The news is a little late but definitely worth taking note: Parko, a social/tech solution to the parking problem recently won the Israel Mobile Challenge, beating out 80 other contenders.

The Israel Mobile Challenge is a competition aimed at promoting technological innovation in the smart phone arena. It was sponsored by Motorola, Google, and Ben Gurion University. Noam Bardin, CEO of Waze, acted as judge of the competition.

According to Ynet’s coverage of the event:

According to the company, statistics show that the average driver will spend almost a year of his life searching for parking.

As Tel Aviv residents who face the challenge of searching for parking on a daily basis, the five young founders of Parko decided to devise a solution – in the form of an user-driven service that automatically finds available parking spots that have been reported by other drivers.

The app incentivizes drivers to share the locations of parking spots they have just vacated with prizes, coupons and even cash – as well as the promise that next time, they won’t have to spend the better part of an evening searching for an empty stretch of curb.

Source:

Read Parking Finder Wins App Contest (Ynet)