P1070416 How you pay for parking in downtown Austin parking lots

A vertical box with slots to stuff money into: "technology" commonly used to pay for parking in downtown Austin, where paid parking lots have no attendants. There is a piece of metal on a string attached to the box, that you can use to stuff coins and bills into the slot. Coins often get stuck in a slot, so you have to wiggle the stuffer really hard. If you are going to Innotech, and the Austin Convention Center parking garage is full, this is one of the parking lots you are likely to have to use. It's ironic that before you can get to a high-tech conference you are likely to have to use a very low-tech, frustrating way of paying for parking -- and that's after you found an ATM and then found some place to break up a $20 bill. Wouldn't it be so much easier to pay by an SMS from your cellphone? I hear that's available in Europe.

My blog posts on Innotech are here.