Hasta La Gadget!

LAS VEGAS — Apple accessory maker Griffin has announced a nifty new dongle which connects your iPhone wirelessly to your car’s brain. The CarTrip is an OBD-II hardware interface connects to the iPhone via Bluetooth.

OBD-II (On-Board Diagnostic System) is a standard interface for hooking up diagnostic computers to cars. The CarTrip plugs into the socket (found in pretty much any car made after 1996) and sends the info to a companion app called CleanDrive.

As you may guess from the name, CleanDrive isn’t about tweaking your car for performance but for tweaking your own driving for better fuel economy. You can see readouts and graphs for acceleration, top speed, fuel consumption, as well as fault codes. Trip analysis helps you see how you’re driving, and if the dreaded check-engine light blinks on, you don’t need to panic. Just pull over, check your phone and you’ll know what’s wrong.

The CarTrip will cost $90 and is “coming soon.” The companion CleanDrive app will be free, and available at the same time.

CarTrip product page [Griffin]

See Also:

• GPS AutoBot Dongle Tracks Your Car From Your Cellphone
• Wired.com Readers' Best iPhone Dongleware Inventions

Meet Charles: the robotic GPS system that can tell when you’ve got road rage. Yes, he’s a tad scary looking, but according to the Cambridge professor who created him, you won’t feel like throwing him out the window when you’re frustrated. The disembodied satnav robot (head and torso only), which sits in the passengers seat, is designed to respond to a driver’s emotional cues, like facial expressions, body language, and tone of voice. Charles takes this information and responds accordingly, providing sympathetic phrases when he senses frustration. Researchers say the robot is about 70 percent accurate at detecting emotion, or about as accurate as any human. We say a backseat driver that can’t hit back is 100 percent awesome.

Continue reading Cambridge professor creates creepy, emotion-sensing GPS system

Cambridge professor creates creepy, emotion-sensing GPS system originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 02 Jan 2011 03:34:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Yes! Another reason to write about the darling and awesomely-named Wheego Whip LiFe! This time, it’s good news indeed, as the all electric micro-car has received EPA certification. The cars, which are priced at a reasonably affordable $32,995 (or $25,495 after the Federal tax credit), are now simply waiting for final approval from the National Highway Transportation Safety Administration before they can roll into dealerships. It looks like the cars will ship at the beginning of the year now, with production well underway for the past few months. We’ll take two, please.

Wheego Whip LiFe grabs up EPA certification originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 29 Dec 2010 14:34:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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There’s no doubt that the Boattail Racer is gorgeous, its “aerodynamic” lines recalling automobiles designed before the wind tunnel, built to look fast rather than be fast. What is also certain is that it takes a lot of promotional bullshit to get away with selling a wooden toy car for $350. Yes, $350.

Let’s decode the marketing speak:

The Boattail Racer is handmade from materials that time cannot easily erode.

What?

The wooden bodywork is sculpted from rugged 13 ply Baltic birch.

It’s plywood

The muscular stance comes courtesy of the 77.5 millimeter carnelian-core industrial grade wheels, which float effortlessly on precision bearings.

In-line skate wheels with hippy-stones inside.

Solid stainless steel axles and fasteners ensure faithful service for generations to come.

Ah, stainless steel, second only to gold and platinum in its preciousness.

Your Boattail Racer arrives protected by a custom archive box handcrafted from black-core 4 ply acid-free museum board.

Comes in a cardboard box.

And that, ladies and gents, is how you take a toy car made from plywood and inflate its price tenfold. It even comes with a certificate to remind you how authentically you were swindled.

Boattail Racer [Auditorium Toys Co via Uncrate]

See Also:

• Motormouse Looks Like a Toy Car
• Death Race 2000: Model Hearse Toy Car
• Speed Racer Slot Car Set is Go
• Video: Smart Car Monster Truck Looks Like a Tonka Toy
• Photos: Tiny Smart Car Secured with Giant Bike-Lock

As if the iGrill thermometer wasn’t enough to convince you that pretty much every gadget will be replaced by the iPhone, what about this? The O’Car – despite sounding like an Irish, erm, car, is in fact a car stereo which uses the iPhone as its display and control panel.

The O’Car comes from Oxygen Audio, hence the “O” on the name. As befits a dumb head-unit, it does almost nothing. Apart from the iPhone slot, there is an RDS radio tuner and an 4×55-watt amp, so you can still tune in to something when you forget your phone.

But plug in the iPhone and you get everything. The O’ar will hold the phone vertically or horizontally, so you can use any app, turning this humble stereo into a GPS navigator, Pandora radio, or even – should you feel like killing some other road users while you drive distracted – Angry Birds.

The integration goes further. The iPhone charges when it’s docked, and you can make and receive calls via the integrated Bluetooth hands-free kit.

O’Car is set to debut at CES next month, when the price will be announced. Given its lack of, well, anything, it should really be pretty cheap.

O’Car product page [Oxygen Audio via Andrew Liszewski]

See Also:

• Remote Control Your Car With Your iPhone
• Magellan Launches iPhone App and Car-Kit
• Useless Car Cassette Deck Makes Perfect iPhone Holder