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Category: Utility
Developer: cgCraft LLC
Requirements: iPhone 2.2 software
Compatibility: iPhone and iPod touch
File Size: 0.4 MB
Version Reviewed: 1.0
Price: $2.99

Parking App is a full-featured program designed to help you deal with parking meters. Its biggest function, and most obvious, is a simple slider that you set when you put money into the meter. Just drag until it shows how much time you have left (up to four hours, in five-minute increments), and let it run. The countdown will keep running even if you switch out to another application, or even turn the iPhone off, but you won’t get an alarm unless PA is open—which the makers attribute to Apple’s stinginess with letting other apps control background functions.

Since parking meters have different hours of enforcement, Parking App allows you to add “zones,” where you can store the information of the places you frequently stop, recording the days, hours, and weeks when you have to plug the meter (or better yet, get free parking), as well as when you’d like the alarm to go off (do you need five minutes to run downstairs, or half an hour to walk several blocks?).

Finally, if you’re in an unfamiliar area, or just have a bad memory (like me), Parking App helps you remember where you parked by typing a “hint;” a short text message with whatever helps you remember: the address, the parking level, or “by the huge fiberglass trout.” iPhone users can also use their camera to take a picture, or, if you’ve somehow got a photo in your iPod touch (emailed to you by another camera phone?), you can attach that.

Parking App’s got a clean, easy-to-use interface with some truly useful features to help prevent a parking ticket. Simple, but with the ability to store complex parking zones, this is a tool that will come in handy for any driver who regularly has to deal with meters.