{"id":340890,"date":"2017-05-15T00:33:27","date_gmt":"2017-05-14T16:33:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/techcrunch.com\/?p=1489568"},"modified":"2017-05-15T00:33:27","modified_gmt":"2017-05-14T16:33:27","slug":"bikeparking-club-connects-a-social-network-to-bike-locks-in-a-city","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/people.utm.my\/asmawisham\/bikeparking-club-connects-a-social-network-to-bike-locks-in-a-city\/","title":{"rendered":"BikeParking.Club connects a social network to bike locks in a city"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/p>\n

Palo Alto has a bike lock problem, and a pair of software developers and a designer took a shot at trying to solve that problem in 24 hours in New York this weekend.<\/p>\n

Eugene Tonev, Alexander Sivura and\u00a0Yuri Dymov \u2014 currently at health startup HealthTap \u2014 put together a model of the kinds of bike racks you might see on the streets of Palo Alto. But this rack has a connected lock, paired with a social network, on it that can activate on demand. It\u2019s part of an app called BikeParking.Club, which is a network for bikers that might instal structures and locks like this to make sure they always have a spot somewhere nearby for their bikes. All this was thrown together and actually worked on stage at TechCrunch Disrupt New York\u2019s hackathon this year.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou always need to carry all these chains, or buy two chains and leave one in office or one in home,\u201d Tonev says. \u201cYou always have a lock around your places. So, if you have chains everywhere, why share\u00a0them [to make sure you always have a spot somewhere].\u201d<\/p>\n

The prototype they showed on stage was a mock-up of pipes and plumbing pulled from Home Depot nearby \u2014 but it\u2019s something that it may look what a kind of lock network would look like in the real world. Users connect to the app, which helps them find a nearby open spot and then gives them the ability to lock their bike on the rack. The three bike to work every day, and that\u2019s why they figured it\u2019s a problem that probably needs an answer at some point.<\/p>\n

The big problem is twofold, Tonev says: having enough spots around that bikers can access; and not having to carry locks around everywhere to make sure those bikes (hopefully) stay in those spots. So when a user installs a lock, they\u2019ll automatically get access to the parking network around the city while always having access to a spot in the lock they installed.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

\u201cThe lock is an entry point, after that \u2014 If even half of the [tens of thousands of cyclists]\u00a0will install that [in Palo Alto], we\u2019ll immediately have something like 350,000\u00a0parking lots for bikes.\u201d<\/p>\n

It\u2019s a hack, of course, but according to the trio HealthTap encourages them to try out new ideas. Opening up the biking universe might not be such a foreign idea for a healthcare startup, though the software developers suddenly having to deal with a hardware problem was a bit of a taller order. So, who knows where it goes, but at least when they fly back to the Bay Area they\u2019ll have another neat project to throw on their portfolios.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\"\" Palo Alto has a bike lock problem, and a pair of software developers and a designer took a shot at trying to solve that problem in 24 hours in New York this weekend. Eugene Tonev, Alexander Sivura and\u00a0Yuri Dymov — currently at health startup HealthTap — put together a model of the kinds of bike racks you might see on the streets of Palo Alto. But this rack has a connected lock,… Read More<\/a><\/p>\n

\n<\/img><\/a> <\/img><\/a> <\/img><\/a> <\/img><\/a> <\/img><\/a> <\/img><\/a>\n<\/div>\n

\"\"\/ <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5817,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[25],"tags":[59,66,26],"class_list":["post-340890","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-technology","tag-media","tag-techcrunch","tag-technology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/people.utm.my\/asmawisham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/340890","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/people.utm.my\/asmawisham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/people.utm.my\/asmawisham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/people.utm.my\/asmawisham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5817"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/people.utm.my\/asmawisham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=340890"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/people.utm.my\/asmawisham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/340890\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/people.utm.my\/asmawisham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=340890"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/people.utm.my\/asmawisham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=340890"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/people.utm.my\/asmawisham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=340890"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}