Extend time at a parking meter? There's an app for that.

Yes, parking has joined the wave of industries who are developing apps. Downtown Indianapolis will soon launch a smartphone app so people can feed the parking meter virtually. This is a very cool thing. First, because parking has historically been a bit behind the times in the technology realm. But from a parkers standpoint, the convenience alone of not having to rush back to your car to pump quarters in the parking meter is fantastic! The parkers of the world will no longer have to cut lunch short to run and jam a couple of quarters in the meter only to find out when they get there that they are too late and have a parking citation sitting on their windshield. (That's experience talking there, people!) Now they can just update their parking meter via an app and continue chatting about the new outfit they just purchased. With the surge of smartphones in the market, I can only envision more and more parking apps being developed. There are tons of different uses for the smart phone apps and the parking industry should be taking full advantage of technology.