Hasta La Gadget!

OnStar announced that it just sent its 100,000,000th Vehicle Diagnostics e-mail, an alert that lets subscribers know maintenance information for their cars or trucks. (Who knew GM was one of the world’s leading sources of spam?)

Joking aside, the alerts include service notifications, oil status, and tire pressure, and also include messages about subsystems in the car that may be in trouble. The oil life monitoring is particularly interesting to me, just because there’s always a lot of debate about that (i.e. are oil changes every 3K miles necessary or just a waste and indicative of marketing by Jiffy Lube and other overly aggressive service providers).

OnStar Vehicle Diagnostics became available in 2005 and currently has more than 3.5 million subscribers, according to the company. Over the years, OnStar has been adding additional services, such as Ignition Block for aiding stolen vehicle recovery, and Injury Severity Prediction, which helps emergency first responders determine the level of care needed at an accident site before they even get there–important stuff, indeed.

You may have seen a post or three (or eleventy) over the past few days about Sony’s newer, skinnier, cheaper PS3 Slim. Microsoft apparently did, and that might be partly why it chose to delay its own re-pricing announcement, a move it was apparently set to reveal yesterday at GamesCom — but opted not to. Big Redmond is said to be killing off the Xbox 360 Pro and replacing it with the Elite at the $299 price point, a move it will want to make quickly because, for the first time, it’s now the most expensive gaming console on store shelves. Whether the supposed delay was to let the dust settle on Sony’s big news or was just to clear out some additional Pro inventory remains to be seen, but either way MS had better get a move on — and maybe think about knocking an extra couple bucks off for good measure.

[Via 1UP; thanks, jeremy23j]

Filed under: Gaming

Did Microsoft delay its price drop announcement to avoid Sony’s Slim Storm 2009? originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 20 Aug 2009 09:43:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Ed Colligan, who stepped down from Palm’s top position in June, has recounted some questionable business proposals on the part of Apple head, Steve Jobs. According to Colligan, Jobs approached the former Palm CEO back in August 2007–shortly after the launch of the first iPhone–asking him to enter into a deal wherein neither company would hire the other’s employees. “We must do whatever we can to stop this,” Jobs reportedly told Colligan.

The proposal came on the heals of Palm’s hiring of former Apple exec, Jon Rubinstein. “Your proposal that we agree that neither company will hire the other’s employees, regardless of the individual’s desires, is not only wrong, it is likely illegal,” Colligan reportedly responded to Jobs.

Such communications may likely pique the interest of government officials charged with enforcing anti-trust laws, given the current investigation of the connection between Google and Apple.

Don’t think you can sell the kids short anymore, keeping the Blu-ray copy at home and taking DVD rips on the road, now that Panasonic is ready to deliver its in-dash Blu-ray player and 7-inch HD screen packing nav unit in September. We got a good peek at these back in April and the specs haven’t changed, with the Profile 1.1 Bonus View compatible CY-BB1000D taking care of Blu-ray duties and featuring the same UniPhier guts as the company’s line of living room Blu-ray players. The CN-HX3000D is a WXGA 1280x720p 7-inch LED backlit widescreen display ready to play back media via standard HDMI, iPod connector, SD card or its digital TV tuner, powered by Windows Automotive with navigation duties assisted by Google Maps and Yahoo! Japan. The CY-BB1000D is ¥99,750 ($1,057) and the CN-HX3000D is ¥365,400 ($3,872), and both arrive September 10 in Japan. We’ll let you decide if around 5 grand is a good price for the in car HD experience (might want to look at custom mounting a DMP-B15, $800 and you can take it with you.)

Read – CYBB1000D
Read – CN-HX3000D

Filed under: GPS, HDTV, Transportation

Panasonic in-dash HD nav system & Blu-ray player ready to ship, are you ready for the price? originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 20 Aug 2009 09:01:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Darkfield Laser Tracking might sound like something the Death Star uses to find and kill pesky Rebel spaceships, but it is in fact much more mundane, albeit useful. The tech is in fact a new trick from Logitech to solve a problem that has plagued more stylish offices since the mouse-ball rolled out of town.

Two new mice have the mysterious Darkfield Lasers which enable them to track on glass. This means that you’ll not only be able to work at the dining table, but at that expensive crystal and chrome desk that has sat useless for all these years.

Regular optical and laser mice track marks on the surface of the table, but glass is too flat and too see-through. The new lasers actually peer inside the glass and reveal its microscopic imperfections. The result is that these two new mice, the Performance MX and the smaller Anywhere MX, will track on any surface except laboratory grade glass (and regular glass needs to be more than 4mm thick. If it isn’t 4mm thick it’s probably not safe to use as a table anyway).

Both mice also come with Logitech’s tiny set-and-forget USB receiver and weighted spinny-wheel for fast scrolling. The small Anywhere MX is $80, the bigger Performance is $100.

Product page [Logitech]