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

Metallica’s new album has leaked out a week or two early, unsurprisingly.  It isn’t surprsing because it’s Metallica, but that it happens to most every artist these days.  Some record store somewhere will sell a copy or two earlier than they should, one of those folks will share it with their friends, and lickety-split, it’s all over the Intertubes.

In this case, that’s almost exactly what happened, according to Blabbermouth

METALLICA drummer Lars Ulrich has commented on the premature release of the band’s new album, ”Death Magnetic”, via a French record store. A shop in Paris reportedly sold a number of copies of the CD this morning well ahead of its official September 12 worldwide release date — with illegal ”Death Magnetic” MP3 files making their way online by this afternoon.

During a guest appearance earlier today on ”The Woody Show” on the San Francisco, California radio station Live 105 (KITS 105.3 FM), Ulrichstated about the French leak,

“Listen, we’re ten days from release. I mean, from here, we’re golden. If this thing leaks all over the world today or tomorrow, happy days. Happy days. Trust me. Ten days out and it hasn’t quote-unquote fallen off the truck yet? Everybody’s happy. It’s 2008 and it’s part of how it is these days, so it’s fine. We’re happy.”

This is the happy face that Metallica seems to be putting on this particular leak, and I’m not buying it for even a minute. Consistently since their role in the demise of Napster, they’ve maintained an adversarial role with their fans that continues to this day.  

If you remember, they were handed accolades in the blogosphere several months ago when they agreed to release their album free of DRM in digital format. Sean P. Aune wrote a post on his personal blog that at the time I thought was a little harsh, essentially saying the band was still clueless, and was nowhere close to “getting it.”

Their cluelessness a few days later was futher confirmed when they had their management issue takedown requests to all who reviewed the album based on invited advanced listenings.

I think our president once said something like “fool me once, shame on — shame on you. Fool me — you can’t get fooled again.” With eloquence like that, you have to wonder, but I think even he would be a bit wary of Metallica’s true feelings on this.  

I’m guessing they aren’t going to get involved in another ridiculous lawsuit or criminal pursuit against the pirates of the world, but mark my words: if Metallica’s album sales aren’t simply spectacular, look for an irritated and enraged Lars Ulrich coming soon to a press conference near you to blame all the pirates of the world for preventing Metallica fans from keeping his private jet fueled up.

—Related Articles at Mashable! - The Social Networking Blog:RCMP Says: Piracy OK (for Personal Use)Metallica Has Smoked Themselves RetardedDon’t Download Illegally in France AnymoreDRM-free MP3s from Warner Music Now Available on AmazonStudy Confirms: Piracy Is Better Than The Real ThingHey, I Know A Way To Get Windows XP After June 30NBC Exec Heats Up Battle Against Piracy

Source:Mashable!

It didn’t take long for Second Life, a leader in 3D Virtual Worlds, to respond to There.com’s announcement of new features.The most compelling new feature There.com revealed was its innovative ThereIM which would allow its members to chat in 3D and 2D worlds at the same time. Not to be out-done by their competition, Second Life has announced their own instant messenger called SLim™ (Second Life Instant Messenger) that will work in the 2D and 3D worlds.

A whole New Virtual World

The thin client SLim™ will be a voice and text instant messaging client that will enable Second Life Residents to conduct voice or text conversations with members of their Second Life Friends list in and out of the virtual world. While the Second Life viewer will still serve as the primary communication engine, SLim is capable of running on any computer and offers users a voice-enabled instant messaging client that extends the value of the Second Life platform beyond the virtual world.

Breaking down the Barriers

Allowing communication between the virtual world and the regular online world is a major hurdle that has hampered wider acceptance of that platform. Taking down this barrier will be a boon not only for entertainment purposes but also for commercial and corporate endeavors. Enabling interaction between these two separate worlds will surely take 3D virtual worlds to the next level.

Additional features of the SLim client:

- Provides residents with access to their Second Life Friends list with real-time “presence” status updates

- Enables users to seamlessly migrate a text conversation into a voice call

- Allows SLim users to leave voice mails for offline friends

Availability

Linden Lab and Vivox will be demonstrating the benefits of SLim at this week’s Virtual Worlds Conference in Los Angeles, California. The official release date has not been made public.

Conclusion

The future of 3D virtual worlds looks brighter than ever thanks to the two announcements made by There.com and Second Life. We can all expect more innovation to come from this platform as it becomes more integrated with the rest of our online experiences.

—Related Articles at Mashable! - The Social Networking Blog:Armani in Second LifeSecond Life Gets Identity VerificationThe Future Of Linden Lab Following Executive ShuffleSecond Life Teams Up With IBM for Virtual World InteroperabilitySecurity Experts Expose Costly Vulnerability in Second LifeNew App Merges Facebook and Second LifeDoes Second Life Need a Reuters Office?

The Open Web Awards are currently accepting votes in all 13 categories. The Open Web Awards are presented by Mashable and about 800 blog partners (except CN, we are always a bridesmaid, never a bride!). Get out there and vote for your favorites!

The bolded selection in each category below is who received my vote. Many of these decisions were not easy as I have many favorites but I can only select one. Runner-up vote is in parens.

Niche Social Network

CafeMom, CampusBug, CollegeTonight, FilmCrave, GloCals, (OpenSourceFood), OurLikes, Realtorclix, SwitchPlanet, Wish Done

Favorite Mobile Site

Facebook for Blackberry, GetaBuz, Google Maps for Mobile, Mocospace, Tipped.mobi, Trugo, Twitter, Utterz, (WireNode), WishDone

Favorite Social Shopping Site

CrowdStorm, iliketotallyloveit, Jellyfish, Lootist, Recommendr, Skimbit, Smashingdarling, ThisNext, (Woot), Zlio

Favorite Music Site

BandsinTown, GetaBuz, GrooveShark, Gruvr, (iLike), Last.fm, Mixaloo, Pandora, TheHypeMachine, ThePeriodicLabel

Favorite Site To Find Places and Events

BandsinTown, EventBrite, Eventful, Evite, Facebook, Going.com, Meetup, MySpace, (Upcoming), ZVents

Favorite Start Page

DailyWaste, Eskobo, Favoor, iGoogle, Live, (myAOL), myYahoo, Netvibes, PageFlakes, TheWebList

Favorite Video Sharing Site

Break, GoogleVideo, Kaltura, MetaCafe, Mocospace, Trugo, Uber, (Veoh), Vimeo, YouTube

Favorite Photo Sharing Site

DotPhoto, EachDay, Facebook, Flickr, PhotoBucket, Picasa, Slide, (SmugMug), Vois, WebShots

Favorite Sports and Fitness Site

ArmChairGM, Ballhype, ESPN, Local Replay, MediaZone, (Skinnyr), Sportme, SportSnipe, Traineo, YardBarker

Favorite Social Search

Copenda, Eurekester, Facebook, Gleamd, Mahalo, Spokeo, Tipped, Trugo, VibeAgent, Wink (not enough information on these sites to me to vote)

Favorite Application or Widget

BlogRush, Flempo, Flock, Getabuz, iDesktop, Jangl, MindTouch, (Quintura), SezWho, WidgetBucks

Favorite Social News or Social Bookmarking Site

BlinkList, Del.icio.us, Digg, Mixx, Newsvine, Propeller, Reddit, (StumbleUpon), Wikio, Wish Done

Favorite Mainstream or Large Scale Network

Bebo, (Facebook), LinkedIn, MocoSpace, MySpace, Netlog, OurLikes, Uber, Vois, Wish Done

Source:CenterNetworks

Rememeber the game of Risk? Today it’s like that game between Meebo and eBuddy. Meebo controls North America and eBuddy controls the rest of the World but overall the market is probably split 50/50. Meebo is releasing a couple stats today: 6.5 million unique users monthly at meebo.com and in November alone, 16.5 million unique users visited meebo widgets distributed across the Web by partners and users. The latter number is a bit of a stretch as it refers to widget load, not actual touching of said widget.

Meebo is also announcing support for Facebook applications via their meebo rooms, Partner Edition. Meebo notes that the following applications have already launched meebo rooms, Partner Edition: BuddyMedia, (fluff)Friends, RockYou, Slide, The Broth and WaterCooler, Inc. RockYou, a leading applications and widgets provider, launched 12 meebo rooms today for the highly-popular Facebook application Horoscopes – a different meebo room for each sign of the Zodiac. Next year the Partner Edition will begin to offer a rev share.

The other features of the Partner Edition they sent over include:

• Brand customization and Flash skinning. Partner Edition gives brands full control of the look and feel of their meebo rooms to create a seamless user and design experience between your brand and meebo technology.
• Integration with Facebook’s existing registration system. Facebook Edition authenticates logged user sessions and lets users take their registered names and user photos into the room with them, without requiring a meebo account.
• Automated capacity spillover. Designed for highly-trafficked application and canvas pages, new rooms spawn automatically when capacity is reached.
• Advertising tracking. Partners can seamlessly embed and track advertising in a room’s media queue to monetize traffic inside meebo rooms.
• Traffic and data reporting. Facebook Edition offers enhanced traffic and data reporting capability to measure campaign effectiveness and results.

Nick at Techcrunch has some information on a new program currently in a private beta. The application is named YieldBuild and the goal is to help you make more cash from the advertising served on your Web sites and blogs.

Nick notes, "It uses computer algorithms to automatically optimize your site’s ad spots with the most profitable combination of ad layout, style, and network. The system continually tests alternative configurations of layouts, networks, and color, looking for the highest performing ones. You can see a timeline of the system substituting ads below. It takes about 100,000 impressions to train the system. As users become unresponsive to the ads, the system is supposed to switch in a more profitable combination of layout and networks."

I’ve chatted a few times with another application offering a similar service called Pubmatic (our coverage). Pubmatic works with the following networks: ValueClick, BlueLithium, Google Adsense and Yahoo Publisher Network. YieldBuild doesn’t list the networks they work with. Both networks have seen early success in their trials.

For these services to grow, their network base will need to grow as well. For example, in addition to Pubmatic’s listed partners, I also use BurstMedia, my own ads and FeedBurner for advertising. Pubmatic can route to these networks from what I remember but they can’t optimize against them yet.

Additionally, if these systems could recognize the "type of user", then they could be even more beneficial. For example, if we know that Digg users respond better to gadget ads versus automobile advertising, make sure that any referral from Digg gets gadget ads. That’s where the real money making opportunities are.

I will provide a more detailed review and report back on results once I give each program a try.

Source:CenterNetworks -

Update: It appears there are two sites, a .com and a .org - the .org talks about compiling. Since my post, I see the site admin added a huge message about going to the .com site to download compiled versions for Win/Mac/Linux. Great to see this correction so others don’t make the same mistake I did.

News out of Mashable-land is the pre-alpha 0.1 release of a new IM aggregator client named Instantbird. It ties into the XUL language which is compatible with Firefox and Thunderbird for easy extension creation. You have to compile this application after the download which makes it super-sexy to those early adopters. Wouldn’t it make sense to offer a pre-compiled Win/Mac version? Instantbird currently connects with the following networks:

• AIM
• Bonjour
• Gadu-Gadu
• Google Talk
• Groupwise
• ICQ
• MSN
• QQ
• SILC
• SIMPLE
• Sametime
• XMPP
• Yahoo!

It seems similar to desktop client Trillian and Web IM clients Meebo and eBuddy. I can only imagine that the real power will come from the library of extensions.

And something to ponder: Since we know that none of these IM aggregators can access Skype, what about if Skype was to allow access to other networks inside their client. That might be a revenue-generation idea as well!

News out of Mashable-land is the pre-alpha 0.1 release of a new IM aggregator client named Instabird. It ties into the XUL language which is compatible with Firefox and Thunderbird for easy extension creation. You have to compile this application after the download which makes it super-sexy to those early adopters. Wouldn’t it make sense to offer a pre-compiled Win/Mac version? Instabird currently connects with the following networks:

• AIM
• Bonjour
• Gadu-Gadu
• Google Talk
• Groupwise
• ICQ
• MSN
• QQ
• SILC
• SIMPLE
• Sametime
• XMPP
• Yahoo!

It seems similar to desktop client Trillian and Web IM clients Meebo and eBuddy. I can only imagine that the real power will come from the library of extensions.

And something to ponder: Since we know that none of these IM aggregators can access Skype, what about if Skype was to allow access to other networks inside their client. That might be a revenue-generation idea as well!

Today’s hot social news is the announcement of Skype partnering with MySpace to integrate Skype into the MySpace IM client and into the site itself. Owen from Valleywag sums it up well, "The bottom line: Now you can call your MySpace friends right from the "add me" page!" I really don’t see the value here and am betting most users will turn off the call function after the first few "perv" calls.

What about the business model? That’s easy too — people who use a free service such as MySpace are going to buy premium services from Skype to integrate into their MySpace profiles and IM. Sure, they will use the free calling, but I can’t actually imagine many takers on the paid services. This contradicts what Amit Kapur, vice president of business development at MySpace said today, "If we can engage the user base in the right way and increase usage and create the right sort of premium experience that people want to participate in, as well as monetize around the free environment through advertising, it can be a viable business partnership".

Caroline at Webware has some interesting thoughts on the deal, "Only 25 million out of MySpace’s 110 million active users have downloaded the MySpaceIM client. And neither company is at the top of its game. MySpace still leads the social-networking field in membership and traffic, but has lost its place in the spotlight to fast-growing rival Facebook. And Skype hasn’t exactly turned out to be a real winner for eBay, with some critics saying that the two are mismatched.".

Om Malik notes, "The new client will give a big boost to both communities and is a net positive for both Skype and MySpace."

I guess we will wait and see once the service launches in November — will it be a long-lasting relationship or a one-night stand? What are your thoughts? Will you enable this option on MySpace?

Meebo and eBuddy are always one-upping each other. eBuddy launched iPhone support a month ago, and tonight Meebo is announcing their iPhone client. Seth Sternberg, founder and CEO of meebo says, "Safari on the iPhone has enabled a new level of mobile innovation - it's the most advanced web browser ever on a portable device. Our application for the iPhone now provides a seamless experience between your computer's browser and your phone's browser. meebo truly is instant messaging everywhere!"

The featureset includes:

• Access all of your IM accounts through a single login and in a single buddy list
• Your chat history and preferences stay with you from any web browser, mobile or desktop
• No software is required - meebo updates without annoying downloads

It makes sense for early adopter Web apps to make iPhone versions as quickly as possible as the majority of iPhone users would be considered early adopters. I don't have an iPhone so if you try the meebo for the iPhone, please report back with your review.

Check out our previous meebo and eBuddy coverage.