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Dean Andrews is author of "101 Cool Smartphone Techniques" – a how-to tips book for S60 phone owners. Mr. Andrews has written hundreds of articles covering high-technology. He works at Nokia in the Enterprise Solutions group. |
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» Find a place to park it » Get the 411 on your surroundings |
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I’m psychic and I predict that you will have trouble finding a parking space in the near future. OK, so that predication doesn’t really require any supernatural ability ‘cause we ALL have trouble parking at one time or another – at least those of us within a day’s drive of a major metropolitan area.
What to do? Point your phone’s browser to SpotScout [NOTE: currently test marketing only in Boston, New York, and San Francisco]. SpotScout is a Web-based service that takes a holistic view of the parking problem. It’s allows drivers to quickly find available spots (via their phones or PCs) but it also lets parking garages alert drivers of their availability and it even gives owners of individual private spaces the opportunity to rent their spots in small time increments.
Another US-based parking information site is Wheretofindparking.com, currently focused on Boston and New York City. Wheretofindparking offer tips on where to look and not to look for parking. It also offers a mobile site for browsing via phone. Both of these sites plan to launch in other US cities in the near future.
Don’t live in or near one of these cities? That’s why this is a blog! Please post any similar phone-friendly parking Web services that you use and tell us what city you’re in.
While traveling on business, you often need to quickly get familiar with your surroundings. Maybe you need to find a restaurant, a Fed Ex office, a hotel, or whatever. There are lots of options for tracking such info down, but a new and handy method is Google Voice Local Search or GOOG-411.
Dial 1-800-GOOG-411 on your mobile phone and you can quickly perform a local (based on you saying your city and state) search all by voice. You can say a business name or a category like, Chinese food, and the service quickly returns matches in your local area. While listening to the search results list you can ask for the address and phone number (say “Details”) and ask for a listing to be sent to your phone (say “Text Message”).
I’ve already added it to my phone’s speed dial.
