Newcastle University student Dylan McKee has won praise from Newcastle Central MP and Shadow Minister for Digital Economy Chi Onwurah for his latest app, the Parking Fairy.
The free app, which knows where you are as you drive into Newcastle and alerts you to the nearest parking space, was launched only last week and due to popular demand has since been made available for Android users as well as Apple.
Chi Onwurah said: “This is a fantastic example of the kind of digital innovation and entrepreneurship we have right here in the North East. I’m pleased to see open data being used in this way and, with a free app now available for Android too, I’m sure many people will be able to benefit from it when driving into the city.”
Dylan, 20, from Seghill Northumberland, won NETV Digital Catapult’s competition to come up with an idea to use open data to ease travel problems in partnership with Sunderland Software City.
Dylan said, “I came up with the idea of The Parking Fairy to offer a simple but smart solution to the problem of struggling to find a parking space when you come into a city. Due to timing and costs, I thought I would launch with just the version for Apple Watch and iPhones initially to test the waters and see if there was a demand. It’s fantastic to see just how popular it has been already and because so many people were also wanting to have it for Android, I’ve pulled out all the stops to launch this quickly.”
Dylan has many years’ expertise in app development, running his own business DJM Development to create his own apps and also ones commissioned by other organisations. His most successful app to date My Altitude has had over a million downloads across the world.
For more information or to download the free app visit www.parkingfairyapp.com or follow @parkingfairyapp on Twitter.