PrimoSpot Blog

We are proud to announce we have just added push notifications reminders to our PrimoSpot Parking iPhone app.

Now in addition to knowing where you parked you car, you can send yourself a reminder when it is time to move it. This might be for how long you can park in at a meter, the parking regulation will go into effect, or even when your garage is closing.

It will default to the best time based on the regulations where you have parked, but you can set it for whenever you like.

For instance, if you use the app to park at an on-street spot and its metered for one hour, the app will set the reminder time for just under one hour. If you park at a side of the street that has a rule that says you can park until 9:30AM, the reminder will be set to 9:25AM.

You can set the reminder a specific date/time or set it to minutes from now (see the screen shot below).

Our web site has been overhauled for a whole new look, and also we have added new functionality to our map interface:

General Site Look and Feel

• spiffy new font
• cleaner layout
• new top navigation, buttons, and footer

On-Street Parking Map

• Choose how long you want to park for and the map markers will change for this amount of time. (explained below)
• The legend on the left is now dynamic. You can turn off different marker colors for less clutter. this helps you find parking for the specific time lengths faster. you can turn off the "bad idea" spots if you do not want to see them.
• metered spots show up as colored parking meters on the map for more clarity

Choosing how long you want to park:

In the search box on the left, you can now type in how long you are trying to park for. Typical examples are 4 hours and 15 minutes. Using this new feature you can find the exact regulations you need to park for as long as you want -- even at a future time.

After selecting your time, a new status bar at the top shows you what times you are looking at.

Interactive Legend:

The legend on the left hand side is now interactive. You can turn markers on and off to find the length of time you want faster.

Here is the map after turning off the "bad idea" markers

Meter Markers:

New metered markers for the map if a metered (paid) regulation is in effect

Coming Soon

• All on-street parking info for Brooklyn and Queens.
• Updated on-street regulations for Manhattan. Thanks for all the feedback!
• Mobile app updates for these new features.

"New York City traffic agents have begun training to learn how to deal with a new law that gives drivers a five-minute grace period in some parking zones" ...

"It gives a five-minute grace period in timed zones and meters before a ticket can be written."

City Traffic Agents Training for New Parking Grace Period Law

We’re thrilled that our founder Mike was invited to join the conversation on Brian Lehrer Live this past Wednesday, March 24,2010, which was focused on whether new technologies, such as mobile parking applications, are helping the congestion and parking challenges in NYC.

Great points were made by David King, a professor of urban planning at Columbia. We do feel that once there is wider use of available parking applications such as PrimoSpot, people will be parking smarter. The only thing that will truly help congestion is less cars! Since that is not a near-term reality, we think that technology that saves time and gas sure doesn't hurt. We actually look forward to connecting with him in the future.

If you'd like to check Mike out on TV you can find it here:

The page on the Brian Lehrer site

For the many many folks who have downloaded our parking reminder application, iParked in the iTunes store, we completed a key feature for this app - specifically, push notifications.

Not only will you be able to set a reminder as to where you parked, but you'll also be able to set a reminder for when your meter expires or even when your garage is closing, and receive a notification. You can chose to get a notification for a specific date/time or choose minutes from now (see the screen shot below).

This feature is now live in the iParked app and will soon be rolled out to our main app, PrimoSpot Parking.

Happy Parking!

We have added information for the area around Harvard University campus area in Cambridge, MA.

Please let us know using our feedback system if you encounter any information might need to be updated.

If you watched the Apple iPad keynote yesterday, you may have noticed our app made an appearance:

Steve Jobs was discussing the great apps available for the iPhone, and included our app in the slide at 1:30. The same image was shown later at 2:47. We are honored to be featured by Apple in this way!

PrimoSpot is excited about the new device. We're looking forward to releasing a Primospot app for the iPad that will take full advantage of the larger screen and new interface capabilities. Stay tuned for more details!

We have added in parking information for the neighborhood of Bensonhurst in Brooklyn. Bed Stuy is well on its way also. Look for more Brooklyn, Bronx, and Staten Island soon.

The NYC parking landscape is quite vast, and we've been providing coverage of Manhattan and some good solid chunks of Brooklyn and Queens for a while now. It has been a longtime objective of the PrimoSpot team to provide FULL coverage of NYC for everyone that lives and visits for both on-street regulations and garages.

Recently, we've been working with the NYC DOT to secure additional information that will help support our on-street parking regulations. It will take some time to integrate properly, but we expect to have both on-street and garage data for most ALL of NYC for Q3 2010. Some areas will likely be integrated in advance of that. If you have PrimoSpot already, it will simply show up in the app when it is ready to go, no upgrade of the mobile app is necessary.

We know...that sounds great, but...it gets better! This will also improve our existing coverage, too! We'll be able to provide more detail for each block we currently cover. Some blocks have multiple regulations on them, and right now our markers identify only the most critical. We'll be able to split blocks to have markers that reflect each individual regulation for the exact space it applies to.

The other great thing about this is as we work with more city agencies, we can add support for new coverage areas quicker than our previous methods.

We're pretty darn excited about this, especially since some of us live in the "outer boroughs".

Here is an image of a DOT regulation mapped in the Bronx and another of some regulations in Manhattan. Note the exact location of each sign on the street.

Stay tuned...

We have been very busy collecting and entering data on which garages will park motorcycles. When viewing the details for a garage on our site, we now indicate which garages have motorcycle parking and an icon will show in the price chart down below:

We are working on a way to search and filter the results for only these types of garages and will post on our blog when this is completed. In the meantime, please send us feedback regarding garages that we may have tagged incorrectly or those which need this item added to them.

*Note: Some garages that park motorcycles will run out of space for bikes, especially in the winter months. Be sure to call ahead before mounting up.