First smartphones helped you find where you were going. Now, once you get there, they can help you find a place to park.

According to the NY Times, San Francisco is the site of the test-drive for this novel innovation, a “wireless sensor network” that uses a device embedded in a 4” x 4” piece of plastic attached to the pavement beside individual parking spaces to indicate wirelessly whether or not that space is occupied.

The ever-progressive city is trying out this technology on 6,000 metered parking spaces (out of 24,000 citywide) to see if such a thing can improve the parking disaster drivers are currently facing there.

Just like looking up maps and directions, smartphone users will be able to view maps of the area they’re traveling with available parking spaces lit up. Additional features this technology can make available are the ability to pay for spaces remotely, and even to feed the meter remotely should their stay last longer than intended.

On the flip side, surely this same technology may also be used to make meter-reading (and thus parking-ticket distribution) easier too.

With the new NY Times mobile service, you can do all of the following from your wireless internet-enabled smartphone:

• Read all the latest news in all of the NY Times sections
• Scan the front of sections for headlines of interest to you, and click on them for the full article
• Navigate from section to section easily, and without the mess of all that paper

Plus, you can search back a full 7 days into The Times' archive.