Connecting devices seems to be the proper solution for car makers nowadays. So, Magellan’s Premium Car kit is not such a bad idea, as exclusively relies on your iDevice for driving directions. How does it succeed doing this? By combining itself with various navigation apps to offer a complete satnav experience.
So:
- it also includes a GPS receiver, with a multidirectional patch and 3-4m accuracy.
- an accessory for charging your iPhone which works with any style of app for satellite navigation, not only with Magellan RoadMate.
- it features a couple of stereo speakers, so that the driving directions to be clear, and different devices to be used in the same time: you can use the iPhone, and also the Bluetooth for hands-free calls.
- it’s designed for iPhone 3G and 3GS.
- its price: £70.
What do you think about this kit?
{[Source: Pocket-lint, Photo]
Post tags: Tags: car-kit, iphone, ipod, magellan, magellan premium car kit
A few days ago, TeleNav has announced the launch of a new version of its automotive navigation platform. We are talking about TeleNav Auto 2.0, which integrates the phone, cloud and car and sets a totally new standard in in-car connectivity. The new versions tries to improve the driving experience, making the sending / receiving / exchange of information easier for users who are driving, everything available on hands-free system.
Let’s see how exactly the new version works! Users can send the destinations to the car and then just drive there, having full easy access to contacts, schedule and locations. To all this, the cloud can be accessed for getting information about places to visit, search algorithms, mapping data, real-time traffic, weather, gas prices and different other dynamic content. The good part for manufacturers is that TeleNav Auto 2.0 supports HTML5 apps, which means they do not have to update the vehicle’s software for updating their services.
Beside all those things, TeleNav will also provide information to the car’s electronic system, which to improve intelligent safety or fuel efficiency decisions adapted to road’s condition (curvature, grade, blank, speed-limit, road type or signs).
So, TeleNav 2.0 can now be founded at OEMs and Tier1 suppliers.
Have you ever used in-car connectivity on your car?
[Source: Marketwatch, Photo]
Post tags: Tags: in-car connectivity, telenav, telenav auto 2.0
According to OnStar spokesman, this is not a common problem, although John Volecker has written about the fact that he has received a robocall during having a Chevrolet Sonic on a test-drive. Nevertheless, this is not the only complaint.
Should OnStar subscribers become worried? We don’t know. But anyway, OnStar suggests owners of OnStar equipments to add their OnStar phone number to the National Do Not Call Registry and they will be credited any phone minutes wasted by robocallers.
Do you have an OnStar-equipped car? Have you received a robocall?
[Source: Autoblog, Photo]
Post tags: Tags: onstar equipment, robocall, subscriber
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Head-Up Display technology – from BMW
We are everyday warriors: we fight like warriors, we think all our actions like warriors and we even use weapons. So, there wasn’t more to driving cars which to use some military technologies. It’s also the case of BMW and its Head-Up Display (HUD): the technology started being used on military jets in 1958, so that the vital information to be kept in the pilot’s sight; around 1970, it started being used in aviation, and in January 2004 BMW became the first European car manufacturer to integrate this technology in its cars.
HUD on BMW 5-Series cars actually displays information like speed and rpms so that the driver not to be distracted from the road. According to their studies, a driver normally takes his eyes from the road for at least a second just for checking the instrument cluster or the navigation screen. Apparently, even when driving at a low speed of 50 km/h, the car already covers 14 meters without the driver to pay attention. That’s a lot.
Besides this obvious benefit of the technology, HUD also reduces the time for the driver to assimilate the info by more than 50%.
If you are curious where this info is actually displayed, BMW has used a water-thin foil, integrated into the windscreen. Its advantage relation to its military version is the colorful display of the information, which facilitates the distinguish between different type of data.
So, do you usually feel like a warrior in your car?
[Source: Carscoop, Photo]
Post tags: Tags: automotive technology, bmw cars, head up display, military technology
Why working at an app dedicated specifically to your car brand when you can have an entire phone inspired by it? This is what Porsche Design has done in collaboration with Blackberry. The association is not accidental: both Porsche and Blackberry rely on their functions and less on their form. That’s the moment when Porsche Design interferes and does its job perfectly.
Porsche Design P’9981 Smartphone from BlackBerry is a co-branded product; it features a 1.2 GHz processor, a HD video camera, 8 GB of internal memory, QUERTY keyboard and a touch display screen. In addition to this, a personal concierge service is included with the P’9981. The entire value of this “creation”: $2,000.
Escort is a line of radar detectors – so far, this is helpful for any driver. The beauty of this radar detectors line is the next feature: a mobile app-supported network (Escort Live), which sends notifications to drivers whenever speedtraps are identified on the road.
This is how it works: each time the Escort device identifies a radar through its SmartCord Live, a Bluetooth-enabled cord, an alert is sent to the cloud and then forwarded to driver’s smartphone, in case you are in its radius of action. Besides that, it can also identify red light cameras and different other types of surveillance devices on the road.
If you are interested into getting this app for you and your smartphone, you would have to pay $79.95.
Do you currently use a radar detector on your car?
[Source: Autoblog, Photo]
Post tags: Tags: bluetooth, escort radar detector, smartphone app
The new Volkswagen Beetle called VWJuicedUp has an interesting promotional campaign in Canada and has an Apple app to support it. It’s a trend, isn’t it? That of having a mobile app integrated into the marketing campaign for your product, especially if the product is a car. In this case, Volkswagen has definitely drawn consumers’ attention by using this strategy.
Watch the video and see how it actually works:
So, all you need is an Apple device, and the interaction with the new Beetle billboards begins. If you were impressed of what you have seen, the app is available for download on the iTune store. And if you have no billboard around, you can still download it and watch the presentation videos.
Toyota’s latest addition to Toyota Touch infotainment product includes the world-first smartphone mirroring infotainment technology. The fact that it’s a first is indisputable. The important is what that improvement means, a.k.a. how it becomes useful to a regular driver. So here it is: the technology establishes a connection between your smartphone and your car, being able to port an exact replica of the display of your connected smartphone to the touchscreen integrated in your car. In this way, all the functionality of your smartphone can be accessed through the streering wheel-based controls or the touchscreen surface of the display from your car.
Systems’ connection is for the moment supported by Nokia – an important partner in this project. Actually, Nokia’s Car Mode app can be downloaded from the Nokia Store, and it’s available only for devices that run Symbian Belle. In the same time, Apple iPhone users are able to download the app too.
Toyota Touch Life will be available for Toyota’s iQ city car by the end of 2011, in all selected markets. Until then, there is still the question about the functionality of this technology in U.S. models.
What do you think about this technology?
[Source: Autoblog, Photo]
Post tags: Tags: mirrorlink, smartphone, smartphone-car connectivity, toyota iQ city car, toyota touch life
At Web 2.0, Google has announced that the next goal for Google Self-Driving Car is to go 1,000,000 miles without the driver to interfere. Its co-founder, Sergey Brin, has declared the team working at the project has already amassed more than 1,000 incident free miles, without driver’s intervention.
Google’s car performance so far is of 160,000 miles, but even so with the intervention of a person. Although little incidents did happened, the company sustains they were caused not by Google’s software, but by the human driver error.
Anyway, besides that, there is still so much to do, as it’s not legal yet to use a driverless car in everyday traffic. There are many improvements to be done so that a human driver to be able to ignore the road entirely.
You can watch the bellow presentation of how Google Self-Driving Car:
Do you think Google will achieve its goal?
[Source: Autoblog, Photo]
Post tags: Tags: driverless car, google, google car, google self-driving car
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App providing Auto Detailers: iLocate-Auto details
A dirty car is like a dirty house: it smells bad, it chases the visitors, and it makes a bad first impression about its owner. So, something should be done about this issue: apparently, there’s an iPhone app that already helps car owners keeping their cars clean by providing information about the best deal on a detail for your car which is located closest to you.
The app’s name is iLocate – Auto Detail and it combines data about auto details shops and iPhone’s GPS capability – for displaying the closest results to your location, with name and address. After choosing one of the details shops listed by the app, the driver can call and ask for directions and also read some reviews about the place (by using the Google Place option). It provides information by only entering ZIP code or place name, too, and the driver can save locations by using his Google account information.
The download of the app costs you $1.99. Does it worth the money?
[Source: Edmunds, Photo]
Post tags: Tags: app, auto detailer shop, cleaning the car
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BMW becomes part of the Networked Car / Roadside Brigade
How about having a smart car? Just like everybody wishes for a smart kid, it would soon be normal to wish for a smart car. So, car makers work hard at “intelligent” driving, so that cars to “see”, “talk” and “alert” the driver about the possibility of facing some dangerous situations.
In turn, BMW has decided to become a part of this technological change by joining the Networked Car / Roadside Brigade, based on “connected” vehicles and infrastructure. In this way, they add a new feature to their cars, besides their new “Car-to-x” communication system, which enables the driver to see into areas hidden from view and around the corner. This ability became possible due to an electronic networking of both cars and roadside infrastructure, produced through WLAN or cell phone connections, transforming the exchange of information into a communication network.
Here are some video which will better illustrate the functionalities of this system:
How often have you faced a dangerous situation which could have been prevented if you would have used this system on your car?
[Source: Carscoop]
Post tags: Tags: BMW, BMW car-to-x technology, car technology, intelligent driving
In December, at the Tokyo Motor Show in Japan, Toyota will launch its long-awaited FT-86 rear-wheel drive sports coupe. Until then, Toyota has presented a new dedicated app for Apple iPhone and iPod users.
What this app do? Apparently, it offers to its users the possibility to place a digital rendering of the FT-86 on videos and photos they take on the streets. After that, by using the app, they can post them to the program on the interactive movie website “FT-86 World Report”.
For the moment, the app is available for free in Apple iTunes store.
You should try it and share your impression, here, on our blog!
We have already talked about BlackBerry’s service not working and about the fact that this has determined a decrease of the number of accidents in some countries in Asia. Now, RIM has just released the app DriveSafe.ly, trying to make the use of BlackBerry phones during driving safer.
But let’s see how do they try to limit the risk of injuries for using the mobile phone while being behind the wheel:
- The app reads the text messages to you.
- It provides you the possibility to dictate and send text messages by voice as reply to the ones received.
- By using the vocal command, the driver can call somebody / the sender of the message back.
- Voice controls are meant to keep your attention and eye on the road, not on the display of your phone.
You can pay $19.99 for getting the app, although it is not known for how long the giveaway will last. In addition to this, for the next four weeks, RIM will be giving away all the premium BlackBerry apps.
So, maybe BlackBerry’s service interruption was not such a bad thing to happen, don’t you think?
If you are a woman, you probably know how it is not to know much about the car you are driving and about what problems might have. And if you are also one of the persons who think mechanics aren’t reliable, CarMD can be useful.
CarMd is a device that diagnoses your vehicle, by simply connecting it to the 16-pin Data Link Connector (DLC) – usually placed on the driver’s side of the vehicle. So, it uses a software and firmware updates, providing full access to CarMD’s database. Besides that, the device can also be connected to a computer and all the data gathered will be transferred to a Vehicle Health Report.
Why is this device great for women like me? Because it reveals safety issues or recalls; and because it notices you about what goes wrong with your car. It provides you with the costs of the car parts that should be changed. If you want CarMD for yourself, you can visit their official website.
How often were you in the situation of not knowing why your car is not working properly?
Many persons complained and had problems doing their job because of BlackBerry’s service interruption. But besides that, something came out of this too: according to some reports from Abu Dhabi and Dubai, the disruption that only lasted three days resulted in a 40% decrease of the fatal accidents in Abu Dhabi and of 20% in Dubai.
After all, this wasn’t such a bad thing to happen, was it? If you take into consideration the fact that in those areas a fatal accident happens every two days (as in Abu Dhabi) or at every three minutes (as in Dubai), I guess the improvement becomes noticeable. At least in those areas. As expected, the cause of the accidents is the frequent use of BlackBerry Messenger (BBM) while being behind the wheel. I don’t know what’s the situation in the rest of the world, but, apparently, people in Abu Dhabi and Dubai use this a lot.
Do you use BlackBerry Messenger while driving?
[Source: Ubergizmo, Photo]
Post tags: Tags: Blackberry, fatal accidents, safer roads, service interruption
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