Product & Startup Builder

Uber's New Release

Added on by Chris Saad.

The Uber Developer Platform team is on fire right now. Yet another awesome release today and you can read about it on this article.

Congrats to Christine, Dustin and the whole team for making this release happen and the constant, consistent and inexorable march towards a better, bolder and easier to use opportunity for developers everywhere.

Originally posted on Facebook

Trump Supporters You're Misinformed

Added on by Chris Saad.

This video (attached) is not a mistake. It's just the most recent and blatant example of a deliberate and dangerous reality distortion field that's been coming from the right for a long, long time. Most notably from Fox News and most recently from the Trump campaign.

It's designed to scare you into voting Republican. Because any population that's afraid is easy to manipulate and subjugate.

To anyone who still supports the Republican Party and/or Donald Trump. Your anger, heartbreak, and desperation are real. Some of your grievances are real. However, much of your information and understanding about the issues, the candidates, the causes and the solutions is dramatically warped beyond all recognition.

I implore you to reach beyond your conservative information sources and your fear and consider...

1. Most of the meta-trends show that the US and the world are actually getting better. Any numbers you can cite are likely short term blips.

2. Your manufacturing jobs are not coming back and it's not because of foreigners or trade deals. It's because the world is becoming a fundamentally more connected place with information and transportation technologies reducing the cost and complexity of international trade. And that's a good thing for everyone - ultimately (over decades) leading to less war and poverty for everyone.

3. Terrorists and immigrants are not going to kill you. Your eating habits and guns are. Statistically speaking this isn't about a bowl of skittles. It's about Olympic-sized swimming pools filled with them. Guess what? The world is dangerous and no politician is going to keep you 100% safe. Instead, we need to live our ideals of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. We need to show the world compassion and lead by example. You can NOT fight fear and anger with the same. That's the price (and the privilege) of living in a free society as part of a global community.

4. Obama and Hillary are not crazy left wing socialists. They are basically centrist policy wonks trying their best to keep a fragile world moving in roughly the right direction.

5. Being well-connected, well-informed and “part of the establishment” is not pay-to-play or corruption. It’s the result of high centrality, influence, and respect. That’s what happen when you work in a field dependent on working with people — many of which might be ‘your enemy’.

6. The way a person reacts (words and deeds) in one aspect of life will apply to all other aspects of their life. If Trump can become unhinged with a tweet, then imagine what he can do with an unwanted military maneuver from a foreign power. He has shown his character by both talking about and performing sexual assault and bullying military families and beauty pageant contestants. That's what he'll do if he becomes president. Bully and rape the country and the world.

7. This isn't just a plea for a Democratic president or for American Democracy. When America sneezes the world gets a cold. Having a rational and legitimate Republican Party is essential to the world. When Trump loses (and he must) I beg you to retake the party and return it to sanity. It's literally the fate of the world in the balance.

I could go on. But I won't.

I also doubt many republicans planning to vote for Trump are still reading my feed. So please share this with your family and friends so they see it.

And VOTE.

Cross posted to Medium: 

https://medium.com/@chrissaad/trump-supporters-youre-misinformed-3107bcd47975

New Uber Feed

Added on by Chris Saad.

So excited about this. Really happy to finally be able to share it with the world. You can read more about it in this article.

This is a complete redesign and rebuild of the Uber app. it's beautiful. It's the result of a company wide herculean effort. The speed and agility in which it was done really couldn't be replicated at any other company.

- Super fast startup

- More intuitive product selector

- Destination first

- Shortcuts to your most likely destination

- Upfront pricing

- Stunningly beautiful requesting and ride experience

It also includes a feature that me and the Dev Platform team contributed to heavily: The all new Uber Feed featuring some initial 3rd party integrations. This will will change the game for Riders.

Stay tuned for much more.

Trust Algorithm

Added on by Chris Saad.

If Facebook isn't developing a trust algorithm for news right now, it's a big missed opportunity.

Step 1: Crowdsource: Find an elegant way for users to report fake or misleading posts/pages on the Internet.

Step 2: Train the algorithm: Start with verified, authoritative accounts and then spider out to their high strength connections. Sites that get a lot of high confidence flags are themselves flagged as sources of misleading information.

Step 3: Apply results: Influence edgerank behind the scenes and/or be displayed as an annotation near the embedded preview.

"False story"

Google should do the same.

Better: They should both provide the data as an API for all apps and sites to use. Imagine a browser extension that surfaces this too. Chrome could surface it just like their malicious site warnings.

Ultimately this is similar to the email spam problem; although not exactly the same because there's even more incentive to game the system with false positives.

Cc: Ryan Victoria Robert Joseph

Press coverage for the Uber Driver API

Added on by Chris Saad.

Thanks Ken Yeung!

“More than 1.5 million people across the globe drive on the Uber platform,” explained Chris Saad, a product manager with the company. “With demand for flexible, on-demand work on the rise, we also see an extraordinary opportunity for developers. By leveraging driver profile data, trip data, earnings, and more, you can create new apps and services that make driving with Uber more productive and fun.”

Full article on “Uber’s newest API lets developers reach and reward drivers” can found here.

Originally posted on Facebook

Uber: Introducing Driver Ratings

Added on by Chris Saad.

I'm very happy to share this news on behalf of the Dev Platform and Driver Partnerships teams. For those of you who follow these things closely, this is a big deal.

"As part of this release, we’re also making Driver Ratings available. This valuable reputation data can be used to bootstrap trust when users first join a new app or reward great customer service."

Congrats to Adam, Simon, Peter, Andrew, Alex, John, Devin, Adil, Jill, and everyone else who worked super hard to make this product a reality #justthebeginning #movingexperiences

Full Medium article “Introducing the Driver API: A new opportunity for developers to help make driving more rewarding” can be found here.

Originally posted on Facebook

Uber Partnership with Yext

Added on by Chris Saad.

Wow this post is wildly inaccurate and unnecessarily snarky. Trip branding simply let's any app that's initiating the Ride Request to display valuable content or utility during the trip. It's also a feature that's been generally available for quite some time.

But it includes a quote from me so that makes it all better I guess.

She Started it Documentary

Added on by Chris Saad.

I'm going to the premier for this - very excited for my friend Nora

Shot in Silicon Valley, Europe, Vietnam & NYC for the past three years, SHE STARTED IT follows the lives of five exceptional young women on their journey to startup success. Join the Premiere on October 8 at the Mill Valley Film Festival here.