Use phone to find storage for bikes
Denver-based Clancy Systems International Inc. – the company behind the infamous Denver boot – is rolling out a system that lets bike riders reserve and pay for bike lockers using their mobile phones. Registered users search online for available bike lockers, call in to retrieve access codes and dial back in for additional codes to retrieve their bikes at the end of the day. The customer’s phone number is linked to his or her account, and users are billed monthly for their bike-locker use. The monthly bill includes the locker fee of $2 per day plus a 10 percent convenience fee. Users also pay a $5.95 annual fee for their accounts, which also allow them to access the company’s pay-by-phone auto parking system. The company has a handful of lockers in downtown Denver and is in negotiations to place additional units throughout the city, said Stan Wolfson, president of Clancy Systems. The system is already in use by the Los Angeles Metropolitan Transit Authority, Bay Area Rapid Transit District in San Francisco and at colleges including the University of California, Los Angeles.
Check www.bicycleparkingnetwork.com/Locations/ for lockers in Denver and elsewhere.
A disposable way to keep memories
Has the cost of a nice digital camcorder – about $600 to $700 – kept you out of the market so far? CVS Corp. is introducing a $30 disposable digital camcorder, a little bigger than a deck of cards, which records 20 minutes of video. The product is made by Pure Digital Technologies Inc. of San Francisco. When the device’s memory is full, you drop if off at a CVS photo lab and get back a DVD movie for a $13 processing fee. The DVD can be viewed in most players. And you can e-mail copies to friends and family. CVS plans to have the video service in 4,500 of its 5,400 stores.
