SpotScout: startup hopes to create online marketplace for open parking spaces

[mandy]

Finding a parking spot often requires drivers to summon their inner caveman: Scan the horizon for the target, then bag it before someone else does.

A startup company is betting it can chip away at that anachronism and transform the search for parking just as eBay Inc. changed auctions.

SpotScout Inc. hopes to create an online marketplace where drivers armed with mobile phones can not only reserve private spaces in garages and driveways, but also swap public parking spots in real time, with vacant spaces going to the highest bidder.

Analysts who track emerging online applications say the fledgling venture could successfully capitalize on the growing popularity of mobile Web-surfing and big-city parking frustrations...

full article: http://www.dailyherald.com/business/story.asp?id=285294

the SpotScout web site: http://www.spotscout.com/

[regic]

drivers armed with mobile phones can...also swap public parking spots in real time, with vacant spaces going to the highest bidder.

Yeah right. :

[BellisimaJ.]

but also swap public parking spots in real time, with vacant spaces going to the highest bidder.

Yeah, and create accidents and traffic jams while they are playing on their mobile. This really, really sucks. I can see people killing each other over parking spots in a large city-----hell, they aren't far from that now.