Hasta La Gadget!

I’m sure there are plenty of Websites out there devoted to images of naked German men crawling out of car trunks–heck, I’m sure there’s an entire subculture with its own annual convention devoted to the phenomenon. That said, it’s still a bit weird to see that sort of thing show up in the generally fairly benign Google Street View.

German news magazine Der Spiegel caught sight of this odd phenomenon before it was censored by Google Maps Deutschland.

The whole scene is an odd one to unpack. A seemingly naked guy in the trunk of a convertible. There’s no one else around, save for a sleeping (?) dog that has been creepily cropped by Google Map’s editing technology. There are pieces of the trunk off to the side and a jug of some kind of fluid.

In all, seems like the end of a Guy Ritchie film. Theories?

Her dulcet tones are familiar to millions, though likely none of them know her name–in fact, they’d like have difficulty placing it during casual conversation. Her name, for the record, is Karen Jacobsen. She’s an Australian who has been living in the US since 2000. She is the voice of Garmin GPS’s turn-by-turn directions. Oh, and she wants to be a famous singer.

Jacobsen describes her musical stylings as a cross between Billy Joel and Celine Dion. New Yorkers will be able to see her in action next week, when she opens at the Laurie Beechman Theatre, a cabaret on 42nd st. in Manhattan.

Jacobsen is living her dream, kind of, sort. “As a little girl, I dreamed of hearing my voice in the car radio,” Jacobsen told The New York Daily News. “I never dreamed that my voice would end up in cars, but in a GPS.”

You know the old saying, right? “He who controls information…” Well, Google controls information. A lot of it. And while the company’s unofficial motto has long been “don’t be evil,” the potential for such abuse is unnerving, to say the least.

Take this little mistake–Google Maps botched the border between Costa Rica and Nicaragua, giving “Nicaraguan commanders an excuse to invade a disputed area,” according to Fox.

Google apologized for the mistake, stating, “It is our goal to provide the most accurate, up-to-date maps possible. Maps are created using a variety of data sources, and there are inevitably going to be errors in that data. We work hard to correct any errors as soon as we discover them.”

The company put the border back where it belongs, working with the U.S. Department of State to correct the error.

Keeping your eyes on the road gets ever more difficult with ever-bigger, ever-brighter GPS navigation units hitting retail. This product of University of Utah research could obsolete them entirely by tickling your fingers. It’s called “shear feedback,” effectively stretching the skin on your fingertip to tell you which way to go, achieved via a pair of old Thinkpad trackpoints, which were always too coarse a grit for our delicate tastes. The nub moves left or right to tell you where to go, and in a test distracted drivers were 24 percent more likely to follow directions through their digits than when told by cold, uncaring GPS lady. It’s demonstrated after the break and looks like it would be perfect if we always drove at ten and two — and wanted to get our fingerprints sandpapered off on every trip to the mall.

Continue reading Shear feedback GPS navigation tells your fingers where to go, you just have to follow (video)

Shear feedback GPS navigation tells your fingers where to go, you just have to follow (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 11 Oct 2010 19:30:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink   |   | Email this | Comments

Odd, but just when the GPS market is getting really saturated and prices are falling, Sony decides to jump in with some premium-priced models. Sony announced its first in-dash car navigation systems, using technology powered by TomTom: the XNV-770BT ($1,300) and XNV-660BT ($1,000). Both systems come pre-loaded with U.S. and Canada maps, with one year of free map upgrades.

The XNV-770BT is a 7-inch system and the XNV-660BT is a 6.1-inch system. Each includes IQ routes for finding the fastest way to your destination, lane guidance, quick-fix GPS positioning, and more than 6 million points of interest. These do more than navigate, and offer multi-channel music playback, for example. But really, it seems crazy to pay this munch when a $100 plug-in mode will give you the same directions. They’re available now for pre-order.