Portable GPS functionality wish list

I’ve been using a car GPS (global positioning system) for about six months and I can’t believe it took me so long to get one. There’s a lot I like about GPS units, but they’re far from perfect. One feature I’d like to see in a future version is a parking finder. GPS units currently guide you to an address you specify, but that address might not have parking. Take any downtown address for example. The GPS tells me how to get to the front door, but there’s never any parking allowed or available for an ‘out’ -towner like me. Having a feature that would allow you to tell a GPS to guide you to the closest available parking that meets a set of personal criteria (e.g. below $2 an hour, within 2 blocks, gated, etc.) would make these units much more usable than they currently are. Such a feature would require more than a bit of programming of course. Map providers would need to add a whole new meta layer on top of their maps and maintaining accurate data on parking prices and features would be enormously costly. So how about allowing the public to contribute and maintain that content? Sort of like how vancouvergasprices.com gets content for its site. Let the public maintain the information and have the necessary mechanisms in place to verify and maintain information accuracy (e.g. community feedback, ‘revertability’, and user ratings). Then make GPS units updateable and customizable – allow users to add their own meta layers on top of the built in maps. I can see whole cotton industries building add-ons to GPS units, not unlike the industries that have developed around open source CMS software like Joomla, blogging software like WordPress, and multimedia devices like the iPod.