An Online Guide to Parking Spots

I was on Yahoo the other day and ran across some company startup news. I thought this was interesting because it appears to use google maps with mashups. The founder and chief executive of this new startup company, Rick Warner, came up with this idea while looking for a parking space in San Francisco. The company is called ParkingCarma and is based in Flint Michigan which is due to public and private funds that were made available to entrepreneurs who start new businesses in Flint.

It’s not clear if there is a cost involved with using the service because it appears to be free to view available spaces. However, the company does get revenue from ads as well as a percentage of parking fees. The article states that there is an additional fee of $9.99 a year for registered users in San Francisco and San Diego if they want to reserve spaces with their computer, PDA or mobile phone.


The service also offers parking rate information related to hourly or monthly parking and the website lists upcoming events in a few major cities which include: New York, Boston, Los Angeles, Chicago, San Francisco and San Diego. Of course, these events all revolve around the ability or necessity to “find parking”.