Two apps to help you find a parking spot

The real boon here is for meter mates and maids that can now more efficiently target meters that are coming up for expiration, and then ticket or even tow the offending vehicles.
The app that's really needed (and infrastructure to go with it) is one that allows folks to pay for and repay for their parking spaces remotely, as if currently available in a few cities in the world.

Just saying, that Chicago parking thing would take off like crazy, considering the ridiculous parking meters are now!

Peter & Josh H -- I think each of you is defining 'the spot opens up' differently. The only thing the Primo-spot site does is tell you when the street parking spot becomes legally available. The site doesn't tell you if the spot is vacant or not. So if you use the site, you'll end up driving to an area where you can legally park, and then you'll circle around to find a vacant spot.

If you are looking for monthly parking, try www.parkitguides.com. This site says it has more than 350 garages signed up to bid on your business for monthly parking and that it guarantees the lowest rates.

Peter, you are incorrect about the PrimoSpot site, I saw this in the blog:

http://www.primospot.com/blog/new-feature-upcoming-spots

Basically, it shows the upcoming spot as about to be free when it is about to be free based on what time it is NOW. If the regulation expires at 7P and its 6:30, then you would see it. It seems you can search for different times too to see when these will pop up (the search box on the left). When I was browsing the site I saw a few in the E Village, they are the pins with the star on them.

I am having too much fun looking at all the broken down bikes locked to the racks. Fun stuff, now back to work!

Thanks for just wasting my two dollars - Guess it was my fault for trusting TUAW's review and not studying the website first.

"PrimoSpot Parking is designed to help you find spots in New York City or Boston -- you punch in your location and parking spots, garages, or bike racks will pop up on the screen with markers according to when they open up."

Except... this isn't true. What the app does when you punch in your location is tell you when the parking spots become -no cost-, I.E. when the meters shut off. It does NOT estimate or tell you when the spot will open up. From their own website, "Parking spots: Easily see on the map where you can (and cannot) park, check the markers to know how much time is left based on the regulations, and know what spots that are about to become legal."

Becoming legal and becoming available are not at ALL the same things. It's my fault for trusting you, but you definitely just cost me two dollars with terribly shoddy reporting and I suspect you'll cost quite a few more of your readers until this gets edited or taken down.

Oh, and @John R Haigh: Primo is available for Android, coming for blackberry, and freely available on all mobile browsers at http://m.primospot.com. All facts available on the front page of Primo's website that this article failed to cover.

@Wojtek Great suggestion! :D

This needs a lot more scale to work. Probably needs to be available on more than just the iPhone as well. A little too early for this, but a good idea. Pushing the envelope. Maybe if it was simply a mobile website that worked in the same manner...

-John :)
App Popular, LLC
http://AppPopular.com

Cool, would it be even cooler if the lot could use twitter to twitt available spots? Or at least tell you if lot id full or not?
Hmmmm