Hasta La Gadget!

A lot of automotive manufacturers are working to get more technology integrated inside of their vehicles. Much of the push is to add additional entertainment options and streaming capabilities to the in-car infotainment systems. BMW announced this week that it has four new partners that will provide BMW Approved Apps for the BMW Apps option for the Apple iPhone.

The apps that have just been approved include Audible, Glympse, Rhapsody, and TuneIn. If you’re familiar with these companies, Audible is a service that offers downloadable audio books and other spoken content, Glympse is a location sharing service, Rhapsody is a subscription streaming music service, and TuneIn is an Internet radio provider. BMW says Audible integration with BMW Apps is the first time a graphical integration of the app is available for the BMW infotainment system.

Drivers will be able to access their own library through the BMW iDrive controls. Glympse will allow drivers to share their location information with anyone during a specific period of time. The app is useful for things like letting family know you are in route and where exactly you are at any given time.

Rhapsody is self-explanatory and allows drivers to listen to on demand music with more than 16 million tracks to enjoy using the iPhone and fully integrated vehicle controls. The TuneIn app integration allows the driver to select from all sorts of streaming Internet radio stations using the app running on the smartphone and controls inside the vehicle. The BMW Apps option is available on 2011 later BMW vehicles when the iPhone has to be connected to the car using either the USB cable that comes with the iPhone or a special snap in adapter.

[via BMW]

BMW announces new app integrations with Audible, Rhapsody, and more is written by Shane McGlaun & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

I’ve got what most people refer to as a black thumb. I can’t grow anything but weeds. I’m so bad with plants, I once killed a cactus. It’s really hard to kill a cactus. If you’re like me and don’t have a good history with growing things, the thought of having your own fresh herb garden for the kitchen may seem like a bad idea, at least for the plants.

A new project has turned up on Kickstarter called the Smart Herb Garden that aims to make it easy to grow fresh herbs in the kitchen using technology. The people behind the project say all you need to do is plug the Smart Herb Garden into the wall, add water, and the smart growing device will take care of everything else. The device comes with special cartridges for basil, thyme, and lemon balm.

The company offers refill cartridges that will be available offering other plants such as chili pepper, mini tomatoes, peppermint, spinach, salad rocket, and other kinds of lettuce. The company is also working on some cartridges for strawberries. It’s not cartridges of seeds that make this garden smart, it’s the technology in the pot itself.

The high tech nature of this product comes in a growth medium, which is a nanotech material engineered to supply plant roots with the right amount of oxygen, water, and nutrients at any time. The company says this is the easiest indoor garden solution on the market. The device even has its own growing lamp so you don’t have to place your garden near a window. The lighting solution uses LED bulbs that require only six watts of power making it cheap to operate as well. The project is seeking $75,000 with 33 days to go and has raised over $50,000 so far. A pledge of $39 will get you your own Smart Herb Garden and three plant cartridges.

[via Kickstarter]

Smart Herb Garden germinates on Kickstarter is written by Shane McGlaun & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

Connection adapter “NVSPH-1″ released today by I-O DATA connects Android smartphones wirelessly by Bluetooth to car navigation systems in Honda cars
Users of this connection adapter can use “Honda internavi LINC premium club” service through their smartphones. So all of the advantages of that service – receiving traffic and weather reports, parking spot information, etc. will be delivered to your smartphone taking advantage of the hands-free features of the …

Nissan has announced plans to roll out a gas-electric hybrid version of its popular Pathfinder SUV this summer, a change that will bring with it a slight increase in both price and gas mileage. Neither a specific release date nor price were given, but word has it the SUV will cost about $3,000 more than the current non-hybrid Pathfinder, which has a starting price of $41,000, and goes up from there to nearly $50k.

The gasoline-electric hybrid Pathfinder will feature both a supercharged 2.5-liter gas engine and an electric motor that, combined, offer 250 horsepower. This will bring about 5 more miles per gallon, bringing the total up to 25MPG in the city and 27MPG on the highway for a combined total of 26MPG.

This is a tad higher than the current 21MPG combined total for the all-wheel drive gasoline model. Of course, an electric hybrid brings with it some extra-battery baggage, which will be found below the third-row bench, taking up that section of space and perhaps proving inconvenient to some owners.

Nissan’s Vice President of Product Planning Pierre Loing said: “The Pathfinder Hybrid is highly affordable because it matches motor and battery size well, while minimizing the number of additional parts or modifications needed to the platform and body. It is designed as a logical bridge between conventional internal combustion engine powertrains and the wider acceptance of hybrid systems by providing enhanced efficiency with no compromises versus the standard vehicle.”

[via Wall Street Journal]

Nissan to launch electric-hybrid Pathfinder SUV this summer is written by Brittany Hillen & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

It was just a couple of days ago when we heard that Evernote announced Evernote 5 for Android, so where does that leave us folks who prefer to side with the Windows Phone platform? Well, version 3.0 of Evernote for Windows Phone is now available, and it certainly brings with it a slew of changes not to be trifled with. After all, Evernote CTO Dave Engberg did mention in the past that the average revenue, per user, from its Windows Phone users was actually more than the larger Android user base.

One of the new features would be Shortcuts, letting users jump to any frequently accessed note, notebook or log in a jiffy. Creating a shortcut is as simple as making a long tap on any of those items, where said shortcut will then appear on the Home Screen. These shortcuts can sync across platforms, as they are available on Mac, Android and Windows Phone, so that all shortcuts created on a certain platform too, will appear on the other platforms – how neat is that? Other features include a tag list, the creation and editing of checkboxes, Notebook Stacks, and premium Evernote users have the advantage of accessing Document Search in the Windows Phone app. Go on, give it a go and let us know how your experience is like!

By Ubergizmo. Related articles: Samsung Galaxy S4 Hits The FCC, Windows Phones Usurped iPhones In The Following Countries…,