Cognitive Cities

Android just got that much better: Google has just released an Android app called Open Spot that lets users leaving parking spots share their spots with other users searching for parking. How cool is that?

It gets cooler. Open Spot has three degrees applied to a parking spot based on the amount of time since it was marked as open wit red pins for new open spots, orange for spots that have been open for over five minutes and yellow for over ten. After 20 minutes, Google takes down the open spot (Google also acknowledges that 20 minutes, especially in densely populated areas, is a long time for a spot to stay open, but they counter that with a “the more info the better” argument – we’ll have to see if people get a bit of parking rage when they show up 18 minutes later and the spot is gone).