Hasta La Gadget!

Keep your hands off the wheel as the MKS parks itself.

(Credit: Sarah Tew/CNET)

During the 2009 New York auto show, Ford let us try out a couple of technologies it is introducing. The first is called Active Park, and parallel parks your car for you. Lexus previously rolled out a self-parking car with its LS model, but Ford has refined the concept and made it more user-friendly.

For the demonstration, we got into a Lincoln MKS equipped with the technology and started driving. After pushing a button to activate the system, the car goes into parking spot search mode. We drove by two cars parked at the curb, and the system told us we could fit in the space between them, and advised us where to stop so it could commence parallel parking.

The MKS can find parking spaces for you.

(Credit: Sarah Tew/CNET)

As with the Lexus system, we had to put the MKS in reverse and control the brake and the accelerator, but the car handles the steering. As we backed up, the wheel spun around on its own accord, steering the car into the spot. The park distance warning sensors sounded off as we got close to the car behind us, and the Active Park system flashed a message that it was time to pull forward. Putting the car into Drive, the wheel again turned, straightening the MKS out so it would be parallel to the curb.

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Originally posted at The Car Tech blog

(Credit: Crave UK)

What’s this gizmo? Another ridiculous lens thing for bolting on the front of your phone to beef up that pitiful 2-megapixel camera? Actually, no: it’s the CellScope, which turns a normal mobile phone–in this case, a rather venerable Nokia N73–into a microscope. Limited …

While Fisker Automotive isn’t making too much of a stir at the New York Auto Show this week, it is scheming to deliver a vehicle that will purportedly compete with Chevrolet’s Volt and Tesla’s Model S. ‘Course, it should probably look to get its Karma onto US streets before it starts looking too far ahead, but you won’t find us kvetching about the promise of a lower cost plug-in hybrid. Company spokesman Russell Datz insinuated that the outfit was jonesing to release a model that would be priced somewhere below its Karma ($87,900) and above the Volt (around $40,000) and Model S (somewhere in the $50,000s), though it wasn’t close enough to production to hit the show floor of any expos in 2009. Oh, what a tease.

[Via AutoblogGreen]

Filed under: Transportation

Fisker already working on lower-cost vehicle to rival Volt, Model S originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 09 Apr 2009 16:28:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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For all its flaws, we can understand why someone who can say they had anything to do with designing the iPhone’s user experience would be a hot commodity among manufacturers and platform firms, but RIM? mocoNews is reporting that Don Lindsay, who spent the last five years at Microsoft working in the Live Labs and Vista teams, has made the jump to Waterloo to lead up the user experience team. Prior to Microsoft, he lead the OS X user experience group, which the Ottawa Citizen reports created the user experience for the iPhone; that’s all well and good, but how much influence could he really have had in the mobile space if he left Cupertino way back in 2004? Either way, perhaps the most interesting thing about the hire is that RIM just underwent a major renovation of its brand image around the time of the Bold and Storm releases — and BlackBerry users tend to love the way their devices generally operate (Storm notably excepted), so any jarring change to the experience risks alienating huge swaths of the base. Then again, RIM has made no secret of its aspirations to push ever deeper into the consumer space — a place where Apple shines — and again, RIM’s touch paradigm needs some serious tweaking, so maybe this guy is going to leave the Bolds and Niagaras of the world to the pros and attack the multimedia-hungry masses with an entirely different angle.

Filed under: Cellphones, Handhelds

Musical designers: UI guru moves from Apple to Microsoft to RIM originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 09 Apr 2009 15:59:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Finally, HD Radio is being priced right in the new-car market: free. It’s now standard equipment on the 2009 BMW 7 Series sedan (starting price $80,200 and BMW 6 Series coupe and convertible ($78,200).

BMW was the first automaker to offer HD Radio and to offer it across the line, and now it’s free on some models. On its more expensive cars, BMW rolls in the price of niceties such as the BMW Assist emergency calling service, leather seats, a navigation system, and now HD Radio.

HD Radio is a freebie not because BMW wants to help you ride out the recession. Here it’s free for a different reason: BMW integrates the HD Radio circuitry into its latest Car Infotainment Computer (CIC)–the in-car box that typically handles the radio and CD player–so it doesn’t cost much to include. On other BMW models, HD Radio remains a separate trunk-mount module and BMW tags the customer $350 for HD Radio for the privilege of hearing what the HD Radio alliance calls “free radio.”