Parking your car just got easier for Android users. ParkMe, the free iOS app that helps you find parking spots based on your location, is now available as an Android app.

The free app uses your location information to identify parking options in your vicinity. The app serves up a map with information on parking lost and garages in your area, as well as the rates that these places charge to help you compare costs. Once you find a lot you’d like to park in, the app will give you directions direct to the lot’s driveway, not just their street address.

Using a meter or a lot with limited time available? The app also has a parking timer to help you avoid getting a ticket or getting towed. In some markets, the tool also has a real time space view tool, so that you can see how many spots are actually available in real time.

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

Bernard Waber, the author of The House on East 88th Street, Lyle, Lyle, Crocodile and other classic kid’s books, has passed away.

After World War II, the young artist changed his plans to study finance and took on art instead. he The House on East 88th Street captured his memories of moving to New York City as a young artist and newlywed. He shared his memories in a moving essay:

My involvement with children’s books originated with some illustrations of children I carried in my art portfolio. Several art directors suggested that my drawings seemed suited for children’s books. At the same time, I was also having read-aloud sessions with my own three children. I am afraid enthusiasm for “their” books began, in fact, to cause them occasional discomfort. “Daddy, why don’t you look at the grownups’ books?” they once chided as I trailed after them into the children’s room of our local library. Before long I was mailing out stories and ideas to publishers. Rejections followed, but after a time a cheery encouragement arrived from Houghton Mifflin Company, and to my delight, a contract was offered for Lorenzo. In one way or another, I seem to find myself thinking of children’s books most of the time.

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

While The New York Times is currently focusing on print, online, apps, and even Google Glass experiences today, the company has a lab in which they think about how readers might want to consume its content in the future.

In a talk at the AppNation conference in New York today, Michael Zimbalist, VP of research & development operations at The New York Times Co., revealed that his team is thinking about the next place that consumers will want to read news. He imagines a world in which the news is available on your coffee table or your bathroom mirror, if of course, these items become connected.

“In the lab we envision a world where everything is connected,” said Zimbalist.

The media company is testing a Google Glass app, and Zimbalist says that whether Google Glass is the thing that wins, he does experience that soon we’ll have a connected hub in our pockets beyond just mobile phones. “Instead of looking at maps, your right shoe [will be] buzzing when you have to turn… your wallet ringing when [your] kid away at college has just exceeded their credit card limit,” he said, explaining that five years ago people would have scratched their head, but today it’s easier to imagine. “

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

A tweet by the Swedish Academy has started a guessing game about this year's Nobel Prize for Literature.    

Novelist Stephen King has made headlines for the second time over his decision not publish an eBook edition of Joyland.

In May 2012, King revealed that his Hard Case Crime book would not have a digital edition: “We’re going to hold off on e-publishing this one,” he said. As the Junte 2013 publication date neared this week, King told The Wall Street Journal:

I have no plans for a digital version … Maybe at some point, but in the meantime, let people stir their sticks and go to an actual bookstore rather than a digital one.

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

Publishers looking to get into the app business should not just adapt their online content for the mobile web, argued David Kenny, chairman/CEO of The Weather Company, said in a keynote interview at the AppNation conference in New York this morning.

“It is a big mistake to think it works like the web, it is a very different experience,” he said. “They are checking the weather six times a day. Our mobile users are  making decisions on the fly, you’ve got to flow into that.”

Kenny ought to know. The Weather Channel’s apps have been downloaded 106 million times and the business is growing, and the company’s mobile business is the fastest growing part of its business both in usage and in monetization. The company employs about a hundred mobile engineers to develop and improve mobile products every day.  The company feeds their weather forecasts into 15,000 other apps including Facebook. continued…

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

Using video chats over AT&T’s cellular network is impossible, but the company is giving assurances that it  is working to resolve the issue by the end of this year. The service, or lack or service, renders new video chatting apps like Google Hangout ineffective.

AT&T has only allowed iOS users access to Facetime as recently last year after blocking the service, citing its own policy for prioritizing pre-loaded apps. There’s no telling how many customers have left the company for better video features, but with T-Mobile’s  new 4G wireless network, AT&T is no longer dealing with just Verizon’s superior connections.

Here’s the full announcement on The Verge:

continued…

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

Guncrafter joins the top free iPhone apps list this week at No. 9 free iPhone app this week, according to research from AppData. The Naquatic app encourages users to build their own virtual guns.

Below, we’ve listed the top free iPhone apps of the week. The list links to Inside Network’s research about the individual apps, including historical charts, developer information and download information.

To support Mediabistro’s Media App Summit, we spotlight the top free apps every week–helping our readers discover, enjoy and analyze successful content. continued…

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

Helen Fielding, the best-selling author, says Bridget Jones will be technologically advanced in the third novel in the series.    

David Annand hails the great American writer's first novel in thirty years.    

Sarfraz Manzoor salutes a fine anthology documenting the hidden lives of Indians in the UK.    

HarperCollins has announced some adjustments in their General Books group, driven by It Books publisher Cal Morgan's move to the Harper division as svp, executive editor. (He will continue as editorial director of Harper Perennial and Harper paperbacks as well.) Lynn Grady has been promoted to svp, publisher of It…

Instead of a treehouse, one father with an avid young reader built his daughter a reading nook in a tree.

We’ve embedded his photograph above–would you love a treehouse reading nook this summer? The proud parent posted about his creation on Reddit:

It’s about 7 ft off the ground. All the weight is supported by the bolts in the main trunk and the thick branch opposite the platform. I boxed around that support branch so as to minimize strain as the tree inevitably grows. The steel cables are most definitely overkill backup support, but they don’t seem to be needed even at 3x her weight … She was away at a friends for most of it. I had the joists and half the decking done when she got home. It was fun to have her sit up on the finished part if the deck and space / position the boards before I secured each one. The whole process went surprisingly quickly.

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

Hachette Australia has partnered with Sydney creative agency Droga5 and Qantas to create a set of paperback books that are timed to be read during 10 of the airline’s main flying routes. The ‘Stories for Every Journey’ set includes 10 books by existing Hachette authors. Two of the books by Sean

Australian illustrators Ben Sanders and Tony Flowers have been shortlisted in the children’s book category of the UK-based Association of Illustrators (AOI) Illustration Awards. Sanders has been shortlisted for his book I’ve An Uncle Ivan (Thames & Hudson) and Flowers has been shortlisted for the cover and internal illustrations in Samantha-Ellen Bound’s What the

Booktopia CEO and founder Tony Nash has been nominated for the 2013 Australian Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year Award. Nash, who founded Booktopia in 2004, is one of 18 nominees competing in the Eastern region category, which includes entrepreneurs from the ACT and NSW. A regional winner will be