If you’ve ever wondered what it would be like to drive a taxi or become a fancy Uber driver, you might actually get the chance to. A new app called SideCar aims to become a community of people looking to give each other rides to and from their destination.

The interesting thing about SideCar is that payment is optional and the price is completely decided on by the passenger. Using the same rating system that Uber uses, this “pay what you want” model could take off, considering you’ll get low ratings as a passenger for being a cheapskate.

The service is only available in San Francisco right now and its iOS app is strikingly similar to that of Uber’s. All you have to do is create an account and associate your credit card with it and wait for a ride.

Like the Uber app, you’re shown how close available vehicles are and how long it will take for them to get to you. Once you set your location and request a pickup, SideCar drivers get to choose whether to pick you up or not.

As long as you have a valid California driver’s license, insurance, and a car you can become an Sidecar driver. Thinking like a passenger this scared me a bit at first, but according to the company, it does background checks before approving drivers:

SideCar goes through tremendous measures to ensure that drivers are safe. Not only must SideCar Drivers have a valid driver’s license, insurance and a good car in working order, but we also run background checks, conduct interviews and extensively test them with secret shoppers. We also use GPS technology to track their locations to make sure everything runs smoothly.

There’s no word on when the service plans to expand to other cities, but if its a success in San Francisco, it will surely hit other popular cities like Seattle, New York, and Los Angeles.

If you do live in San Francisco and are looking for a few ways to make an extra buck, SideCar is a great way to do that.

➤ SideCar

In the age of evolving technology, video games are starting to look more and more like movies. The last game I picked up for Xbox had a ten minute theatrical intro that looked like something I’m accustomed to seeing in a movie theater. One site wants to get us back to our roots with text-based games that have zero graphics whatsoever.

Tech writer and tech entrepreneur Andy Baio decided to not only build a site where you could play these games, he wanted to give you the tools to create your own text adventure.

Playfic started out as a side project with his 15-year-old nephew and Baio decided to introduce it to the world.

Here’s how Baio describes Playfic:

Playfic is a community for writing, sharing, and playing interactive fiction games (aka “text adventures”) entirely from your browser, using a “natural language”-inspired language called Inform 7.

While it might sound difficult and overly geeky to create a game on the platform, Baio has included some tutorials to help you along.

Walk West

If you’ve played any RPG or MMORPG games on the web, you’ve probably been presented with a command line interface that asks you to type in your next move. While it’s not meant to be pretty, it can be extremely addictive and it’s good exercise for the mind.

There is an entire community of these types of games on Playfic complete with tools to build your own and share it with your friends and other gameplayers on the site. All you have to do is start playing around with the official tutorial and you’ll get the idea immediately:

The technology used to power the games is called “Inform 7″ and something as simple as the following text is turned into a fully functional text-based game using it:

East of the Garden is the Gazebo. Above is the Treehouse. A billiards table is in the Gazebo. On it is a trophy cup. A starting pistol is in the cup. In the Treehouse is a container called a cardboard box.

There is an official manual for Inform 7 that you can get completely lost in as well as a recipe book that gives you examples of text that can be turned into an awesome game.

This style of game is familiar to anyone who has ever read a “Choose Your Own Adventure” book and is an extremely interactive way of telling a story. In fact, the site’s tagline is “Play me a story”.

Baio hopes to start a trend of fiction writing and gameplay with the site, hoping to inspire younger people who might not have grown up with this style of games or storytelling. It’s a brilliant idea and for those who have the time and imagination to spend on it, I would highly suggest having a play with the site to see if it grabs you. Try out this game to get started, it’s called “A Maze of Twisty Passages”.

➤ Playfic

Google developers aren’t taking a holiday break, apparently. YouTube and members of the Google Research team have come up with a fun way to engage users by pitting two videos against each other, asking you to choose your favorite. The company calls it YouTube Slam.

Here’s what YouTube had to say about the experiment:

Then come play YouTube Slam—a video discovery experiment we cooked up with folks from Google Research. Each week a new crop of videos battles head-to-head in Comedy, Cute, Music, Bizarre and Dance Slams, where your votes determine who wins the Slam and gets featured on the leaderboard.

This feels a lot like Mark Zuckerberg’s original project FaceMash, which was reminiscent of HotOrNot. On both of those sites, you’d vote for the person you felt was more attractive. This time around, you’re voting for YouTube videos. It’s a smart way to drive community engagement and video views.

Along with watching videos that you might not have seen before, you can get points for accurately predicting the crowd favorite with your vote, and see how your points stood up to the rest of the community at the end of the week. While it doesn’t appear that there any prizes for winning, this is definitely a boredom buster.

➤ YouTube Slam

When you see something in your neighborhood that shouldn’t be there, you’re not always sure of who you should contact. Contacting the police for graffiti isn’t the best use of their time, so the company Freedom Speaks has created an app called CitySourced to collect local problems and issues. There’s a web version, and it’s also available for the Android, iOS, Blackberry, and Windows platforms.

Even if you’re not reporting issues around you, CitySourced gives you a great idea of how safe a neighborhood is or isn’t. The reports are submitted directly to your local City Hall.

Checking your surroundings

Opening up the CitySourced app immediately triggers your location to be requested. As soon as your exact location is picked up, you’re shown a map with red pins that are reports submitted from other people.

Each report is automatically assigned a ticket number, and the progress on the report is updated by the City Hall staff in your area. How fast a city acts is dependent upon the laws where you live, but this is an extremely efficient way to report nuisances, dangerous roads, and broken traffic lights. The app does tell you that if you have a real emergency, you should call 911 and even prompts you to do so with a button.

Reporting problems

The CitySourced app is really well designed, and lets you attach photos, video, or audio with your report. Obviously, the more information that you can provide, there’s a better chance that the issue can be resolved quicker. You can submit a report with your name and contact information, or anonymously.

During the submission process, the app will pick up your current location or let you enter one in manually. The app is really fast, so reporting something out of the ordinary is easy.

CitySourced will also alert you of changes to your submission, or alert you of happenings around your current location via push notifications.

If you live in a big city or community, you probably notice illegal dumping, noise pollution, and graffiti every single day. If you took a few moments to report those issues with CitySourced, you might help everyone around you find some comfort and newfound safety. I had a sneak peek at the Windows version today, which leverages the new Mango operating system. It’s really gorgeous, as are most of the new apps coming out for the platform. Being on all major devices as well as the web, is a smart move for CitySourced.

Last week, I had the pleasure of being invited out to Finland by Finnfacts on a whirlwind tour of new and established Finnish start ups. I was also delighted to attend the renown Nordic Technology Conference MindTrek, joined by other prominent figures from the international web and technology scene.

Over the next few days I’ll be sharing thoughts and details of some of the companies we visited, these include Floobs, RuntoShop and Muxlim. Though, for the moment, I’d like to share my perspective on the Finnish startup scene and community as a whole.

First and foremost, visiting the country, there is no question the weight of the country’s most famous technology company – Nokia – is an overbearing one. While it provides jobs and a great deal of pride, it also appears to be a heavy load on the start up community who need more small and nimble company’s to look up to.

That said, in recent years with the acquisition of companies like the Google acquired microbloging service Jaiku (still held in high acclaim),  MySQL and more recently the (Nokia) purchase of Finnish/UK travel community Dopplr, there is a richer source of start up inspiration than ever before.

Nordic blogs like Arctic StartUp share news and reports about the regions finest, and provide a much needed source of promotion and support through events and the blog itself.

Ville Vesterinen, Arctic StartUp’s editor, sat with us to share some of his insights and experiences. Amongst many other facts, a notable one is the sad fact that the majority of the country’s entrepreneurial successes rarely return to the country, but rather choose to move abroad and invest their financial rewards in stocks and mortar.

While the migration of successful entrepreneurs has hampered the country’s growth, there are signs that is beginning to change and entrepreneurs like Jyri Engeström (Jaiku founder) are reportedly returning home to help nurture the community and support aspiring internetpreneurs. While others like Taneli Tikka are already there and continue to play a pivotal role within the start-up ecosystem.

In regard to financial support and investment, the most notable fixture is the support the government gives its fledgling start ups. Through programs like Tekes and Finnvera, the Finnish state provides sizable investments equal to the amount you can find through VC’s and angels. This means, if you are able to find €1 Million in investment through a VC, the government will match it with a loan at favorable rates. This can be repeated through further rounds of investment.

One significant characteristic of the start-ups we were able to visit is their international outlook. Clearly, success in Finland isn’t enough. Companies have an almost ingrained international perspective, a huge positive.

From my experience, there are a number of essential ingredients to a (potentially) successful start up ecosystem, engineers, more engineers and a special few entrepreneurs. Fortunately Finland is stacked full of them, and they’re creative too. This, combined with a supportive community, and natural drive towards global success and innovation means Finland does indeed have what it takes to play a more significant role in the international start up scene that it currently gets recognition for.

That said, the country is still in dire need of more support from its start up ambassadors, the fortunate few who have created a great deal of personal wealth and experience from their own start up successes. From my albeit short time in Finland, it is these role models that can make the difference between mediocrity and supreme international start up recognition.