Parking Mate is an all-in-one parking app for the iPhone. You can set a GPS marker for your car's location, use the parking meter timer, take a photo of your car's location, set a schedule for street sweepers in your 'hood, and see all that data at a glance in the "Current Parking Details" function.

• Carr Matey is an Android app that not only will tell you where you left your car, but it will fulfill your daily need for things pirate-themed. Want to set a GPS trace? Just mark your "vessel" with the "drop anchor" button, and you'll get step-by-step directions on how to get back before high tide. If you're parked underground or indoors, which can interfere with GPS, the compass feature will guide you to your vehicle. Carrr Matey even has a setting called Harbor Mode, which lets you input the level, letter, color, and space number of your chosen parking space. And, as with Parking Mate, this app includes a meter timer for those left out on the street.
  

• Looking for a space? Google Open Spot (also for Android) can help. Users can mark when they've left a parking space, alerting other users that a space is available. Oh, the kindness of strangers.
  

• Foursquare (all major mobile platforms) is useful for remembering the locations of parking garages around a city center. Check in whenever you park and you'll have a reminder of where to find your car at the end of the night, as well as a searchable list in your history. Bonus: Check in at any one garage more times than anyone else and you'll become the mayor. What's the benefit? Pretty much just bragging rights. But ask the manager of the facility if they have a special deal for Foursquare mayors. They'll probably look at you like you've just escaped from a hospital, but they might swing you a discount.
  

• Use Facebook's mobile website or the latest version of Facebook's mobile app to check in through Places and you'll be able to keep a record of where you've parked in your Facebook news feed.
  

Go old school

You don't need a smartphone to become an expert parking hacker. Dumb phones, cameras and wristwatches are useful, too.

Take a photo. It doesn't necessarily have to be of your car. If you're in a parking garage, take a photo of the nearest sign indicating that you're on level G7. If the sign is next to your car, even better. Parking on a city street? Try the nearest intersection or a landmark.

Use GPS. If you have a GPS unit and feel like carrying it around, you can set a marker for the location of your car, put the GPS in your bag or pocket, and run a trace. You'll have directions back to your car.

Set an alarm. Worried about the meter running out? Set a timer on your phone that will go off about five minutes before your meter.

Set an event Use the calendar on your phone and set a recurring event for when street sweeping happens in your neighborhood. Your town or city should make its full schedule publicly available.

Twist your watch Do you have a watch with a diving bezel? That metal ring around the face with numbers on it that only twists in one direction? Yeah, that thing. It's used by deep sea divers to time their decompression stops when swimming back up to the surface, but you can use it to remember when your parking meter expires. Place the triangle over the minute hand when you feed the meter to track elapsed time. Or track the remaining time: count forward from the current time and place the triangle over the minute mark when the meter is set to expire.

Tie a flag or stick some sort of tchotchke on the end of your antenna to help you find your car in a crowded lot. It's the oldest trick in this wiki.

Originally written by Wired.com contributor Matthew Bushlow

This page was last modified 16:45, 8 September 2010 by snackfight. Based on work by pstatz and howto_admin.

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