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Source:Mashable!

Owning a car can give you a great sense of freedom… then you have to figure out where to park it! More and more tools are popping up on the Web to help you locate both long and short term parking. Here are 15 services that cover everything from free spots to event parking, long term parking, and more.

Do you use the Web to find parking? If so, tell us about your experiences in the comments.

Parking Comparison Sites

AboutAirportParking.com - Has listings for over 400 parking lots near over 100 international airports.  Can add optional services like valet, car wash, mechanics and more.  You can read more about this site in our Startup Review.

BestParking.com - Allows you to compare parking rates of various garages in Boston, New York City, Philadelphia and Washington D.C.  Also offers a mobile version.

ParkingAnytime.com - Locate garages, lots, free parking and more for a given area.  Limited to Chicago, IL during their beta phase.

ParkingCarma.com - See real-time data of available parking spaces.  If you register, you can reserve parking spaces in advance.  Serves multiple US cities.

PrimoSpot.com - Gives you information on parking conditions in Manhattan and Brooklyn, and will show you the actual parking rules for a specific space.  The service plans to include more cities. You can read more about PrimoSpot here on Mashable.

Streetlinenetworks.com - Not operational yet, Streetline is putting monitors in 24,000 San Francisco metered parking spots so people will know where spots are available.  Read a summary of Streetline’s services here on Mashable.

Parking Spot Rentals

CraigsList.org - As with just about anything else you can sell or rent, CraigsList has numerous listings for parking spaces.

ParkAtMyHouse.com - Specializes in renting out parking spaces around sporting venues, airports or just about anywhere.  Available in Australia, Canada, Ireland, the Netherlands, New Zealand, the UK and the USA.

ParkingHunter.com - Lists available spaces to rent in cities such as Chicago, New York City, San Francisco, Vancouver and more.

ParkLet.co.uk - Offers listings of thousands of parking spaces available for rent all over the United Kingdom.

ParkingSpotter.com - Helps you locate parking spots for major events, airports or everyday use.

Parkingspots.com - Parking spot rental connections for those who own them, and those who need them, in the USA and Canada.  You can find a more detailed review of Parkingspots here.

ParkWhiz.com - Offers parking options around airports, sports arenas, daily & monthly parking and some more tools for those who need a place to park.

SpotScout.com - Parking garages list their inventory and then you can look them up on the Web or your mobile device.

YourParkingSpace.co.uk - A site to help connect people with spare parking spaces in the UK with those who are looking for them.

—Related Articles at Mashable! - The Social Networking Blog:ParkingHunter is Just a Google/Craigslist Map Mashup. Yawn.At Least ParkingSpots.com Has a Good Domain NamePlan Ahead with About Airport Parking (The Startup Review)Learn NYC’s Street Parking Landscape With PrimoSpotWeFi Finds Friends from Their WiFiInfield Parking to Launch NASCAR Social NetworkOrbitz Launches Incentives for Traveler Update Service

Source:Mashable!

Editor’s Note: This post is part of an ongoing series at Mashable - The Startup Review, Sponsored by Sun Microsystems Startup Essentials. If you would like to have your startup considered for inclusion, please see the details here.

STARTUP DETAILS:

Company Name: toksta

20-word Description:  toksta brings IM and chat (text, voice, video) to social networks and websites. 100% free, hosting included + worldwide revenue share.

CEO’s 100 word description: toksta brings real time communication to your social network or website by providing free (or white label), hosted IM and chat solutions featuring text, voice and video chat. Our goal is to prevent users from leaving your community to chat via external applications like Skype, MSN or ICQ. Add a cool new feature for your users within minutes and benefit from our worldwide revenue or ad view share. All solutions are design customizable with a facebook-like chat bar and deeply integrated with your community (friends list, ignores, profile pictures etc.).

Mashable’s Take: There are many ways to add communication tools to your site these days such as instant messaging with a Meebo widget or an audio/video message forum via UserPlane. toksta is offering a fully customizable real-time text, audio and video chat system for your website. You can add your own logo, change colors, fonts and the background image.  

The toksta IM runs directly in the Web browser and users can chat via their own profile no matter what other IM service or social networking site they are connected to at the time.  Best of all, no installations or additional logins are necessary which is a big plus for your website visitors.

What’s the catch? toksta can offer all this for free because it is financed by advertising, but the ads are not as huge or as pervasive as with other ad-supported services. As a matter of fact, the ads are only displayed during what they call waiting time as things load on the screen. toksta also offers a Revenue Sharing program that will allow site owners to share some of the earnings. They do offer a white label service that will allow you to remove all ads or even add your own advertisements. 

From all first impressions, toksta seems to be worth a look if you’re considering adding a live communications platform to your site and don’t mind intermittent advertisements. It’s easy to install and the price is right.

Sponsored by Sun Startup Essentials

This entry was posted on Friday, September 5th, 2008 at 5:34 pm and is filed under News, social networking, web 2.0, web, IM, Web2.0 Startups, Instant Messenger, chat, StartupReview, white label, Toksta. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.