If you were gonna head out, and you knew from an iPhone application that there was no parking readily available in the area, would you wait and maybe go out a little later?  To help avoid the endless circling while trying to find that open spot, San Francisco is testing the idea of sensored parking - you can not only check which spaces are free in a certain area, but you can put money in the meter from anywhere you are, without having to run back to your car and risk a ticket. If LA is not getting better public transit anytime soon, this could be a nice little implementation.