Last week, I announced (in conjunction with Dash and Trulia) that we would give away a Dash GPS car navigation device to whoever could come up with the best new app for it. Readers came up with more than 300 suggestions, including the sketch at left (which I have no idea what it is supposed to be). But many of the ideas were pretty solid.
They included things like calendar integration, ride-sharing apps, an OpenTable mashup, and some interesting location-based games.
But the Dash GPS goes to Alfred Toh, who came up with ParkSpot:
ParkSpot - A real time social parking utility.
Basically, dash owners will help other dash owners find parking on busy city streets. When one dash owner is getting ready to leave, set your ParkSpot status to ready to leave and this will broadcast your location to nearby dash owners whose set to finding spots.
Another great idea, which a few people hit upon, revolved around location notes or geographic bookmarks, but the person who nailed it best was Rob Graff, who came up with Muck:
Muck - ‘A location based twitter like app’
You write a 200 character or so message, which is then geo tagged and sent to a database. When other people drive pass location where you wrote the message, they are read you message through their dash. Stuff like “this is the longest red light in town” or “there is a funny looking bum on this corner every morning” come to mind.
Rob will get a TechCrunch T-shirt. The second runner-up, who also gets a T-shirt is JW, who came up with:
*Ad-Supported Tolls*
The GPS knows when you are going thru tolls and could show however many geo-targeted ads would offset the cost of that toll. This could be linked to an E-Z Pass account so Toll-Booths wouldn’t hafta make any changes.
Honorable mentions (sorry, no prizes):
Garage Sale search and proximity locator.
My app would be a shopping utility. You input the item you’re looking to buy and it shows you retailers on the map that sell that item and the price. You can find the shortest distance to get the product for the lowest price.
Blabba.
An app that blabs to you; er, reads (e-mail, RSS feeds, etc.) to you so you crazy drivers (me included) can stop thumbing around on your iPhones and Blackberrys while you drive.
Guided Tours!
Your in a new city, or maybe your hometown. You download a tour, maybe for a specific topic like architectural history. You follow the tour in your car and it tells you some interesting things about where you are. It tells you stop & park and then you can read some more, maybe get out and look for something interesting. The cool thing about this is that the tours could be on many subjects. I’d love to take a guided tour of my town, Schenectady - there’s lots of hidden history all around.
Valet Monitor - it keeps track of how far they took your car! (think of Ferris Bueller) You enter a PIN and the device won’t shut off till you disable it. I think the Ferris Bueller car scene would be a great marketing ad for Dash in general.
P2P Parcel Delivery: A peer-to-peer parcel delivery service that brings people who want to send parcels with people in their area who are going to the parcel’s destination area. Dash can be used for tracking purposes.
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nice idea.
Some are really good ideas..especially the parking and parcel ones… and also I dont like paying tolls… so that too..
I think the ad supported tolls is a bit more stable. In a busy city, parking spaces go fast and I don’t know how realistic that idea is. I just hope the ads would be audio not video that would be a bit dangerous. AB
The idea for parking spots is not new.
I’m with Adam, I think on the surface it’s a *great* idea. In reality it won’t work and it will just make your life a bit worse in particular in the city where parking spaces go just as quickly as they become available.
*ping* parking spot available
ooohh, drive two blocks
oh it’s gone
*ping* another parking spot available
drive one block
oh it’s gone
repeat until suicidal
Hum, I thought that’s what http://www.spotscout.com/ has been doing for a while except it’s not on the Dash… Anyhow I still think the lack of incentives for the person leaving a spot is what’s holding up this model…
I agree with CN. Not only that, it is also going to work only with Dash. How about all those people taking up parking spots without Dash? Within a few hours the database will be completely out of sync from the real parking spots. Also, how do you make money?
Yeah the parking spot idea is terrible unless EVERYONE is running the app. “Muck” exists already as BrightKite- and the Ad Supported Tolls thing doesn’t require a GPS at all, they could just put the ads on the easy-pass website and watching one credits your account $0.25 or something.
Not too impressed, sorry.
Nice thing to know that online social activity can help more people even for offline activity
What if you had the “Parking Space Seekers” pay* the “Parking Space Leavers” to hold the space until they arrive?
I’d happily pay a few dollars for a space downtown, and I suspect that some people would happily wait a couple minutes for a few dollars.
* electronically, of course.
what incentives does one have to say their space is now open. once most get their parking space any sense of altruism is over.
Hmph. I think Streetline Networks (http://www.streetlinenetworks.com) has a better idea that will be more functional and accurate - radio-transmitting reflectors that detect whether a car is parked over them or not, which then transmits to a local cell-based restransmitter. Cities use it for automated parking charges to your credit card, and offer a mobile app driven by GPS to locate that parkign spot. Rollouts in san francisco and LA right now.
I think the real solution is flexible pricing for parking spots.
You can’t find a parking spot often because the spots are too cheap or free. There is a “tragedy of the commons” where free resources are consumed even for a slight benefit because the real costs of providing a resource are borne by someone else, in this case the taxpayers who paid for the land and the paving.
Free roads, free parking, free right to pollute. All of it hastens global warming, raises your taxes and creates more urban sprawl.
But don’t worry; you won’t have to pay the bill for awhile. It’ll just show up out of the blue and ask for a big bailout.
Real capitalism is actually good for the environment.
Ok… You finish what you where doing, go to your car, turn it on and leave… oh no, wait… first I need to turn on my Dash and launch tell the app I’m leaving so other Dash users are aware…. then when the app is ready I can leave….
Have you ever followed somebody in a parking lot to get his/her spot?
Not to mention that the amount of Dash users needs to be HUGE so this can work. I don’t think people are buying Dashes as they buy iPhones.
Don’t worry. Even with the unit on, it will take awhile before the satellite is acquired and you’ll be half a block away before you’re asked about the spot you left behind.
I included a marketing campaign and all I got was this non-existent TechCrunch tshirt! jk
I like the two runners up ideas over the winner because the parkspot would require such a large group of early adapters within the Dash userbase to be worthwhile.
I would probably refine the idea to be a background process that loads on boot-up. If another person is in the area and is looking for a spot then it plays a loud noise and asks you to confirm whether it is a parking spot or your driveway. Opt-out instead of opt-in would make it a lot more useful.
i like the Guided Tours the best. Muck/BrightKite can be expanded by showing videos, text and inside pictures of nearby buildings/restaurants in addition to other people’s comments…should ask the user if they want to see the details