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MetroMile Mobile App Helps Drivers Avoid Costly Parking Tickets
Life can be quite expensive, and despite reports of the world economy improving, the average Joe on the street might feel squeezed out of life as everything starts to go up in price, and salaries remain stagnant. Heck, owning a car these days can be considered to be a necessity, but with your ride comes plenty of responsibilities. The service schedules, fuel, as well as parking in city centers that could add up to quite a handsome amount. Parking being an issue in congested areas, some of us do take our chances with the long arm of the law to complete an errand like paying a bill or purchasing some medication over the counter, only to return to our car with a ticket on the windscreen. Enter MetroMile and their app that intends to help drivers avoid one of the most common parking citations which actually cost San Francisco drivers millions every single year – that is, parking in a street sweeping area.
This app has a new, free feature that will work in tandem with a connected car device that is known as the Metronome. The Metronome will remain plugged into the OBD-II port of a vehicle, where it communicates with the free iOS app. Using the Metronome’s onboard GPS to capture the existing location of the parked vehicle, it will send you a push notification a dozen hours ahead of the street sweeping timeframe, as well as a reminder an hour before street sweeping occurs.
The cost of parking tickets prices have increased drastically in the past few years in San Francisco, where drivers pay up to $64 per ticket when one forgets to move their car that remains on the wrong side of the road for street cleaning. For instance, a regular parking ticket in Paris costs only 17 euros, and is increased to 33 euros should you fail to settle the balance of the ticket within 45 days.
Even when the car is parked in a forbidden area (such as a fire lane) or disturbs the traffic (like in the middle of the street), the parking ticket price starts at 35 euros and goes all the way to 75 euros. The cost of living in Paris can be comparable to San Francisco, or even more expensive when you take the exchange rate into consideration, but they seem to pay less in parking tickets there. Of course, there is no perfect system in this world, but at least this offers food for thought. [Press Release]
Have you grown up on a diet full of violent video games? Well, certainly Mortal Kombat is one of those franchises that shocked everyone when it was first released, where digital blood was spilled along the way. It definitely looks tame by today’s standards, but back then, it created quite a buzz in the video game industry, and then some. Having said that, Mortal Kombat X for iOS is now available to download from the App Store, where you can check out the striking graphics in the trailer above.
There will be 24 Kombatants to choose from, which should offer you plenty of opportunities to master all of them, and apart from fan favorites such as Scorpion and Sub-Zero, there will also be newcomers to the scene, Cassie Cage and Kotal Kahn included. Mortal Kombat X for iOS works great across platforms, so that players will be able to unlock content across all platforms as long as they play.
It was in October last year that the folks over at Sprint updated their iPhone for Life plan, where $80 a month would net you an Apple iPhone 6 on lease for a couple of years, alongside a plan that has unlimited talk, text and data. Of course, if you would prefer the larger iPhone 6 Plus, it would cost you from $85 monthly onward. It seems that Sprint intends to push the envelope further – at $100 a month, the iPhone 6, iPad mini 3, unlimited talk, text and data on the phone and 2GB of data for the tablet will be all yours.
If one were to run the numbers through a calculator, you would have to spend approximately $117 monthly, which means Sprint’s recently revealed plan would help you out with a 15% savings in total – that would amount up to $17. Of course, leasing the devices would mean you would need to make sure that your handset is more carefully taken care of than normal, but then again, you will always have the latest products at the end of a 2-year cycle. Not too shabby a deal, don’t you think so?
Now that the market for smartwatches are definitely growing – never mind that there are no explosive figures whatsoever to report of, it is a steady market which is worth checking out. If you have always wanted to make the jump to a smartwatch device, but was held back by the lack of choice as well as relatively high price tag, how about checking out the $129.99 Huawei TalkBand B1?
This unique smartwatch can be picked up from GetHuawei.com, although one can also check out the likes of Newegg.com, Amazon.com and Fry’s Electronics in order to purchase it. The TalkBand B1 is capable of tracking your sleep, count the number of your steps taken in a day, and even to compute the number of calories that you have burned. Heck, it will also do its level best to wake you up using its smart alarm when it figures out that you happen to be in the light cycle of your sleep.
Other features include iOS and Android compatibility, NFC support, Bluetooth connectivity, and a 90mAh battery that allows you to make use of your earpiece for up to 7 hours – non-stop, now how about that?