Future cars tell you where they are parked

One day cars could tell you where they are parked without you needing to remember.

Background : 5 floors of large parking lot with hundreds of cars often confuses me about where did i park my car. Going home for lunch doubles the confusion as i need to search my car twice. As most of you know during winter basements and parking lots are some of the coldest parts. Its drives you mad searching your car in the cold. I found that I am not the only one to find it hard to remember parking spots after checking with some more people on the way to parking spots. Almost everyone has the same problem once in a while(specially when they are pre-occupied with some thoughts and foget to actively remember where they parked the car).

I was wondering if we had the technology that could tell me where my car is parked on my iPhone.


Options: Yes technologies are already existing to achieve some of these. Here are some of them.

iPhone app can locate your parked location- This is the closest option for me. Yes this application can tell me only if I tell the app that i parked my car here(need to choose park here in the application). This does not track your car but remembers the location where I marked the location.

Your Car lock key can also beep loudly to tell you where it is located. I do have this feature, but if i am far from my car it does not reach the car.

OnStar service of GM is another closest technology that can track your vehicle. But no iPhone app or a website to track your car.

There are some keychains availavle that can mark the car location just like iphone app. This makes it a little bit easier, but again those compact devices arent yet as reliable and advanced as other GPS devices are.



Some advanced thoughts...
If there are 5-10 floors, GPS only marks the location in 2Dimension, so you wont be able to find out the floor where you parked it. There should be some way to figure out the height and map it to the floor number. I am sure some one picks this idea in future and makes a fundo gadget to locate your car.

Conclusion: Man finds more and more ways to get lazy and handover the thinking to machines/gadgets. This is one of mine. I am sure future holds lot of such smart features in cars.

Zylog launches ‘Wi5’ services

Zylog Systems India, a software solutions and services provider, has launched ‘Wi5’ wireless broadband services in Chennai. The WiFi service will enable customers access high-speed wireless broadband connectivity through their laptops, desktops or mobile devices by subscribing to Wi5’s service on the move


The company, which obtained a category A internet service provider license – license to operate in all of India’s DoT circles – late in 2008, will then be officially entering the ISP business in the country. Its parent already has its offshore software development units in Chennai.

Unlike traditional WiFi, which operates out of ‘hotspots’ – spots where wireless transmission equipments are fitted to provide wired connectivity to a small area around it – Zylog’s network uses a mesh network architecture, which makes the wireless network a continuous one. Popularly called a hotzone, this works much like a mobile telephony network. Zylog’s business model would be similar. The company plans to retail network subscription to individual users on a prepaid rental basis.

The company has presently set up 140 nodes in the city and aims to complete setting up 32000 nodes in five cities – Delhi, Mumbai, Bangalore and Hyderabad, apart from Chennai - by the end of the year.