Hasta La Gadget!

Playing the Eigenharp, while driving around the world in a Ford Fiesta.

Editor’s note: Wired.com contributor Jeremy Hart is making a 60-day, 15,000-mile drive around the world with a few mates in a pair of Ford Fiestas. He’s filing occasional reports from the road.

Another week, another continent. As I write this (on my trusty iPad) we are blasting across Europe. The Fiesta World Tour 2010 has left The New World behind and is heading deep into the Old World. The Middle East is on the horizon and Asia is not far off.

The last week in the U.S. and Canada was nothing but gadget hassle. The once-wonderful Virgin MiFi became a liability for all of us when it refused to do the one job it was designed to do and had, up to then, been doing brilliantly: Be a mobile Wi-Fi hotspot in our Ford Fiesta.

Sleep is a luxury on a global drive so I did not enjoy wasting an hour to the useless Virgin Mobile help desk, only to be told their server was down. The advice from the same desk the next morning was to reboot the device using a paperclip. Not easy at 70mph on I-95.

But for the last day of the U.S. leg the MiFi finally started working and found me (via my iPad) a great place for breakfast between Boston and NYC: the Cosmic Omelet in Manchester CT. Then it helped guide us (when the TomTom and in-car satellite navigation system did not) to the spot I had found on GoogleEarth from which to film our arrival in The Big Apple.

The SPOT tracker uses GPS and satellite signals to let you track our location wherever we go.

The second technical hiccup came when I gave up trying to ignite my Spot Satellite Messenger for you guys to follow our progress. I called FindMeSpot’s 800 number, only to be told the one I had bought from BestBuy in LA was a recalled unit. The Spot public relations people FedExed one to me in time for me to get it going for the last few miles of the U.S. trip. It is now well up and running and you can see where we have been at. But I will turn it off when we are in more sensitive areas.

Leg 2 started in Ireland, on the far side of The Pond, at the Lisdoonvarna matchmaking festival. (Don’t ask.) I’d hoped for a Guinness gadget of some kind from Dublin but only when we got across to Wales did the gadgets start ramping up.

Welsh is a revived language, and it’s thriving so well that there is even a Welsh version of Scrabble. There are no Z’s, but you get maximum points if you can use the A. We played it on the railway station of the town with what I believe is the longest URL the world.

In England we stopped by our headquarters in the Inc office where gadgets galore were stacked for our next leg.

• Iridium satellite phone
• Camping Gaz car cool box
• Eigenharp computer instrument
• Handpresso pump action espresso maker
• Car kettle (a hand espresso machine needs hot water)
• European TomTom app for the iPhone
• Apple wireless keyboard for the iPad
• 2 Lifeventure first aid kits

Time waits for no infotainment system and GM’s OnStar seems to be well aware of that fact. Plunging headfirst into the social world, the driver assistance service is said to be planning to start conveying Facebook status updates and text messages in an upcoming update, reputedly landing later this month. Text-to-speech translation will be done on incoming notes and voice-to-text is said to be undergoing testing for outgoing updates. So you can tell your friends you’re free as a bird, born to run, rocking the highway, or whatever else, without ever having to speak to them directly or going to the effort of typing anything. The future sure is awesome. Oh, and it might not be all that expensive either, as we’re also hearing that OnStar might make some services completely free to better compete with Ford’s Sync.

Original image courtesy of merriewells (Flickr)

OnStar expected to add Facebook updates and texting soon, might make some services free originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 08 Sep 2010 15:25:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Last weekend Jeremy Hart — Wired.com contributor and a global traveller with 120 countries under his belt — left Los Angeles for a 60 day, 21 country, 15,000 mile drive around the world — in a Ford Fiesta.

Jeremy will be filing occasional updates here and on our sister blog Autopia. Here, he’ll be reporting on how well his various gadgets work in some of earth’s most amazing locations.

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If you were the fisherman hanging over the edge of Santa Monica pier, the hobo foraging through a garbage bin or the glamour model squeezing into a dress (as shiny and pink as one of our two Ford Fiestas)  for a dawn photo shoot last weekend, then you would have witnessed this international escapade leaving the eastern edge of the Pacific. For us, it was the start of the Fiesta World Tour 2010.

In gadget terms the Fiesta is an iPod more than iPad. It’s funky, basic and functional. And it comes in a range of bright colours. It has built-in iPod connectivity, USB and aux jacks, and Sirius radio. All in all, it’s a good platform to bolt, strap, and load more gadgets onto — and that’s exactly what we’ll be doing.

Here’s a look at a few of the gizmos we’re taking on the start of the trip. (We’ve got plans to test more — many more — so this is just a beginning.)

Pocket video camera. I have a TV cameraman (using Sony’s EX1 HD broadcast camera) and a photographer (Canon 5D) with me, so the need for extra filmmaking and photography kit is not crucial. But I now refuse to go anywhere without a Flip Ultra HD. Broadcast-quality and idiot-proof, it fits both my criteria. I have two of them on the trip – just in case.

I will be video blogging with them for easy editing and instant uploading. Take a peek at the one I did at a gun club in Scottsdale, Arizona.

We use Motorola walkie-talkies for car-to-car communications on the road.

Apple iPad. Against my better judgement, I have decided to get an iPad for the trip. It’s the Wi-Fi-only, 64 GB version. Roaming with 3G is so expensive, so I opted against that model. And I say that against my better judgement because I have, and am currently writing on, my MacBook Pro. I’ll be interested to see how the iPad fits into our trip — and maybe even improves it — or if I wind up shipping it back to London for my kids to enjoy.

GPS tracker. I have a Spot Tracker so you can follow our travels. It allows you to see exactly where we are (and please, come and see us if you are pretty, have freshly baked goods, or want to give us gadgets you’d like us to take round the world).

I’ll have it set up for the next entry here, and I’ll give you the link to follow us then.

The Virgin MiFi (in the foreground) is the key to making a trip like this work. Wi-Fi for all my friends!

Portable hotspot. But my favourite piece of kit, as I write this from the middle of Arizona, is Virgin Mobile’s MiFi. Just 100 bucks for the unit and around 60 bucks for 6GB of upload/download data. It is the godsend of the trip so far.

It works off Sprint’s network, turning the cell network into a mobile hub through which 5 users can surf. A colleague in our second Fiesta surfed from the adjoining lane on I-40 at one point. I was on the edge of the Grand Canyon yesterday, uploading video and copy faster than I had in my hotel room the night before.

Talking of hotel rooms, we stayed at the fantastic Westin Kierland Resort and Spa in Scottsdale. But, as with many 5 star places, the internet service is 5 star prices. Not with my little Virgin buddy it wasn’t.

And being an Englishman in your wonderful country, it means I can use my iPhone 4 as it should be used, without  having to pay huge roaming charges ($3,000 a month last year when traveling in Canada, US and Australia).

Virgin might be a British company, but I am not going to apologize for my nationalize when I pledge my undying love to Sir Richard Branson and his MiFi. I’m motivated purely by the bandwidth, I assure you. I just fear it won’t be there when I need it in the remote Arabian desert next month or the Malaysian jungle a few weeks later.

Right — I gotta go now. I’ll have more gadgets to report on next week.

Have you broken into a Ford lately? The 2011 Ford Sync includes unique features that might initially make some Fords and Lincolns attractive to thieves. It may also have you underestimating the true cost of Ford’s SD Card Premium Navigation. It’s all because Ford now bases its newest navigation system on an easily removed SD Card that lets you choose to add factory navigation at any time, so long as your car has a built-in color LCD display, called MyFord Touch.

The second generation of Ford Sync represents a big step for what is already the industry’s most comprehensive, affordable Bluetooth and music player system. Sync now understands almost 10,000 words, has a flattened command structure that lets you issue any command at any time (as a music player command while using the phone menu), and one-shot navigation system address entry that lets you speak number, street, and city all at once. Sync shows to best advantage with the rollout of MyFord Touch, which puts an 8-inch touchscreen LCD standard in some Ford and Lincoln cars.