Tag Archives: New York City

Say Goodbye to Parking Tickets

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Getting a parking ticket can easily ruin a day. They are frustrating to receive – especially when wrongly accused. The price of a parking ticket is just marginal enough that for many people it isn’t worth the time to fight it, causing them to simply pay the fine.

Fixed is here is help you out. The app, currently only available in San Francisco, coming soon to Chicago, Los Angeles, and New York, will fight your parking ticket for you. All you need to do is upload a picture of the ticket into the app and a representative will file the complaint and handle the rest. Fixed will only charge you if they win the case (According to VentureBeat they’ve won 20-30 percent of their cases so far). So if you lose you pay the ticket, but if you win you pay just 25% of what the fine would’ve cost you, to Fixed – a bargain considering it’s a 75% savings with no time spent.

The company has just completed $1.2 million dollar round of funding which will help them expand to more cities across the country. Keep Fixed in mind next time you get a parking ticket and don’t have the time to fight it.

What Sparks our Fire: An app that helps save both time and money.

Have you ever gotten an undeserving ticket you just paid instead of fighting?

Go Explore

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There are countless apps out there that offer great location-based services. Yelp and the recently redesigned Foursquare are two of the best out there when you are looking for something to do nearby. But one of the giants has entered the market and is poised to take them down.

Google announced a new feature for its Google Maps app for iOS and Android that allows you to explore your area. The feature offers you suggestions on what to do based on your location, the weather, and time of day. For example, by just tapping the explore button while at my desk in the morning, it suggests the best nearby coffee shops, but when I check it before I leave work it recommends restaurants, bars, and movie theaters instead. When it’s raining out, you can be sure it won’t recommend that you go to the nearest outdoor swimming pool. If you aren’t looking for something right now, you can easily just enter the time of day that you are looking to go and explore.

What Sparks our Fire: An easy way to explore your city.

What do you think of Google tackling the nearby recommendation category with this update?

Under the Dome

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The weather may not always be your best friend. Sometimes it’s just too hot, too cold, or too rainy, which can often ruin a perfectly good day. Dubai is setting out to tackle this issue with their proposed plan to build The Mall of the World. This project is more than a big mall, it’s a 48 million square foot city. All of the streets and outdoor attractions will be fully enclosed and climate controlled. Additional features include 100 hotels and luxury apartments and the world’s largest indoor amusement park.

Tourists will be happy to know that everything is housed inside, as Dubai temperatures average an unbearable 107 degrees in the summer. During the winter, when the temperature falls to a not-so-chilly 73 degrees, the roads and other outdoor areas will open allowing for a natural breeze of fresh air.

Who knows what the world’s first indoor city could inspire moving forward. While it could eerily remind you of the CBS show, Under the Dome, The Mall of the World seems like a positive direction for indoor cities and demonstrates one viable solution to global warming. But for now, I am happy I don’t need to entirely leave New York City just to get outside.

What Sparks our Fire: The possible implications that indoor cities can have on the future.

What do you think are the possibilities of a completely indoor city?

Can You Smell Me Now?

I don’t know about you, but my Instagram feed is filled with people sharing pictures of their food. Sometimes a picture is not enough, these platters of chicken parm and fully loaded burgers look so great I wish I could smell just how delicious they are too. Well, this capability may be here sooner than you’d think.

Yesterday, Harvard professor David Edwards showed off his new product that allows you to share not just pictures and videos from your phone, but now the smell too. No, the smell does not come out of your phone. First, you snap a picture of the food. Then, as you would add filters on Instagram, you pick different smells to describe the picture you’re sending. The recipient, with their oPhone DUO device, can open your message and release the scent to experience it for themselves.

It may not quite be smell-o-vision, but it definitely shows forward thinking. A picture may say 1,000 words, but with the oPhone it will smell like even more. The device is not yet available, as they are currently raising money through Indiegogo, but you can check it out at the Museum of Natural History in New York City as of June 17.

What Sparks our Fire: Finally reaching the future with smell-o-vision.

Are you ready to share smells?

Unconventional Medium

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For those of you who haven’t yet heard, the graffiti artist known as Banksy has begun residency in New York City, prompting a scurry by those familiar with his work to search it out and see for themselves. While those of us in NYC are familiar with graffiti, Banksy’s work is more than street tags. His work is more commonly known as street art and has a great deal to say. Often, his pieces will have a social or political commentary and they have been sold for thousands of dollars.

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The identity of the artist remains unknown, but his fingerprints have been left all over the city, from Queens to the Meatpacking District, in the form of art installations ranging from moving exhibits to wall paintings to anonymous one-off sales of his work in Central Park. Check out his blog here.

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What Sparks Our Fire: The anonymous artist manages to have his voice heard throughout the city, spreading his message through an unconventional medium.

Have you seen any of these pieces in person?