is free as well, and while membership apparently has its privileges, it also has its costs. UberCab subscribers should be prepared to pay, at the very least, 1.5 times the cost of a regular taxi, for any given trip. 

GPS tracking also allows users to pinpoint their exact location for pickup, which the app then broadcasts out to any nearby drivers located in your vicinity. Then, once a driver accepts your request for pickup, you can send your destination, and the driver will notify you of their arrival time. With the simple tap of the "Begin Trip" button, you’ll be on your way. There’s even a fare calculation that goes along with your trip tracking.

In the interest of fair play, UberCab drivers have accounts as well, so once you begin to track your trip, the driver also uses their input to signal the end of the trip. That should definitely keep things on the up and up. Like I mentioned before, the entire transaction is paperless, so there are no receipts to track and no worries about coming up short for a tip. UberCab has been growing in popularity, so expect to hear more about this app in the future.

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