Hasta La Gadget!

Jimi Heselden, founder of Hesco Bastion, the company that purchased Segway Inc. earlier this year, was found dead after having apparently driven his own Segway off a cliff and into a river yesterday morning near Wetherby in the UK. Heselden was 62.

Authorities have seemingly ruled out foul play. “The incident is not believed to be suspicious and the coroner has been informed,” a spokesman for the West Yorkshire police department told The Independent.

Heselden’s Leeds-based company made millions with the development of the HESCO barrier, a military defense wall employed in the Afghanistan war. He was recently named one of the 400 richest people in the UK, with an estimated £166 million fortune. He has also donated more than £20 million to charitable organizations.

When I met with some folks from Livio Radio last night, I didn’t recognize the company’s name, though I had seen some of its products before. Livio manufacturers Internet radios–you may well have the products that the company created with NPR and Pandora.

Livio was showing off both of those products last night, of course, but the company also had something new up its sleeve–the Carmen. The Carmen continues the company’s radio focus. The device is an FM transmitter that plugs into a car’s 12-volt adapter (remember when they used to call them cigarette lighters?).

It has 2GB of built-in storage for MP3 and radio content, the latter of which can be recorded using the included radio DVR software. The software lets users grab content from 42,000 radio stations across the world.

The Carmen has an LCD screen, included remote, and built-in buttons which let you pause, rewind, and skip through MP3s or recorded radio content. Seems like a pretty good gadget for a long road trip.

Bullseye! The 2011 Lincoln MKX matches the best-selling Lexus RX 350 on most fronts and blows away all mid-size SUV competitors with a dazzling new version of Sync, SD Card navigation, affordable high-tech options, and to-die-for audio. So long as you like big chrome wheels, you’ll be a happy driver. A fully optioned MKX puts you on the high side of $50,000, but there’s the humbler Ford Edge stablemate as a fallback. Lincoln’s best-in-class cockpit technology puts the MKX on the short list of every midsize-SUV buyer. You’ll have to decide if the MKX platform is as competitive as the embedded technology.

• Dumb and Dumber? Lincoln’s Capacitive Touch Volume, Fan Controls

Soccer moms, prepare to abandon your SUVs and crossovers: Honda made the minivan cool again. The third-generation Honda Odyssey is a technology and packaging tour de force. It hauls up to eight parents and kids, plus gym bags and juice boxes, in comfort. Equally important, it carries six adults in extreme comfort and luxury. Good luck to competitors trying to catch up to a vehicle that is at once roomier, lighter, faster, more fuel efficient, and quieter. Did I mention cheaper? That the Odyssey is not: List prices for 2011 range from $27,800 to $43,250 (plus $780 shipping), about $1,000 more for most models.

• 10 Ways to Improve the Honda Odyssey (Starting with the Center Stack)

The 2011 Lincoln MKZ midsize sedan makes a hybrid drivetrain a no-cost option to go along with the dazzling Sync music and Bluetooth feature. Gas or gas-electric hybrid, it has a $35,180 base price including freight. Technically, the 2011 MKZ adds knockout features to an aging platform. Its uncertain success may hinge on factors unrelated to high-tech, such as whether the Lincoln brand has traction with upscale consumers in the near-luxury segment that Lincoln declares to be in tune with uncertain economic times.