In the United States, buildings make up 70 percent of all energy use, and almost forty percent of all carbon dioxide emissions. Rethinking how buildings use energy is an essential issue of our time, and many have taken on the challenge of retrofitting energy hogs– to save money, to make cities more efficient, and to help the planet.

Forget street smarts. Roosevelt Island is getting smart streets. The 147-acre East River island hopes to create between 200 and 300 parking “smart spots” as part of an effort to attract more residents, tourists and a proposed engineering college, officials said. The island’s management team has just completed a year-long trial of 34 “smart spots” along West Drive near the island’s only subway station.

Streetline CEO Zia Yusuf interviewed for The CEO Show hour-long call-in special, which features some of Silicon Valley’s tech industry heavyweights each week.

What is a parking spot worth? A small fortune, nothing, and everything in between. It all depends on the time of the day and how desperate you happen to be at the moment, according to Zia Yusuf, president and CEO of Streetline, which has created a system for tracking, and ultimately auctioning, open parking spaces in urban centers.

Many promising executives derail sometime during their careers, often because they weren’t very good at office politics. Not playing the political game is often seen as a good thing, even a badge of honor. Some managers see it as proof of their integrity. They are going to succeed because of job performance alone. They couldn’t be more wrong. Research finds that a person’s political skills are key to building a successful career—for the good of both themselves and their company.

There’s no shortage of smart phone apps that aim to help you locate a parking spot in the city, but finding a good one can seem like it requires an app of its own. Many newer apps incorporate real-time data to locate available spaces and pricing information, but as parking apps continue to evolve these elements will seem more standard than spectacular. The next-generation parking app will go beyond mere availability to include features like reservations, open-space predictions, and flexible pricing. Here are five standout apps (or apps in progress) that offer glimpses into the future of smarter parking.

Considering that traffic congestion has been an ongoing theme during my week in Bangalore, it only stands to reason that parking follows. IBM just released its first-ever parking survey, and Bangalore made the top, or near the top, on a couple of key metrics. It was first in terms of most parking tickets issued, and second (only to New Delhi) in terms of cities where drivers argued most over parking spaces.

A new survey from IBM has confirmed what city managers, travelers and commuters already know from everyday experience: finding a parking space in a big city can be a frustrating and sometimes futile chore. And the problem isn’t confined to the U.S. — it’s an issue around the world.

IBM (IBM) has partnered with privately-held Streetline to develop a system that tracks parking patterns in an effort to help municipalities improve congestion. Under the terms of the agreement, Streetline’s patented smart-parking platform would be used to detect the presence of a vehicle through a network of wireless sensors located in individual parking spaces.

More U.S. drivers can soon expect to whip out their smartphones and find open parking spots using a digital map of their local streets. Such a solution could eliminate the tiresome routine of circling around the block countless times, help avoid heated arguments between strangers, and could even cut down on traffic congestion.

International Business Machines Corp. has spent the last two years building direct relationships with entrepreneurs that can help it grow its business. Now it’s getting an early indication that the strategy is working. It announced Wednesday that it has partnered with Streetline Inc., a start-up that’s developing technologies to shorten a driver’s search for an empty parking spot.

It will be near-field communication or in-car transponders. On-street technology has not stopped evolving,” said Amir Sedadi when asked about the future in a conversation he had last month with Parking Today. Sedadi is Assistant General Manager for the city of Los Angeles Office of Parking Management, Planning and Regulations. PT sat down with Sedadi and his staff to review what is going on parking-wise in the nation’s second-largest city.

The concept of “smart cities” must conjure up mental images of in all of us, from urban utopias to sci-fi inspired urban dystopias – and sometimes a little of both. A smart city, also called a “digital city” or a “connected city,” is a concept that has been defined as “embedding intelligence in objects” and then filling a town or city with those intelligent, connected objects: cars, parking meters, parking lots, police equipment, smart cards for public services, alternative energy sources, “smart” electric grids and intelligent networked telecommunications equipment.

Camp is usually a rewarding experience, a nice break from the humdrum of school and work. And the companies attending IBM SmartCamp Israel may have a rewarding experience all their own – a prize package designed to bump up the startup that wins the contest, and a chance to compete in the worldwide SmartCamp competition that could bring a very bright future to the winning company.

Ask Zia Yusuf what he does for a living and he’ll likely say, “I’m in the parking business.” More precisely, he’s in the business of trying to put an end to parking as we know it and utterly transform one of the most familiar and frustrating acts of daily life.

Streetline Inc. has been selling its parking-sensor technology for only a year and it has just 30 employees, but International Business Machines Corp. is depending on it and hundreds of young start-ups like it to reach ambitious financial targets. By 2015, IBM expects to add about $30 billion to its 2010 revenue of $99.9 billion, a challenging goal considering it grew its annual sales by around $10 billion over the past decade.

Forget the mobile operating system wars or the debate about which mobile devices should be the standard. The enterprise mobility discussion needs to shift to the topic of using mobile devices to improve business processes and create contextual services that harness Big Data.

Everyone who drives has had the frustrating experience of circling the block in search of an elusive parking space, or pulling into a garage to discover that it is full. All that time spent driving around in search of parking wastes time and gas — and emits even more of the greenhouse gases that cause climate change.

The Saturday morning ritual of searching for a parking space will be wincingly familiar to most drivers. The queue to get into town, the crawl round packed bays and the annoyance as the car in front grabs the last space. It’s enough to drive anyone to online shopping.

Have you ever struggled to find a parking spot in a big city? And whilst driving around in circles have you ever dreamt of a service that lets you know where the free parking spaces are? In this era where our smartphones can tell us when the next subway train is coming and where there’s traffic congestion, is this really too much to ask? Apparently not according to Streetline.

The concept of machines talking to machines was once the domain of science fiction fantasy. No more. Firms need to grapple with how it will transform business models.

The City of Asheville is inviting the public to help test a new Smartphone app that lets drivers know where available parking meters are located. The free app, called “Parker,” shows real-time parking availability and will be tested in 50 downtown spaces July 1 through Sept. 30. It was developed by the San-Francisco-based company Streetline and is available for iPhone and Android users.

I don’t own a car, but I still care deeply about parking — or, rather, the ability of the people I mooch rides from to find it. So I think my chauffeurs will be pleased to hear about the Parker app by Streetline.

A wireless solution to the nightmare that is parking is getting a sizable investment from some well-known players. On Tuesday, startup Streetline, which uses wireless sensors and cell phones to find parking spots for drivers, announced it has raised $15 million from Fontinalis Partners, the investment fund from former Ford CEO Bill Ford, as well as RockPort Capital Partners and Sutter Hill Ventures.

I can’t count the number of times I’ve actually shown up half an hour early for a meeting or event, but still ended up being late because I circled the city for an hour searching for a parking spot. And who wants to be the lame ass that walks in halfway through the meeting and says, “Sorry I’m late, I couldn’t find a place to park”? Because apparently everyone else found a place to park and was able to show up on time.

Streetline Inc., the maker of technology that helps reduce traffic congestion, attracted $15 million in funding from an investor group that includes a firm co-founded by Ford Motor Co. (F) Chairman Bill Ford. Ford’s Fontinalis Partners LLC led the investment, along with RockPort Capital Partners, San Francisco-based Streetline said today in a statement. Existing investor Sutter Hill Ventures also contributed to the funding round.

As part of Metro’s ongoing effort to make parking more convenient for riders, a trial of real-time sensing has been underway at the Fort Totten Metro Kiss and Ride Lot for the past few months. This system uses sensors embedded in the pavement and in parking meters to let users know when spaces are available in the Kiss and Ride Lot, and when they should save time, energy and reduce their carbon footprint by driving to a different lot or using some other mode to access Metro.

PITTSBURGH (KDKA) – You might not think parking is a hot button topic across the country, but for the last few days, thousands of so-called parking professionals packed the David L. Lawrence Convention Center for the International Parking Institute’s annual meeting. Roughly 3,000 people attended the conference in downtown Pittsburgh.

Just about every time a new electric vehicle charging station is installed in America, I get a press release about it. But what about the other 256 million vehicles on the road in the U.S.? Although they don’t need to plug in, regular cars need somewhere to park, too. Streetline, a California startup, has an app for that: Parker. The company installs sensors in parking spots so that consumers can go onto their iPhone or Android and check to see where spots are available.

Looking for a parking spot by driving around and around the block has become a thing of the past. Streetline today announced the launch of the second-generation smart-parking app, Parker, for the iPhone and the launch of Parker for Android. Parker lets users find available street or lot parking options and offers other information such as cost.

Cell phones and social media tools help topple Middle Eastern regimes. Telemedicine lets surgeons reach across time and space. Smart grids let power companies reduce fuel consumption and lower pollution. Networking has changed the world.

Roosevelt Island has a long history of taking the mundane and making it cool, in a nerdy way. Trash from residential buildings is pushed to a central processing facility through a series of vacuum tubes; the daily commute for many islanders is a tram, just upgraded in 2010, that carries them as high as 250 feet over the East River on their way to work. For years now, a tidal power company, Verdant Power, has been powering the grocery store in Motorgate with energy from tidal turbines in the East River that were installed as a pilot project.

Locating a place to park could soon be easier thanks to a wireless sensor that monitors parking spaces. The sensor, created by San Francisco startup Streetline, detects large metal objects nearby and signals traffic officials, who can use the data to help ease congestion and boost meter revenue.

Visitors to downtown Fort Worth know how hard it can be to find parking spot, especially on the weekends. Now there’s an app for that. The city of Fort Worth has partnered with Streetline, the maker of a free smart phone app called Parker. Parker promises to steer drivers to open metered parking spots in real time by using sensors placed near each meter in the app’s network.

Some of the most valuable real estate in cities is hidden beneath parked cars. For managers of urban resources, this turf is a blind spot. There’s no real-time data about how it gets used, and you can’t manage what you can’t measure. Experts believe that some 30% of urban traffic comes from cars hunting for parking spaces.Enter Streetline, a 30-employee company in San Francisco that creates and installs wireless sensor networks to monitor parking spaces. 

Between 8% and 74% of traffic in congested downtown areas is caused by people cruising for parking, according to a report by UCLA professor Donald Shoup who synthesized studies from 70 years of research on the subject. The paper indicates that drivers in major cities — including San Francisco, Sydney, New York and London — spend between 3.5 and 14 minutes searching for a space each time they park.

The parking space at the University of Maryland College Park has now been enhanced with the Smart Parking Space Program, which informs the visitors about the available parking spaces. This new program provides information like availability of electric vehicle charging stations as well. 

Wouldn’t it be great if you could use your phone to see and be routed to the closest available parking place? Well, I’m here to tell you that mobile and wireless technology is going to help solve the very big ‘pain point’ of parking.

Learning how to park takes a few weeks, but finding a place to park takes a lifetime. Streetline, a San Francisco-based start up, has help on the way. Its new technology beams the location of the closest open parking spaces to anyone with an iPhone and the new app— Parker.

HOLLYWOOD — Zia Yusuf is driving down Vine Avenue, en route to a parking space. He doesn’t have to search hard. He knows there are two available spaces on the next street at this very moment. It’s not that he can see ahead to the open space: His iPhone showed him the available space, via the $1.99 Parker app from Streetline.

Forget Angry Birds! This is WAY more useful! Streetline’s new Parker app, which costs $1.99, locates available parking spaces for users. So cool! The app currently works in the Hollywood district of El Lay and NYC’s Roosevelt Island. It will be adding Washington, D.C’s Fort Totten Metro station soon, and Salt Lake City will be coming later in 2011.

Do you have any tricks for finding a tough parking space? We talk to Zia Yusuf, CEO of Streetline and creator of the new Parker IPhone app.

Zia Yusuf is driving down Vine Avenue, en route to a parking space. He doesn’t have to search hard. He knows there are two available spaces on the next street at this very moment. It’s not that he can see ahead to the open space: His iPhone showed him the available space, via the $1.99 Parker app from Streetline.

Streetline, a San Francisco-based start-up that helps cities collect information about real-time parking data, was named the “world’s smartest startup” last year by IBM. More than 30% of traffic in a city is caused by people looking for parking, according to Streetline. The company’s goal is to reduce traffic congestion, cut carbon emissions and decrease noise, pollution and wasted energy by making it easier for drivers to find parking spots.

Big Blue will fund educational and mentoring services through President Obama’s Startup America program. 

For those of you wondering when America broke down, the headline refers to the new “Startup America” campaign launched by the White House to encourage high-growth entrepreneurship in the U.S. Multiple tech companies will contribute to the campaign but some of the biggest announcements come from IBM, Intel and Techstars.

Parking operations have always been a relatively staid and unexciting part of Metro’s operations, but suddenly it’s rife with innovation and some of the best communication with riders anywhere in the organization. Metro is piloting a secure bike room in the College Park garage, and asked riders for input on how and whether to charge for access. Another pilot will try electronic sensors at Fort Totten’s kiss-and-ride to give real-time occupancy data.

Metro will roll out a pilot program of sensors on parking spaces that will collect data on parking usage to help Metro make strategic choices and to keep riders from having to drive in circles looking for a spot.

Finding a parking place in Metro garages may get easier with the help of new sensor technology. Metro is starting a test program in early February at the Fort Totten Kiss and Ride lot that will allow users to see which spaces are available and for how long. Sensors will relay information in real time to Metro’s Web site and the Parker App, which soon will be available in the District.

One of the challenges Metro faces is how to best support Parking customers. Good data on parking space utilization at metered Kiss and Ride spaces can be hard to come by and finding a metered parking space at many stations can involve guesswork. To address this lack of space availability information, Metro is beginning a 1-year pilot of sensors in parking spaces at the Fort Totten Metro Kiss and Ride parking lot to capture data on space availability and usage and to facilitate payment.