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Google Maps will help you park in 25 more cities
Back in January, Google rolled out a "parking difficulty" icon in Maps which, as its name suggests, explains how hard it will be to find a spot for your vehicle. While useful, it was only available in 25 US cities, including New York and San Francisco. Today, it's being expanded to a further 25 locations around the globe: Alicante, Amsterdam, Copenhagen, Barcelona, Cologne, Darmstadt, Dusseldorf, London, Madrid, Malaga, Manchester, Milan, Montreal, Moscow, Munich, Paris, Prague, Rio de Janeiro, Rome, Sao Paulo, Stockholm, Stuttgart, Toronto, Valencia and Vancouver.
At the Mercedes museum, your rental car parks itself
The concept of a self-parking car certainly isn't new, but Daimler is about to take the next logical step on that front. It's partnering with Bosch to launch an Automated Valet Parking service at the Mercedes-Benz Museum in Stuttgart. When it launches at the start of 2018, anyone (not just museum guests) can rent cars that will not only drive themselves out, but park themselves upon return. You just need a smartphone app to both make the reservation and the virtual handover when you're done.
BMW 5 Series sedans relieve parking woes with real-time updates
Transportation analytic company Inrix announced this week that its On-Street Parking service will be incorporated into the BMW 5 Series sedan. The service provides real-time information on the likelihood of parking availability based on historical and up-to-the-minute data.
Google Maps can remember where you parked on Android and iOS
Google Maps already lets you know when parking at your destination might be difficult, but the app's latest navigation feature aims to make things even easier after you've arrived. The helpful parking location features we saw last month just became official, meaning Google Maps on Android and iOS will now remember where you parked the car once you reach your destination -- and it's literally a no-brainer to use on iOS.
Google Maps warns you about parking woes before you leave
A parking difficulty icon popped up in an Android beta for Google Maps earlier this month, but now the feature is officially rolling out. However, there are a couple of caveats. First, the parking warnings are only available in the Android version of Google Maps for now. The new tool will also only warn you about potential parking headaches in 25 US metro areas.
Google Maps may soon offer parking suggestions
Google Maps can already tell you how congested your drive will be, but how about when you arrive? It looks like the app is about to give you at least a decent idea about the parking situation, thanks to a new feature spotted in the latest 9.44 beta by Android Police. Availability of spaces at a selected destination is shown as "easy," "medium" and "limited," with the latter situation highlighted in red. Once you start navigating, it'll give further details in the instructions, indicating that parking around your arrival address is "usually not easy" or "limited," for instance.
VW's latest acquisition helps you pay for parking by phone
Volkswagen wants to turn itself into more of a mobility company than a pure automaker, and it just made an acquisition that should help make that a reality. It's snapping up PayByPhone, a Canadian company that lets you pay for parking through smartphone apps, calls and text messages. The terms of the deal are hush-hush, but PayByPhone handles about $300 million in transactions per year across major cities that include Boston, London, Paris, San Francisco and Seattle.
New York City now lets you pay for parking with your phone
New York City is making good on its promise to have smarter parking meters before 2016 is over. As of December 19th, the first ParkNYC-capable Muni-Meters are live in midtown Manhattan -- you can now pay for parking through a smartphone app (or the web, or a call) instead of fishing for cards and coins. While you'll need to load a virtual wallet, you can extend your parking if you're in danger of running out. The days of racing to the meter to top it up will soon be over, then, but so are the days of pleading with traffic officers when you're a little too late.
ICYMI: Hand over your car to the robot overlords
try{document.getElementById("aol-cms-player-1").style.display="none";}catch(e){}Today on In Case You Missed It: A new parking structure will autonomously park cars without a single human's assistance. Meanwhile Colorado School of Mines is testing small-scale water treatment plants that could be used in neighborhoods rather than one city location. And Canadians sent the US a darling little 'keep your head up' video that has us saying aww! The machine mating video on YouTube can be found here. As always, please share any interesting tech or science videos you find by using the #ICYMI hashtag on Twitter for @mskerryd.
German cars will share real-time data to help you find parking
However smart your car might be, there's only so much it can tell you by itself. Wouldn't it be nice if cars regularly shared helpful driving info beyond what you offer in mobile apps? Here thinks so. It's launching services that will have cars automatically sharing real-time data to improve commutes for everyone. Vehicles (starting with those from Here owners Audi, BMW and Mercedes-Benz) will use their sensors and cameras to offer details on free parking spaces, traffic conditions, and road hazards. You'd know that a parking spot has opened up, or that heavy rain is forcing drivers ahead to slow down.
Ford's app lets you find and pay for garage parking
Ford is making some canny moves to get its brand in front of the public, even for folks who don't own one of its cars. Its latest update to the FordPass app lets your reserve a parking spot in garages at over 160 US cities. You just enter a destination and the time you need to park, and can view available spots and pricing on a map in real time from the eight garages Ford has partnered with. You can then reserve and pay for a spot using FordPay, a service that lets you store your credit and debit cards.
AI lawyer shoots down 160,000 parking tickets
Who said that chat bots were gimmicks? Certainly not DoNotPay's Joshua Browder. He recently noted to VentureBeat that his service's AI-driven virtual lawyer has successfully contested 160,000 parking tickets in London and New York City in nearly 2 years of service, saving drivers millions in the process. It's not the most complicated bot, as it's really just asking simple questions about the circumstances of the ticket and walking you through the appeal. However, it's both effective (it successfully challenged 64 percent of tickets) and, importantly, free -- you don't have to pay a real lawyer to dish out advice.
Mitsubishi uses sound and WiFi to locate you indoors
There have been many attempts at locating you indoors when GPS fails, but they usually come with catches. WiFi alone isn't very accurate, for example, while a ton of beacons isn't always practical. Mitsubishi may have a good answer to those problems, however: using two techniques at once. It just developed an approach that determines your location based on the time it takes for sound to reach positioning-capable WiFi access points. It's accurate to within 3.3 feet, and it works with as few as three hotspots -- which, of course, can get you online at the same time as they get you from A to B.
NYC's parking meters are getting a big upgrade this year
Driving in New York City is stressful enough as it is and that's before you have to try finding a parking spot only to realize that you're out of quarters. Mayor Bill de Blasio has a plan in place for making the latter easier, however: upgrading Gotham's 85,000 parking meters so they all accept smartphone-based payment systems by year's end. Rather than printing out a slip and putting it on your dashboard, soon you'll be able to just flash your phone at the new Muni-Meters.
TfL is making it easier to beat traffic and find parking
With the majority of Brits now owning a smartphone or tablet, developers have jumped at the chance to deliver up-to-the-minute information on traffic and travel. Transport for London (TfL) has helped facilitate a number of these features by opening its data feeds, which let app makers display train departure times, ticket costs and even list which stations have toilet facilities.
Ford service helps you get around town, whatever you drive
Ford's traditional business has revolved around making cars, but it's increasingly seeing itself as a transportation company that just happens to make vehicles. Need proof? Just look at the company's newly unveiled FordPass. The free-to-start service is built to help you get around town, whether or not you own a Ford -- it'll help you find and pay for parking, share cars and (in the future) book ridesharing trips. There's a FordPay virtual wallet that will help you pay for everything, and you'll even have access to free FordGuides (basically, customer service agents) that can help out.
Hail a scooter-riding 'Vallie' to park your car in London
Driving in London can be slow and stressful enough, but finding a parking spot? Eesh. For many locals, that's the stuff of nightmares. Vallie wants to solve the problem with a valet parking app that lets you request custom drop-off and pick-up points inside the city. The service is available right now, but there are some caveats to be aware of; one, it's only available in a small patch of central London, between Farringdon and Aldgate; two, parking costs £8 per hour or £25 per day; three, Vallie only operates Monday to Friday, 7am to 8pm, so late-night dinners and weekend expeditions are out of the question.
Your iPhone could help you find where you parked your car
Two freshly published Apple patents might make your next visit to the mall a bit less stressful. "Automatic Identification of Vehicle Location" and "Vehicle Location In Weak Signal Scenarios" -- which were both filed in early 2013 and became public today -- describe systems that can point you to your parking space with or without the assistance of GPS. Far from a simple waypoint system that sends you back the way you came, both patents note that the system "can determine when a vehicle in which the mobile device is located has entered a parked state," automatically. This can be achieved either by utilizing an iPhone's built-in accelerometer to determine the difference between in-motion driving and a stopped, parked state, or via a data connection with the vehicle itself, which would then tell the device that the car is indeed parked. Once this is determined, the user's path away from the vehicle is tracked to allow for the return trip to be plotted. As someone who hates going to the grocery store for multiple reasons -- one of which being that I never remember to mentally note my parking space -- this could certainly come in handy. As with all patents, however, we may very well never see this system make it into a device, though it certainly seems to be technically doable with existing technology. [via AppleInsider]
MonkeyParking app draws ire of San Francisco officials
Finding parking in any big city can often be a big, bonafide pain in the arse. One company with an eye towards remedying the problem is MonkeyParking, an Italian-based startup that runs out of San Francisco. The premise of MonkeyParking is rather simple: Whenever a driver is about to leave a parking spot, he lets users of MonkeyParking now in exchange for money (and the spot). On the other end, drivers who can't find a spot can put out a bid through the app to incentivize drivers of parked cars to make some cash and give up coveted parking spots. The app description reads in part: MonkeyParking is the first app which lets you make money every time that you are about to leave your on-street parking spot. ... You can use MonkeyParking when you really need a parking spot: just broadcast your bid. It's like "Hey I will pay somebody $5 to leave me the parking spot he is currently using!" While this service ostensibly seems to have been developed in the vein of similar consumer-facing apps like Uber and TaskRabit, the city of San Francisco is vehemently fighting to get the service and app itself eradicated. Calling the business illegal, The Wall Street Journal reports that the City Attorney's Office in San Francisco recently sent a cease and desist letter to the company noting that drivers who use the service could face a penalty of $300 for each infraction while MonkeyParking itself would be liable for up to $2500 in fines for each infraction. So what has the San Francisco attorneys so heated? Well, it's quite simple. They claim that no individual can enter into any type of contract "with or without compensation for the use of any street or sidewalk." Emblematic of just how serious San Francisco is taking the issue, they've even sent a take down request for the app to Apple's legal department. As of Tuesday morning, the app remains available on the App Store. Taking a step back, it's easy to see why the powers that be in San Francisco are so concerned. What's to stop a group of friends, or even one person, from occupying a number of spots and staying put until the price of individual bids rises to astronomical levels? While I can appreciate the idea behind MonkeyParking, one of the apps unintended consequences may be to exacerbate an already frustrating problem by artificially increasing the shortage of open parking spots. Notably, similar apps such as Parkmodo have also drawn the attention of local officials in San Francisco. Daniel Shifrin, the chief executive of San Francisco-based Parkmodo, told Venture Capital Dispatch that his company has researched the legality of the business model, and that the service is not buying and selling parking spaces. "You can't sell something you don't own," he said. To which the City's Attorney's Office would likely respond, "Exactly!" Whereas services like Uber and Airbnb connect individuals with services furnished by private citizens, MonkeyParking does no such thing. If people want to profit off of their own house, apartment, or labor, there's no problem. Similarly, there'd be no problem if MonkeyParking operated without a payment component to the app. But once you start charging a fee (at best) or creating a bidding war (at worst) for information regarding public parking spots, it's hard to make a case that such a service is fair or even beneficial. Besides, isn't public parking already expensive enough?
San Francisco bans apps that let you buy and sell public parking spots
Anyone who's ever driven in San Francisco knows that parking in the city can be a nightmare -- garages are often expensive and street spaces are almost impossible to find, especially during peak hours. Several parking apps have cropped up to resolve that issue, a few by allowing folks to auction or sell their spots to others. Sounds like a neat way to make money, right? Well, there's a very important snag: buying and selling public parking spaces like that is illegal. San Francisco City Attorney Dennis Herrera has just issued a cease-and-desist demand today to Monkey Parking, an iOS app that lets users bid for other people's parking spaces. The letter cites San Francisco Police Code section 63(c) that states: "It shall be unlawful for any person, firm or corporation to enter into a lease, rental agreement or contract of any kind, written or oral, with or without compensation, for the use of any street or sidewalk."
