Google Now Will Help You Remember Where You’ve Parked
I live in Minneapolis, and despite the fact that it’s got a pretty solid bus system to ferry folks to and fro, a lot of my traveling within the city and the surrounding environs comes from driving myself there. But like any person who drives a lot, sometimes finding my car can be more than a little difficult—especially if I’ve driven to the ridiculously massive Mall of America just south of the Twin Cities. Fortunately, it seems that Google is on top of it, having created a new Parking Location feature as a part of Google Now.
According to a support post about the new addition, Google will use “your device’s sensors to know when you leave a moving vehicle.” When you’ve left your car, you may want to flip over to Google Now to see if there’s a Parking Location card waiting for you. I’m definitely going to check this out today to see how it works.
Chances are good that having GPS turned on will be a requirement for full functionality—or at the very least, Android’s location settings should be partially on so it’ll know where you are even if full GPS is switched off. And if you typically ride the bus, the Parking Location feature might mistakenly give you the location you disembarked—in which case, you’ll probably want to turn this feature off.
Even still, this is a pretty smart addition to what’s already a very solid app. And just think: in a few months, we’ll get our first taste of Android Wear smartwatches. I can easily envision walking down the street and asking my watch, “OK Google: where’d I park?”
The future is usually depicted with ridiculously ostentatious technology with other-worldly powers. In reality, the future seems to be really good at simply making our present a little easier to manage.