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Lexington and Fayette County Parking Authority Integrates Scheidt & Bachmann Software and ParkMe Application to Improve Parking Experience with Real-Time Space Count

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Lexington, KY (PRWEB) February 12, 2014

The Lexington Parking Authority (LPA) for the City of Lexington, KY recently completed a full integration with parking solutions providers Scheidt & Bachmann, and parking information services provider ParkMe. The integration allows the LPA to offer real-time parking space count information to its visitors, which helps visitors find spaces more easily in LPA parking facilities. This is also an environmental improvement as emissions given off by vehicles circling downtown blocks looking for parking will be lowered.

The interface between S&B’s system installed at the LPA facilities and ParkMe allows live data to flow from the S&B system to the ParkMe application which is displayed on the web and in a mobile app so that customers can see in real-time the parking availability and eventually reserve or prebook parking spaces ahead of time.

“There is a general perception that there is not enough parking downtown and that it is a hassle to find available parking spaces,” says Gary A. Means, CAPP, the Executive Director of the Lexington Parking Authority. “This interface project eliminates the intimidation and helps make it easier for people to plan their trips ahead of time enabling them to view availability as well as pricing in each parking facility.”

The LPA currently uses Scheidt & Bachmann software and hardware to manage the parking access and revenue control systems for four parking facilities owned and managed by the LPA. The interface between the two firms for the LPA uses the Universal Interface module provided in Scheidt & Bachmann’s entervo V2R2 software package while utilizing ParkMe’s real-time availability software to reach its vast user-base. The integration was completed in January 2014 and is currently being tested live in Lexington specifically for purposes of space availability, reservations and prebooking.

In order to use the application, the customer simply logs into ParkMe’s mobile application or online through LPA’s website and views pricing rates and occupancy levels for all LPA parking in Lexington. Data regarding real-time space count for each LPA parking facility is communicated between Scheidt & Bachmann entervo software and ParkMe in a background systems information exchange.

“As Lexington grows and becomes denser with drivers, it’s exciting to see the city address its needs by adopting smart parking solutions,” says Sam Friedman, CEO of ParkMe. “There is a direct correlation between traffic congestion and parking, and ParkMe is eager to work with the LPA to help improve parking for their residents and visitors.

The LPA views the integration as taking parking for Lexington to new heights and pioneering an enhancement in parking technology. “The Parking Industry is shifting from us dictating prices, options and availability to now customers telling us what they want,” comments Means. “Technology is revolutionizing the definition of better parking experience by giving customers information and allowing them to make choices for themselves. It’s a win-win situation for all.”

The Lexington Parking Authority is looking into future plans to expand the space count integration for on-street parking.

About Scheidt & Bachmann

Scheidt & Bachmann has been a leading international transportation solutions provider since 1872. The company’s Parking Division offers parking access and revenue control systems to various industry clients including airports, hospitals, universities and municipalities. The entervo software and hardware are made internally at the S&B factory either in the U.S. or Germany headquarters. Scheidt & Bachmann is one of the few PARCS providers who can offer clients the ability to universal interface with third parties. To learn more about entervo’s Universal Interface module, please visit http://www.scheidt-bachmann.com or call 781-262-6667.

About ParkMe

Based in Santa Monica, Calif., ParkMe is the leading global provider of real-time parking information to navigation companies and consumers. Consumers can access ParkMe via GPS and in-car navigation systems, ParkMe.com, online widgets, and the iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad app. Founded by Sam Friedman and Alex Israel, ParkMe’s mission is to make parking easier, faster and cheaper. The company collects and aggregates data about both on-street and off-street parking, and has built the world’s most comprehensive parking database. This includes more than 28,000 worldwide locations in more than 1,800 cities, 50 countries and seven continents. ParkMe can be found on the Web at http://www.ParkMe.com, on Twitter @ParkMe and on Facebook, Facebook.com/ParkMe

ParkMe is backed by a highly respected group of investors, including Fontinalis Partners, IDG Ventures and Angeleno Group. Fontinalis Partners is a leading transportation technology strategic investment firm founded by Bill Ford, Ralph Booth, Mark Schulz, Chris Cheever, and Chris Thomas. IDG Ventures is a global network of venture capital funds with approximately $ 5 billion under management and a portfolio of over 220 companies built over the last 15 years. Founded in 2001, Angeleno Group is a leading growth equity firm dedicated to investing in next generation energy and natural resources companies globally.

About the Lexington and Fayette County Parking Authority

Created by the Lexington-Fayette Urban County Government in 2006, the goal of the Lexington Parking Authority is to provide, maintain and operate adequate, high-quality, Customer-focused public parking and encourage economic growth. For more information about the Lexington and Fayette County Parking Authority, please visit http://www.lexpark.org.







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imagoo Raises $1.2 Million, Debuts New Real-Time Social Polling App for iPhone

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Las Vegas (PRWEB) June 06, 2013

Las Vegas-based tech startup imagoo has launched its social polling iPhone app and Web platform that lets consumers, brands and businesses issue challenges and comparisons and vote on content in real time. The company has raised $ 1.2 million from an angel investor to fuel the launch and development of its mobile platform.

imagoo, which was born out of a few friends’ hunger for friendly competition, moves beyond the typical social polling features and enables users to issue challenges, which pit users head-to-head against their friends or other users on the network. The result is a real-time poll pushed to the imagoo community in which anyone can vote to determine the winner, whether the debate is about sports teams, politics, food, fashion or dozens of other categories.

“It’s human nature for people to believe their opinions and possessions are best,” said Mickey Hernandez, imagoo’s founder and CEO. “imagoo lets users test that assumption instantly through the unbiased opinions of others. We saw an opportunity to take the need to prove yourself among your peers and turned it into something much bigger.”

In addition to challenges, key features of the app include:

    “This or This” – A comparison feature that lets users solicit opinions on two items through real-time polling. Users can ask for feedback or cast their vote on any two items, services, brands or products. For example, a user who is out shopping can ask the imagoo community what pair of shoes they prefer and receive feedback before they leave the store.
    Activity feed – Users can follow their friends and stay on top of new challenges and comparisons as they happen.
    Quick voting – imagoo makes it easy for users to cast their votes on hundreds or thousands of active challenges and comparisons.
    Social media integration – Whether a user issues a challenge or comparison poll, Facebook and Twitter integration make it easy for users to access the opinions of friends in their social networks.

Businesses also benefit from imagoo through access to real-time customer insight. Using imagoo, businesses can poll followers and other users on the network and receive instant feedback. The polls and challenges that businesses create serve as real-time A/B testing. Instead of investing in expensive consumer data tools, businesses can use imagoo to access opinions quickly, easily and informally.

Download imagoo for free from the iTunes App Store. For more information about imagoo, visit http://www.imagoo.com.

About imagoo

imagoo is a Las Vegas-based startup and social polling app for consumers, brands and businesses to solicit unbiased opinions, challenge competitors and contribute their two cents. Users can debate politics, challenge rival sports fans and get advice on purchasing decisions, all in real time. Tap into the imagoo community and receive instant feedback in the form of votes, likes and comments. For more information, visit http://www.imagoo.com or download imagoo in the iTunes App Store.







HopStop Live! Launches to Help Transit Riders Worldwide Receive, Contribute and Share Real-Time Transit Information

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New York, New York (PRWEB) April 08, 2013

HopStop, the number one ranked transit app in iTunes and Google Play with over three million downloads, today launched HopStop Live! TM – the only free, real-time social transit app backed by the power of millions of highly-engaged mobile users across seven countries, 700 transit agencies, 20,000 lines and 750,000 stops. HopStop Live! is the first social navigation platform that allows public transportation riders to contribute, receive and share real-time transit information about the stations, lines and transit systems that matter most to them. The new service will launch exclusively on the iPhone platform with other platforms, including iPad and Google Play, to follow in subsequent releases. The real-time transit service includes every market, across every transit agency, for every line/route that HopStop currently supports.

HopStop Live! is the only all-in-one transit app, providing unparalleled door-to-door walking and transit directions, schedules and officially licensed transit maps and, for the first time, real-time crowd-sourced information from fellow transit riders. The service benefits from an immediate install-base of 2 million monthly active users, not available anywhere else at this scale. The service also fills a large void left by the lack of real-time information currently available from most transit agencies – especially in periods of disruption caused by unforeseen incidents. Real-time, crowd-sourced information will be available both within HopStop’s familiar step-by-step direction search experience and also through a new standalone service with the iPhone app called “Live!”. Through the standalone service “Live!”, users can follow their specific lines and stations of regular use.

“The real-time public transportation space has attracted so much attention over the past twelve months with a countless number of new transit apps all professing to have the answer to real-time,” says Joe Meyer, CEO, HopStop. “The problem with the vast majority of these is that as impressive and headline-grabbing as their goals or claims may be –they all lack the critical ingredient for any crowd-sourced service to be useful –a big enough crowd of endemic users. Over the past nine years, HopStop has grown to be the biggest independent player in the transit routing market, and today’s launch of HopStop Live! will leverage our large user base and strong commitment to product excellence to define the future of real-time public transportation information.”

HopStop Live! also aims to help transit riders create micro-communities around their particular train line, bus route, stations or stops; and share real-time information and tips to make everyone’s trip better, easier and safer. HopStop Live! analyzes real-time user reports on lines, stations and routes across its entire global footprint to give transit riders a real-time snapshot of whether their ride is delayed, by how long, and an indication of the likely reason.

Joe Meyer, CEO, HopStop added, “Our reliable and highly accurate door-to-door transit directions revolutionized the transit industry a few years ago, and now HopStop Live! will do the same by becoming a must-have tool for any commuter. The new service will also help riders create micro-social communities around the specific stations, lines and stops that they care most about, thereby making everyone’s trip better, easier and safer.”







Logi Analytics and ParStream Partner to Provide Real-time Operational Analytics and Insights

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McLean, Virginia (PRWEB) July 16, 2013

Logi Analytics, the authority on embedded analytics, and ParStream, the leading real-time Big Data analytics platform provider, today announced a technology partnership. The partnership will enable Logi Analytics customers to visualize data and using ParStream, perform interactive analytics and rapid queries on extremely large data volumes, while simultaneously ingesting real-time operational data. ParStream customers can look forward to gaining accelerated Business Intelligence (BI) through Logi Analytics.

Logi Analytics’ platform allows customers to quickly build and deploy interactive web and mobile dashboards, reports, and analytics directly into operational applications, processes and systems. ParStream is a built-from-the ground-up columnar analytic, distributed database enabled by a patented High Performance Compressed Index and specifically engineered to deliver Big Data insights fast. The two platforms together will allow organizations to access, analyze, and visualize Big Data in real-time.

“For companies that need to analyze and visualize large volumes of real-time high velocity data, the data platform speed is critical,” said Brett Jackson, CEO, Logi Analytics. “Together, Logi Analytics’ BI platform and ParStream’s real-time analytics database provide customers continuous visibility into their business operations. With ParStream, Logi Analytics customers can better interact with their operational data and react quickly to changing business dynamics.”

This year, Logi Analytics was moved to the “challengers” quadrant of the 2013 Gartner Magic Quadrant for Business Intelligence and Analytics Platforms report. The company’s position was based on its ability to execute and its completeness of vision. Logi Analytics’ platform continues to deliver on its value proposition of ease-of-use, rapid time to deployment, and ability to be embedded.

“Businesses must analyze historical and real-time data continuously in order to keep pace with the variety and volume of data and gain actionable insights,” said Michael Hummel, CEO, ParStream. “The combined ParStream and Logi Analytics value proposition will empower them to achieve these goals.”

ParStream won recent recognition as being one of CIO.com’s top 10 Big Data startups to watch. ParStream’s technology, based on massive parallel processing architecture, has won numerous awards, including Gartner Cool Vendor, Red Herring Top 100 Europe, and ComputerWeek Big Data Innovation.

About Logi Analytics – Logi Analytics enables organizations to put information to work by allowing them to create web-based BI and analytic applications that can be integrated directly within the applications, systems, and processes that support their business – all at a fraction of the cost of other solutions. Unlike traditional BI platforms that are complex and costly, Logi Analytics technology allows organizations to rapidly develop, deploy, and adapt applications to serve business users without extensive development or professional services. Logi Analytics is headquartered in McLean, Virginia, with sales and support offices in the UK serving Europe. The company is a privately held, venture-backed firm with investments from Updata Partners, GroTech Ventures, and Summit Partners.

About ParStream – ParStream is the creator of a revolutionary high-performance, analytical, distributed database system especially engineered to solve real-time Big Data challenges. The ParStream platform enables customers to continuously import, store, and analyze Big Data, in real-time. The platform delivers sub-second query response times on billions of data records and runs on ParStream’s proprietary columnar database. ParStream has a proven track record in several industries, such as travel, e-commerce, finance, and online advertising. The company is funded by Khosla Ventures and other institutional and angel investors and has operations in Silicon Valley, USA; Cologne, Germany; and Paris, France. ParStream is one of CIO.com’s “Top 10 Big Data Start-ups To Watch” and has won awards such as “The Red Herring Top 100 Europe”, “Gartner Cool Vendor”, and “The ComputerWeek (Germany) Big Data Innovation Award.”







Related Angel Investors Press Releases

LiveMinutes Raises $1.4M, Disrupts Productivity Space with Real-Time Collaboration Platform

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San Francisco, CA (PRWEB) July 23, 2013

LiveMinutes, the real-time team collaboration service, announced the closing of a $ 1.4M seed round led by Great Oaks VC and including notable investors like New World Ventures, Ali Rosenthal, and Sam Yagan. Unlike any other productivity app, LiveMinutes offers a single real-time collaboration platform that includes project management, document editing, and web conferencing.

“LiveMinutes adds real-time collaboration to Evernote’s business collaboration features,” says Rafe Needleman, Evernote’s Director of Developer Relations. “It lets colleagues edit notes in real-time, host conference calls, and save everything back on Evernote to get the most of Evernote. LiveMinutes makes teamwork better for their users and ours.”

LiveMinutes users create a workspace in the app, invite their colleagues, and start collaborating on a project, either asynchronously by leaving comments, or synchronously by launching a conference call. Typical use cases include small start-ups, cross-functional projects in large enterprises, freelancers, and distributed teams working on digital content.

“Our team members are located around the world and are constantly traveling, making real-time communication and productivity a real challenge,” says Starbucks VP Nicolas Bernadi. “We use LiveMinutes to stay in perfect synch. I love their concept of workspace, where we keep project content centralized, edit it in real-time, and send notifications to all stakeholders.”

As a pure HTML5 platform, LiveMinutes runs in any browser with no installation. Teams can start a conference call from their browser, Skype, or even get called on their mobile phone. “Modern teams keep their to-do lists in Basecamp, files on Google Docs, and calls on Skype. LiveMinutes is rewriting enterprise collaboration into a single layer that integrates with great platforms like Evernote or DropBox,” says Kemal El Moujahid, Co-Founder & CEO.

LiveMinutes is backed by leading investors, including Great Oaks VC (backers of Trulia, OkCupid). “I love investing in disruptive companies. Once companies try LiveMinutes they will never go back to plain old screen sharing, web conferencing or tracking changes,” says Sam Yagan, a LiveMinutes board member.