Showing posts with label app. Show all posts
Showing posts with label app. Show all posts

Saturday, February 18, 2017

Easy Car Rental and Road Trip to Napa with Drive Maven

During my recent trip to San Francisco, I got the opportunity to try out Drive Maven, a car-sharing service similar to Zipcar. Maven is General Motors' service, and you can rent GM cars by the hour or day from various locations around the country. For cities where parking is notoriously difficult and expensive like San Francisco, services like Maven is really useful when you need a car just for a day trip.
Drive Maven in Napa
Unlike Zipcar, there's no annual membership fee associated with Maven. Just like Zipcar, gas and insurance are included in the hourly/daily rates. In SF, the cars are parked in various garages throughout the city. To book the car, you can search the map for that city and select the most convenient garage for you.

I picked a garage on Taylor St, and they had new red Chevy Volt! I've been curious about this plug-in hybrid, so I booked it.
Drive Maven in Napa
Drive Maven in Napa

The Volt was $8 per hour - again it includes gas and insurance. Did I mention this VOLT was wifi-equipped? A lot of their cars are loaded with the latest tech, including Apple CarPlay and free unlimited 4G LTE WiFi. You bet I was instagramming using the car's wifi!

Everything is done with the Maven app. When you go to pick up your car, you can just unlock the car with your app using bluetooth. The car will detect that your phone is inside and you can start the car without a key (only when your phone is inside the car). Everything was seamless and easy (minus the tight spaces in SF's parking garages, but what can you do about that?). After that, I was off to Napa!

It was around lunchtime by the time we got to Napa Valley, so we stopped at Oxbow Public Market for lunch. The Public Market has a variety of food offerings, including Hog Island Oyster and Ritual Coffee.
DSC00499

Wednesday, December 10, 2014

Postmates, Now Delivering Anything in Your City

Postmates promises to deliver anything and everything to your home. I initially got some credit to try it out when I was living in LA, but they weren't delivering to Pasadena so I didn't get a chance to use it there. After moving to Boston and with my first real winter impending, this was starting to sound enticing. 
You access Postmates via a phone app. You can choose from the restaurants listed and select from the drop down menu, or you can also type a custom order. They'll go to the store or restaurant and place whatever you want to order. The final bill will be calculated when the order is picked up at the store or restaurant.

Postmates' crew picks up your order on their bikes and delivers it to your door. I've received my order well within 30 minutes for the most part, like for these tortas from Tenoch which was across the Charles River.
Untitled

Gourmet Pigs   © 2008. Template Recipes by Emporium Digital

TOP