Two years ago, my parents celebrated their 40th anniversary. Toasts were given, tears were shed and when the last of the dishes were put away, my mom surprised everyone with a slide show of never-before-seen photos of my parents skiing around the Western United States — she five months pregnant with my eldest brother — celebrating the last of their days sans children.
It was a delightful evening. But just two years later, their 42nd anniversary nearly ended in divorce.
My parents celebrated with a film and dinner in San Francisco. My mom was recovering from knee surgery, so my dad dutifully dropped her off at the restaurant and afterward went to pick up the car.
The way my mom tells it, she was left standing on a street corner, in the pouring rain, with men trying to pick her up (“I was dressed very nicely and they were honking,” she recalled) for 30 minutes before my dad called to report that he had lost the car.
Calls to towing companies were not fruitful: “We could only remember four of the numbers on the license plate and not in the right order.” They asked a cabdriver to drive them up and down nearby streets. “It was the end of his 12-hour shift and, after an hour, he wanted to go home,” my mom said. “But I can be very tenacious.” At midnight, they debated taking the train home but decided it was too late. Finally, after several of my mom’s motivational speeches to the cabdriver and a $70 fare, they found the car. (As to who spotted the car first, the debate continues.)
I suggested that, next time, they use Google Maps to mark their car’s location on a map. Other people suggested mobile applications specifically designed to help people locate their car. My dad and I gave six apps a whirl:
Find My Car. (Free, iOS and Android) Using the phone’s GPS, Find My Car locates your parking spot and fixes it on your phone’s map. You can take photos using the phone’s camera and jot down notes, which comes in handy if you park in a massive airport garage. But the app could be more intuitive. It lets you set a timer for a parking meter, which is useful, but it took five minutes to find that feature within the app. Also, my dad needed his reading glasses for the fine print — major point deductions there.
Find My Car’s developers recently unveiled a new app, called Find My Car Smarter, for the iPhone 4S and iPhone 5, that syncs with your car’s Bluetooth and automatically stores your car’s location when you park. The only time you need to open the app is if you misplace your car. I might be willing to fork over $1.99 for that, but my dad, who has never used Bluetooth, didn’t seem keen to start.
ICar. (Free, iOS) The iCar app offers everything Find My Car does, except it does not take photos. It also locates nearby gas stations and parking lots, but when we tested those features, we got an error message. This was one of our least favorite options because of all the apps we tested, this was the only one with annoying ads. Note to iCar advertisers: When someone is desperately searching for their car, they are probably not likely to click on a Sam’s Club ad.
Honk. (99 cents, iOS) Honk does everything Find My Car and iCar do, but charges you 99 cents for a much cuter interface. The app notes your location, offers directions when it’s time to go and lets you take photos and notes — which you can type using the phone’s keypad, or scribble using your index finger. Very cute. Like iCar, it helps you find nearby parking lots and gas stations, and also ATMs. And like the others, it lets you mark how much time you have left on the parking meter by swiping your finger along its parking meter icon. You can see on the screen how many minutes you have left, and the app honks when it’s time to go, or time to fill up the meter.
Hey Dude, Where’s My Car? (Free, iOS) This is basically a more complicated version of Google Maps with a clever name. Bugs crashed this app three times. The app promises you will “never ask ‘Dude Where’s My Car?’ again,” but it was difficult figuring out how to set the car’s parking location. When we looked for app instructions, we found a description of the app developer instead (a “pretty groovy guy in Austin, Texas”). “It may be dude friendly,” my dad said, “but it lost my car and we haven’t even parked it yet.”
Sally Park. ($2.99, iOS) This was the most costly but also the most intuitive of the apps we tested. All you have to do is open the app and touch the big “Park” button and it automatically sets your location. Sally Park also gives you the option to take a photo or write down notes about your location. Like Find My Car, iCar and Honk, it also includes a parking meter timer and reminds you when you have five minutes left on the meter.
My StuffFinder. (Free, iOS) This is the lost-and-found of apps. It not only lets you find your car, but your keys, glasses, wallet, shoes and purse too. Just save the location of various items and the app will direct you back to them. The app promises to get users within 16 feet of their item, but when we tested it in the Sierra Nevada mountains, it only promised accuracy within 596 feet — not ideal when you’re trying to find your car keys. But My StuffFinder also lets you take photos of where you left the car and jot down a reminder. One drawback: unlike the other apps, StuffFinder does not include a parking meter timer.
Because all the apps utilized the phone’s mapping and GPS technology, they all had the same level of location accuracy. Because of that, my dad said he would probably use the apps with the most intuitive interface and that included photo and note-taking abilities and a parking meter alarm, like Honk and Sally Park. Outside the city, where he doesn’t have to worry about meter maids, he said he would be more likely to use My StuffFinder, especially for my mom’s things. “Your mom is always misplacing her glasses and keys.” And with that, we’ll see whether they make it to their 43rd.