UPDATE: Since the orders arrived on October 20th, Ubercab has remained in service under threat of penalties including up to $5,000 fee per instance of Ubercab’s operation, and potentially 90 days in jail per each day the company remains in operation past the orders.

Way back in June of this year, I saw ubercab’s demo of their app at the 1st ever AppPitch at pariSoma innovation loft in San Francisco. Since then, they’ve made a lot of progress, including landing an Angel Funding Round for $.125 million ten days ago.

The Medallion Holders Association of San Francisco has a lengthy fear-mongering write-up on what a taxi cab medallion is, and why a “cab” operating in San Francisco without a medallion is illegal.

SF Taxi Medallions (Photo Credit: taxi-library.org )

My take on this? Everytime something new and innovative comes into an already established marketplace, the existing stakeholders – cab drivers and the Medallion Holders Association in this case – feel threatened. And rightfully so.

It is what happened to Hollywood player turned urine evangelist James Krug, when he introduced waterless urinals that made the Plumbers Association all around the country confront him aggressively because their jobs in large commercial buildings would become largely obsolete.

Eventually Krug prevailed and I hope the same will happen to ubercab.

How do we do fulfill our philanthropic needs while ensuring that our donations are going for a cause that really really needs it?

Rick Sutton and Joe Fabris solve both these problems in an ingenious way with their Plus3Network mobile App and the accompanying website plus3network.com

Plus3 Networks is an App that tracks individual App users’ active lifestyle, rewards them with kudos / karma point for every step taken, every calorie burnt and then helps corporations donate money and resources to various organization based on the amount of healthy activities carried out by the individual App users.

I met Rick Sutton, the CEO and Co-Founder of Plus3 Networks at the SFAppPitch event here in San Francisco. Rick explained to me the idea behind the Free App, motivation for people to use it and do good simultaneously, the App Business Model, community reaction to the App and much more.

What is Plus3 Network?

Rick Sutton:Plus3 Network motivates people to be more active, to create healthier lifestyles. The secret sauce behind what we do is utilizing corporate philanthropy so as you do something and log it into our network, whether it’s walking the dog or riding the bicycle, not only are you doing something healthy for yourself, but you’re also moving money to charity courtesy of our corporate sponsors.

It’s not your money. It’s corporate philanthropy where they sponsor you through your healthy deeds to make the world a better place.

Let’s say I download the app and use it. How does it work? Let’s say I went out for a walk today. What happens?

Rick Sutton: We have a GPS location-based platform on the iPhone app. We also have a hand entry app if you don’t want to use the GPS. Seamlessly, you can launch the network on your iPhone. It will begin to log the distance and time you spend doing a particular activity. You can edit that activity on the phone, automatically upload it to your Plus3 web-based account and it will seamlessly move the money to charity.

So you have a set of sponsors who are looking to give charity for each mile or something like that?

Rick Sutton:When you look at it from the sponsors’ perspective, the members on our social network become the Pony Express and they replace the postbox. No longer does the company send the philanthropic donation directly to the charity. They power our members to move that money forward.

By being more active?

Rick Sutton:Yes. We do two things. We create a healthier America through physical activity and we also create donations to very needy causes that resonate with the individual.

What category does it fall under?

Rick Sutton:I don’t know what categories there are. I’m just here showing it off.

What is the status of the app?

Rick Sutton:It’s on iPhone right now.

How much does it cost?

Rick Sutton:It’s FREE!

What is your business model? How do you make money?

Rick Sutton:We make money by two ways. We have employee wellness platforms, where companies use us to inspire their employees to be healthier and they pay us a platform fee, based on the number of employees they have.

The second way is a marketing platform where brands want to create relationships with healthy people pursuing healthy lifestyles. An important distinction is that we don’t take a fundraising fee or administration fee out of the donation, so if a particular activity moves one dollar, five dollars to charity, you know as a Plus3 user that all of that five dollars goes to that charity.

Can you tell me a little bit about the company? When was it founded, who are the founders, are you guys actively looking to get more funding?

Rick Sutton:You always want more funding, don’t you? You can never have enough money. The two primary founders of the business, Joe Fabris and myself, Rick Sutton. Joe’s here tonight. He’ll present. We have a couple of other co-founders that are part of the board of advisors and directors.

We did a napkin drawing in 2007. We launched the platform in late 2008, early 2009. We’ve been in business for a little over a year now.

How is the community receiving the app?

Rick Sutton:Very well. If you measure by metrics, the metrics of our user base are very strong. We have 10,000 members in 60 countries so it’s already gone global. Depending on which market you look at — the cause marketing where we talk to a marketing director about building a brand relationship or when we talk to an HR director about creating a healthy workforce, we have really strong engagement on the healthy workforce side and we have pretty good engagement on the cause marketing side.

At the 1st ever App Pitch SF event here at pariSoma, I caught up with Julian Nachtigal, the Business Development Manager in the US for Econtract Pro. Julian was kind enough to spend a lot of time with me talking about the value that EContact Pro provides, how it has become quickly popular on the App Store, bagging a featured app coverage by Apple, what the Business Model for monetizing the App is and what’s in store for the App in the coming days…

What is EContact Pro?

Julian: EContact Pro is a business card reader that uses manual transcription instead of OCR. The OCR is scanning technology, which is supposed to recognize everything that’s on a business card, but we realize it’s not very accurate. It may be 70% correct at most and sometimes it doesn’t even recognize the card.

With EContact Pro, you take a picture of a card, it’s sent to a back office where people actually see the card, transcribe it and manually input it. It comes back and it’s stored in your app and it automatically syncs with your iPhone contacts too.

What category does it fall under?

Julian:It’s in the business category. Right now, it’s #2 in the Business category! It was recently featured by Apple. It’s been doing very, very well!

Is it just an iPhone app?

Julian:Right now, it’s an iPhone app. It’s going to be on BlackBerry and Android too by the end of the year. We realize BlackBerry especially is important, because it’s a really strong business tool for people. We know we have to be on other platforms and we’re working on that.

How long have you been on the App Store and how is the Reaction?

Julian:It’s been on the app store in France since the end of January and it’s been very good. It’s hit #1 several times in Business in France and it’s been featured in France.

We launched and have been in the US app store since the end of April. We got featured last week by Apple. We hit number #2 in business and it’s been received very well. It’s got a 4 Star rating in the app store.

How much does it cost?

Julian: Right now it’s on sale for 99 cents. Usually it costs $3.99 and that includes 10 credits, which are essentially 10 business cards. Then you have in-app purchases of business cards for 10, 100 and 500. 500 business cards costs 10 cents a card and is $50 for the pack of 500. We also do custom requests as well.

What’s the turnaround time for delivering the Transcribed Cards?

Julian: It’s overnight. Usually when you collect business cards, it’s at events or conferences where you’re collecting business cards all day — so you go home or start taking pictures of them during the day.

The next morning when you wake up, all the contacts have been transcribed. They’re in your app. They’re in your iPhone contacts. If your iPhone contacts sync with your address book on your MacBook, which is usually the case, or your iMac, they sync with those — if that syncs with your Gmail, then it syncs with your Gmail as well.

Julian puts EContact Pro to work right away @SFAppPitch!

Why would I want to use this as opposed to an iPhone app like Bump or something else?

Julian: Bump is really interesting, because I get a lot of people who ask me that and with Bump, imagine you meet the CEO of Microsoft. Are you really going to go up to him and say, give me the pound and bump fists with him?

No, not really. You’re going to ask for a business card. It’s a professional business tool.

Bump is fun when you’re going out and exchanging contact information. When you’re dealing on a professional level, you want to take a business card. Then you can photograph it there and hand the business card back. You can be really green about it or you can take the card back with you, take a photo and have it transcribed?

In terms of the other ones, which are OCR apps, the question is just accuracy. Do you want accuracy? For most people, the answer is yes. With OCR, it’s not accurate. You have to go back in and edit yourself. It really becomes a waste of time and you get annoyed with the app.

We want people to be happy and satisfied when they get their contact back.

Your business model is quite obvious. Are you guys profitable right now?

Julian: We’re very close to profitable. The next steps for us in the bigger picture is something where we can sell business card transcription credits to large companies. For example, Ford could buy 100,000 business cards and pass them out to all their employees. As they’re going out and doing sales and they collect business cards, they can do.

We also want to white label the solution to integrate it into other apps, especially CRM apps like Sales Force or High Rise – where when you meet a contact who’s really a business lead, you can add their business card, you can have all their contact information — you can add other layers that that app is designed for as well.

That’s really the next step for us.

Can you tell me a little bit about the company? When was it formed, who are your founders and are you funded or looking for Funding?

Julian: The app was launched in January. Fabian Suliman is the main developer. I’m personally responsible for the business development in the US and launching it on the US market and doing the marketing.

It’s not funded in the sense that it is self-funded. We’re doing a revenue share with the main developer, so we’re partners.

Are you looking for more Funding?

Julian:We would definitely be looking for funding, especially for doing the Enterprise solutions side of things where we do the white label and where we can integrate and we build an API so people can push information to us or pull information back.

Eventually it’s something where transcription services extend beyond just business cards. It’s receipts. It’s documents. It’s notes. There’s lots of potential for it. We’ve actually been approached by people about doing it for things other than business cards. That’s where funding is the next step to build that API.

It is from a Stadium Horn called Vuvuzela (also known as “lepatata“).

The FIFA almost banned it because of the public outcry against it, but then in the last minute, decided not to.

If you are a soccer fan who wants to blow the horn and not burst your lungs at the same time, you can.

There is an iPhone app for that too! It is called Vuvuzela and it is available for FREE on itunes.
Download the FREE Vuvuzela iPhone App here.

The FREE App has already been downloaded for over 75,000 times. If the developer had charged even just 99 cents, he/she would’ve made out with nearly 50K in Net earnings!

PhoneTell is a FREE (for end users) Android App that offers a wide variety of much needed smart phone features like call management, connection to email contacts, social networks, yellow-pages, white-pages and gigantic phone number directory of over 200 million phone numbers across the United States and Canada.

Steve Larsen is the CEO of PhoneTell. His past includes being the CEO & Co-founder of Krugle, Inc., COO of Better Life Media Group, CEO, BigFix Inc, Founding team & VP BizDev at Visage Mobile, Venture Partner at St. Paul Venture Capital , Founding team & EVP/Mktg & BizDev at Net Perceptions and Founding team & VP BizDev at TicketMaster/CitySearch.

Try that for achievements!

What is PhoneTell?

Steve: PhoneTell replaces your native dialer with a dialer that lets you connect to all of your social contacts as well as over 200,000,000 phone numbers in the US and Canada — businesses, other places you may want to call.

Can you explain that a little bit more?

Steve: A lot of times you’re in a situation where you can’t take a phone call and a phone call comes in.  What PhoneTell will do is tell you who’s calling you.  It’ll tell you if it’s Walgreen’s with a prescription, tell you it’s your dentist or could tell you it’s your best friend.  It’ll give you an answer to, rather than answer the call, to be able to send them a text message saying that you’re busy — all with just one click.

We can do that because of that database of numbers that I told you about, that we use to do a reverse lookup to tell you who’s calling.  That also helps to improve your ability to find the number that you want to call.  Even if a name isn’t in your address book on your phone, you can pretty much find it because we connect to your LinkedIn account or your Gmail account as well as connecting into white pages and yellow pages so you can find local businesses or whatever.

I’m able to respond to somebody who’s calling me instead of sending them directly to voicemail.

Steve: Instantly you can respond.  You can be much more polite.

What category does this app fall under?

Steve: Communications or connections.  It’s an app that helps you connect.  In my world, there’s two kinds of categories of applications on a mobile phone.  There are things that you do to entertain yourself between connecting with people and then there are apps that help you connect with people.  We’re one of the apps that helps you connect with people.

phonetell demo kiosk at SFAppPitch @ pariSoma, San Francisco.

What is the status of the application?

Steve: It launched on May 24th for Android.

Do you have plans to publish it for iPhones?

Steve: We will be on the iPhone in about a month and we’ll be on the BlackBerry about two weeks after that.

How much does the app cost?

Steve: It’s free to users.

What is your Business Model?  How do you make Money?

Steve: When users connect to businesses like American Airlines or United or Hertz or Geico Insurance or one of those, we get paid for connecting the user to those merchants.

What is the incentive for businesses to sign up for your service?

Steve: When people are calling you on their mobile phones, it’s because they typically want to transact.  They want what you’re buying or selling.  They’re not calling you on the phone because they’re shopping.  If somebody is at their computer at four o’clock on a Saturday afternoon and they type rental cars into their browser, they want something very different than the person who is typing rental cars into their mobile phone at 9:30 at night at Miami International Airport.

In one case, they’re shopping.  In the other one, they want a damn car right now!

Tell me a little bit about the company.  When was it founded, who were the founders, are you guys funded or looking for funding?

Steve: We were founded about a year ago, by Wendell Brown and [Adrien Vanzell].  The company’s been around for about a year and it’s funded by the founders as well as angel investors.

We’re always looking for new funding.  When do we stop looking for new funding?

DoubleDutch is a free (for end users) iPhone App that make it very easy for hotels, event organizers, city bloggers and other similar entities to create their own private Social Check-In Apps into which their niche audience / attendees can check-in, network, collaborate and share.

Lawrence Coburn is the CEO and Cofounder of Double Dutch. Lawrence, an internet entrepreneur, has extensive experience and expertise in user generated content, online communities, location based services, widgets, and social media distribution.

Lawrence also blogs at Sexy Widgets and LocationMeMe.

Interview with DoubleDutch CEO and Co-Founder Lawrence Coburn.

What is DoubleDutch?

Lawrence: I’m the founder of Double Dutch and Double Dutch is a white label platform for building your own geolocation app.

What does that mean?

Lawrence: It means any community can have their own Foursquare-type service.  The idea is that if conference organizers wanted to offer their attendees the ability to check in to different events around the conference, the can do so using Double Dutch.

If a university wants to have a private check-in app just for their students with just their dorm information geotagged, they can do that with Double Dutch.

If a hotel wanted to have a virtual concierge where it would allow their guests to check in at tourist attractions around the concierge, they could do that too with Double Dutch.

So it’s serves as a great networking tool.

Lawrence uses DoubleDutch to Check-in at the SFAppPitch Private Event

What category does DoubleDutch fall under?

Lawrence: We call it B2B2C — which is business to business to consumer.  We’re looking for large brands, conferences, companies that want to deliver a geolocation app for their users.

What is DoubleDutch’s Apple App Store Status?

Lawrence: We have an example App in the Apple App Store.  It’s called Double Dutch and it basically shows you the features.  It’ll show you all the features that are available to your company or your community.  It’s a way to take a test run with the app.

Is DoubleDutch available for mainstream use right now?

Lawrence: It is.  You can play around with the app, download it off the store and if you’re interested in building your own Double Dutch for your own company under your own brand, contact info @ doubledutch.me.

Is DoubleDutch only for iPhones?

Lawrence: We’re going to have HTML 5 next month and that’ll work on any web kit browser.  So right now we’re just iPhone.

How much does DoubleDutch cost?

Lawrence: It’s a free app for the end user.  Our prices start at $10,000 setup fee (for the organizers) and then there’s a monthly usage fee for having your own private app.

Besides Hotels and Conference Organizers, who else can leverage DoubleDutch App successfully?

Lawrence: Another really good example is local city guides.  We’re seeing a lot of newspapers launch their own local city guides using their local content, like restaurant reviews and bar reviews under their own brand.

The New York Times launched one (Scoop)last week.  Similarly, we can help local media companies launch their own city guide using our platform.

What is your business model?  How does DoubleDutch, the App, make Money?

Lawrence: It’s through licensing.  Software licensing and then on a per user basis.  It’s similar to Yammer.  If a bunch of users end up using it, you pay more.  If nobody uses it, you don’t pay much money at all.

Tell me a little bit about DoubleDutch, the Company.  When was it founded, who are the founders?  Are you funded or looking for funding?

Lawrence: We raised seed funding in September of 2008.  We launched the geolocation product in March of 2010.  We are based in the Mission District (San Francisco).  We are 7 Employees.  My co-founder is Matthew Spolin, the CEO.