ParkShark Makes Driving in NYC a Little More Tolerable
Very seldom do you ever hear of someone actually driving around New York City in their own car. There’s plenty of alternative transportation methods to get you around from point A to point B. However, when it is absolutely necessary for you to drive around Manhattan, the hard part becomes finding a parking spot. Thanks to ParkShark, this won’t be an issue anymore.
ParkShark is an applicant to a contest designed to award the app that best utilizes the NYC Datamine in order to help the city become more transparent, accessible and accountable. It does look as though the app will work for pretty much any city in the world, though.
The app was submitted to the App Store today, meaning it will be out within the next couple weeks pending Apple approval.
I’ll let the devs describe how it works:
ParkShark is a parking space sharing application. It can be used in any city in the world, from Abidjan to Yokohama. It is ideal for use in larger metropolitan areas, where on street parking is at a premium. The goals of ParkShark are to optimize the use of limited parking resources, reduce pollution, reduce congestion and eliminate the frustration that comes with searching for a parking space. To do so, you have the ability to share your parking space with other members of the ParkShark community in real-time. Once you specify the time your spot will be available, it is visible to the other members who are searching for a spot. ParkShark uses a custom algorithm to display available spaces to those members with good ratings before displaying to other members. This encourages you to be a good ParkShark citizen and build a strong user rating. Good citizens are those that share and reserve in a reliable and consistent manner with infrequent cancellations.
So in other words, it’s using social networking to help solve a problem. Everyone helps everyone else out.
Here are some screenshots of the app. Check out a full video at this Parkshare site.
