Nowadays it’s rare to find a web site that launches without a beta tag. “Beta” has become a badge that implies, “We’re not your grandfather’s boring old internet! We’re Web 2.0!”. Dion Almaer sums up my thoughts perfectly in his post on Beta: The Web 2.0 Neverending Clearance Sale.

Originally, “beta release” meant a feature-complete version of software that was given to a limited number of people for the purpose of finding bugs. Once the bugs were fixed, the software became version 1.0 and lost the beta tag.

Microsoft started the trend of widely-released betas when they offered pre-release versions of Windows XP and Office. Reviewers would say, “the software is buggy, but it’s beta so we can’t hold that against them”. Beta became a way to shield yourself from criticism.

While Microsoft started the trend, I think Google is to blame for the rampant misuse we see in web startups today. GMail has been in beta for 2 years now. Google News was in beta for 4 years. The word loses all meaning when used in this way. Flickr has thankfully moved out of beta over a year after they were acquired by Yahoo, but now their website says Flickr is “gamma”. Flickr launched almost 3 years ago; enough with the Greek letters!

If you’ve been reading this thinking “hypocrite! ParkWhiz has a beta tag too!”, you’re absolutely right. For now.

The parking search tool available right now at ParkWhiz.com is only a subset of what ParkWhiz will be. Aashish and I thought long and hard about how we could convey this to people when they visit ParkWhiz’s homepage. We concluded that a beta tag would be best since people have grown accustomed to seeing it around the internet. When the ParkWhiz Marketplace launches, you have my personal guarantee that the word “beta” (hell, all Greek letters) will be banished from our website.

JetBlue recently announced they will begin flying to and from O’hare Airport starting in January. (Woohoo!!! It’s about time.) This announcement got me thinking about JetBlue and its overnight popularity among consumers. Twenty years ago, American, United, and Delta dominated the airline industry, limiting consumer choice and creating a virtual monopoly. Today, JetBlue has created an efficient, low-cost approach with improved customer service that has shaken up an industry mired in profit loss and status quo. The question begs, was there a paradigm shift that enabled this transition?

The Internet, plain and simple, is the shift that changed the airline industry. With the Internet, the world has shrunk. Consumers can easily know all of their options for flying—price, class, location, etc. They’ve become empowered. (Remember the days when you had to call or visit a travel agent just to book a flight?) Powerful search engines and sites like SideStep and Farecast have brought visibility to discount carriers that lack major airlines’ marketing budgets. Consumers have learned that they can find affordable fares. With the Internet, these new airlines can keep their costs down making flying from one coast to the other coast a cinch. As the Southwest ads say, “The country just got smaller”.

Like the airline industry, the parking industry is undergoing a paradigm shift. Although fragmented, parking is led by industry titans, Standard Parking and Central Parking. These companies manage many of the parking facilities in the United States. If you head out to a ballgame, aside from finding meter parking, you’re pretty much limited to these parking operators and their rates. The reality is, however, that there are millions of unused parking spaces all around us, such as empty driveways and retail shopping lots that can be had for less money and closer proximity. What the industry needs is a marketplace to enable this.

ParkWhiz is dedicated to creating this marketplace. Once the ParkWhiz Marketplace launches, the parking industry will change forever. The ParkWhiz Marketplace will allow you to find parking where you want it, when you want it and how you want it. It’s just a matter of time before the JetBlue of parking comes to a city near you!

If you’ve been searching ParkWhiz for parking in the Chicago area, you’ve probably noticed that there is no pricing information for many of the listings. That’s where you come in.

Anyone can edit ParkWhiz listings, so if information is missing or incorrect, you can fix it. Just go to the “more info” page for a listing and click on “Edit business info”.

You can update the facility’s pricing, operating hours, local driving directions, or any other information that you think might be useful to other people.

The more people contribute, the more useful ParkWhiz can be. The idea is very similar to Wikipedia. With an active group of users who are passionate about helping others find parking, ParkWhiz can grow to become a comprehensive source of parking information.

A few years back, some friends and I were heading to a football game. It was a typical Saturday afternoon and as we entered town, traffic began to bear down. Kickoff was only 20 minutes away, and given that we woke up late and missed tailgating, we were already a bit on edge. As we veered off the main road to try and avoid traffic, we noticed several people standing in the driveway of their house holding a sign, “Park here for $10”. Naturally, we were intrigued. We knew at this point we weren’t going to find street parking and the nearby parking garage was probably full, not to mention cost $20+. As we pulled into the driveway, we were greeted by a lady who offered us lemonade and a big smile. Suffice it to say, we were ecstatic.

After the game, we came back to the house to again be greeted by the lady, who offered us another glass of lemonade. As we pulled out of her driveway, I couldn’t help but think not only did this lady save us time and money, but she made me realize that millions of driveways, parking lots, and even garages that go unused during the course of a day, simply because there is no existing market.

That is why we are introducing the ParkWhiz Marketplace. Scheduled to launch in early 2007, it will allow users to buy and sell parking in a real-time environment. So what exactly is the ParkWhiz Marketplace? The ParkWhiz Marketplace is:

A place to buy parking. Find nearly any type of parking you want at the price you want and the time you want. It doesn’t matter if you need parking for 3 hours this afternoon or for the entire month of January. You’ll be able to get parking near your destination at the cheapest market prices.

A place to sell parking. You could be a parking garage operator with excess space or just an average Joe (or Josephine) that wants to offer up their driveway for parking. Live near a sports arena? Have a space available for monthly parking? Simply list it on ParkWhiz and watch the cash come pouring in. ParkWhiz makes it easy to reach a huge group of people that would love to park in your available space.

A place to find parking information. Users have discovered that ParkWhiz is a great place to price compare or “window shop” because of the detailed information in our database. Listings often include pricing, location, a detailed description, and a rating for evaluating the facility or space. Because you can see all available parking in a desired location side-by-side, ParkWhiz gives you insight into the real market value or “street value” of local parking.

Free for buyers and inexpensive for sellers. It costs nothing to become a ParkWhiz member, to shop for parking, or to purchase parking from ParkWhiz sellers. Sellers pay a small charge when a space is sold and there are no monthly fees or other hidden costs.

Environmental friendly. ParkWhiz doesn’t just bring greenbacks ($) to sellers, it also brings green back to the environment. Studies have suggested that driving around for parking increases urban traffic congestion by up to 30%, leading to greater emissions and air pollution. By increasing the pool of available parking and helping people park there quickly, there will be less traffic circling for parking spaces and cleaner air to breathe in.

The ParkWhiz Marketplace is currently in development, and your feedback can help shape the final product. Let us know what you think of the idea and how we could make ParkWhiz Marketplace more useful to you.

Since our goal at ParkWhiz is to make parking simple, our number one priority was to make searching our listings as easy as possible.

To start a search, all you need to do is type in a destination; it can be a street address or the name of a business. To improve the accuracy of the business search, you can include a street name or address after the business name. In this case, we’re looking for parking near the library on Locust Street. Then pick which city to search in and hit the big orange search button. Your preferred city will be remembered for the next time you search. u can click on the map to get information about a lot or garage, or peruse the list. Using the filter tools, you can refine the search to find exactly what you’re looking for.

1. Don’t feel like walking too far? Move the slider to filter out the parking that’s too far away.

2. If you’re trying to be frugal, you can filter by price. Choose from hourly, daily, and monthly rates.

3. The hours filter lets you set when you plan to park your car, and shows you only the lots and garages that will be open.

4. Some parking operators have “frequent parker” benefits. If you’d like to only see lots and garages from certain companies, uncheck the boxes to hide them, or click a company name to see only that company’s listings.

You can also sort the results any number of ways to bring what you’re looking for to the top. Just click one of the field titles at the top of the results.

Since we’re already filtering by the daily price, when we click “price” the results get sorted by their daily price.

Once you’ve filtered and sorted your heart out, you can get more information about a lot or garage by clicking on its name. A small popup will give you contact info, operation hours, and other useful information. You can also get driving directions to the parking from this popup.

That’s it! All that’s left is driving to the lot and pulling into the parking spot. Sorry, we can’t help with that part.

We’ve tried to make ParkWhiz’s search tools as intuitive as possible. If you think something could be better, let us know.

Welcome to ParkWhiz, the online marketplace for parking.

Our mission at ParkWhiz is to make parking simple, efficient, and cost-effective. With the ParkWhiz Marketplace, we hope to connect drivers who need to park with unused parking spaces, benefiting both drivers and owners of parking assets. We’re planning to start with the basics – ease-of-use, buyer protection, and reliability – and add some cool new features like powerful sellers tools and ParkWhiz for cell phones once the service is launched.

We’re working 27 hours a day to get the ParkWhiz Marketplace ready to launch in several major domestic cities by early 2007. In the meantime, you can use our parking search tool and get a taste of what’s to come. With coverage currently in Chicago and Philadelphia, the parking search tool allows drivers to find the best garage or parking lot near their end destination. You can easily filter by distance, price, operating hours, and rating to find exactly what you’re looking for.

We at ParkWhiz want to be your trusted expert and the final word when it comes to parking your car. With better information and proper guidance, parking no longer needs to be a frustrating experience. That said, we still have plenty of work ahead of us and hope you can help us along the way by sharing your thoughts with us, either on this blog or through our feedback form.

Thanks for stopping by, and please tell a friend about ParkWhiz.