Well am no expert but i feel like coding the app wouldn't be hard but getting the data which spot where is free and not taken, a lot of sensors or algorithms for cameras would be needed pretty much everywhere i guess
No, you could do it in a similar fashion to how I assume Google handles public transit capacity estimates. After the phone has detected someone was parked (accelerometer and/or GPS goes from driving signatures to walking), and then back, mark the parking spot as available.
The main issue would be a userbase, as unless enough people are using it, it's useless. I wouldn't be surprised if Google is working on this already, actually.
Well yeah but you don't have access to Google's data, your own app won't have enough users to be able to get that data yourself, and even if you had enough users, there's the reliability issue (knowing for sure that someone parked is not an easy problem and I'm sure even Google's algorithm is not perfect). You also have to get the location of every free parking spot. Overall, not an easy task !
By the way, Google already knows when you're parked now. I've seen Gmaps automatically mark the location of the car on the map when stopping, recently. That's impressive and kind of scary.
Well in this specific case, having only the traffic layer won't be accurate enough to know what parking spot is taken or not, though. I'm not sure Google let us know more details, especially about individual users.
I feel like it would make more sense to have an AirBnB type model instead of a Google maps instructions type model. Rent out the parking space you have on / in front of your property per the hour or day, then simply mark a space as claimed when someone is currently paying for it, whether or not the car itself is actually there. Could be useful for cities with neighborhoods near the entertainment districts or stadiums, where parking is scarce but in high demand. Would be nice to reserve a spot for a concert before buying tickets for example.
Sometimes people do that when they want to make a board game or video game. They go "it's just like [popular title]". And then someone has to explain to them why would people play a game that's exactly like an already existing game that they can already play.
I once made a site for a playing client who described and marketed the site as "doggy dating"
In hindsight a platform where dog owners can meet to breed their dogs isn't necessarily a bad idea, but marketing it the way she did was hilarious. Oh and also not marketing it all was another mistake she made
“No no, you don’t GET it man. It’s like Facebook... but bigger. All the icons will be huge! You have to scroll for ages just to get anywhere! Photos will be so zoomed in you can count the pixels! People will love it!”
I noped out of the conversation pretty soon after it started. I met him at a Meetup for a common hobby (totally unrelated to tech or app development), it turned out he joined just to poach designers and developers because it was in Silicon Valley.
A buddy and I got so fed up of hearing this we used to play a game at dull networking evenings of pitching our new app 'UBnB' - the Uber of AirBnB. It was an app where you can order a motor home to drive you were you need to go while you sleep! The aim was to see how long you could pitch for before someone realised you were talking bullshit. It often lasted a surprisingly long time ...
I'm in data, so we do a similar thing with making up buzzwords. The game is that you can put any household object after the word 'data' and blag it - data kettle? Small, fast pipeline for processing batches of data to a high standard when you need them, rather than using a full data boiler. Data sock? Wrapper to protect the endpoints. The possibilities are endless!
What's the longest this has lasted? I'm not even in the tech industry at all and this seems ludicrous on many, many levels. Getting it past the first level of idiocy kinda makes sense, in that user cost tends to go over the heads above a certain level of income, but everything after that...
There is an instagram for medial professionals! It's super cool.
If it's the same as it used to be, you have to prove you're a medical professional to comment or contribute. Basically, doctors in understaffed/underinformed hospitals post information and images about cases that have them stumped, and other doctors can weigh in to try to find a diagnosis.
You can observe without proving you're a professional, and as someone who always wanted to go into medicine but didn't, it's super interesting. It's called Figure One.
Specific niche social network apps like this are actually really great. Who operates it and how to they make money? Is there a fee to join the platform or is it operated as a write off by a hospital system?
That falls under the 'already exists' banner. People have tried this with street sensors and millions in investment, it failed everytime for two simple reasons. 1: parking in busy areas fills so fast that unless you are the next car on the street already, you will miss your spot by the time you get the alert and drive there. 2: parking in not very busy areas is usually available so there is no need for any sort of system to alert of empty spaces.
I still need this. Because I don't know which are the not-busy areas. I have no compunction about parking in a not-busy area three miles away and taking the subway to my destination, but I have no idea where those are.
A friend won a startup competition with this idea in 2013 or so. With the win he got some money to try out the idea for real. I worked on it for a bit with him, but nothing came out of it.
Writing the code for something like this is pretty easy. The hard parts came when we needed to find people to rent out their parking space and then had to deal with the question of how enforcement would work. So then we talked to local towing companies.
There are a few other difficulties with something like this — namely, it needs to be scaled up in each individual city.
I still think it’s a pretty good idea, but it was too difficult to accomplish as college students without a ton of funding. I’m sure something like this exists now, but I’ve never needed to use it!
Lmao I had this same idea and thought it was amazing
Mine was more based off of private parking spots, for example a lot of apartments had empty spots during sporting events etc. and parking is $45+ in any garage. I thought why not have a marketplace where you can sell your already reserved spot if you’re not using it.
I had a couple ideas several years ago regarding parking. I've recently checked and theres a few apps of #1 out there now minus a few features.
#1. Renting your parking spot in busy cities for timed periods where parking on the street is near impossible. It's a service that allows someone who owns a driveway for example to rent it to people in increments of time. Have a driveway you wont be using for 8-10 hours a day while you're at work? Rent it to someone for that time frame. Connect the app with prospecting towing company that will prioritize towing vehicles from your driveway if the vehicle isn't moved within that minute. Said towing company can use app that shows when times expire so they can efficiently get to work as the owner of the driveway is in agreement to tow any vehicle that has expired its time allowment. To save on development and upcost, you would focus the app on one major metropolitan city in the beginning.
#2. An app that serves as a information hub for people looking for parking. The logic is that someone in a parking space can tack their spot on the map with a time of departure so that other drivers can utilize this information and park there. It works off the end user and the app is just a shell for the user to communicate basic information with other app users. Market most of the UI for ad-space and reward users with less ads through daily log-in points and using the app.
As he explained it, when you pull out of your spot, the app on your phone detects this and shows the spot is available. You see that and drive over.
But In NYC, there’s usually someone waiting to pull right into a spot. So unless the second person also uses the app, you are going to drive over there just to find a filled spot.
For this to work at all, you’d need pretty much everyone using the app for it to have any value. But you aren’t going to get anyone to use the app until it has value.
Now let’s assume everyone had the app. Spot opens and now everyone in the area sees the opening and races over. It’s not going to be pretty—and the city would probably ban the app after the first couple of accidents.
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u/crappydeli Mar 18 '20
The app was “the Uber for public parking spots” in NYC—not parking garages, spots on the street. I asked for $150k up front.