Hasta La Gadget!

When we got wind of Garmin’s Zumo 665, the new navigation system for folks who like to do it in leathers, we were quite excited to learn about its integrated A2DP and other new features — but totally lost interest when we saw the $999 MSRP. You can get a perfectly serviceable UJM starter bike for that kind of cash! Garmin is now addressing the situation with the Zumo 220, which “scales down size and price of motorcycle navigation” — to $599. Yes, still pricey, but you get most of the features of the bigger brother, including Bluetooth compatibility (though seemingly not A2DP), waterproof construction, and text-to-speech guidance. It sports a 3.5-inch touchscreen and of course comes with a bike mount, but also has a car mount for those days when weather prohibits riding in to work — or when you just don’t feel like getting all your gear on. Look for it to ship sometime before the quarter is up.

Garmin introduces Zumo 220, $600 navigation for vaguely budget-conscious two-wheeled hooligans originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 20 Jan 2010 10:54:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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You know what’s great? My smartphone puts the world in my pocket. Broadband puts 2,454,399 channels on my HDTV. I can access the internet from a freaking airplane! You know what’s unsustainable? Paying for it all.

Here’s why: a well-equipped geek will, in our research, have a subscription and service bill total of between 200 and 750 dollars a month.

Let me break it down. You’ve got your smartphone bill, your cable bill, your home broadband bill. Those are unavoidable expenses—there’s not much you can do about them.

Then think about the must-have gadgets on the horizon: a smartbook that requires a data plan. A tablet that’ll require Wi-Fi HotSpot access or a 3G dongle. The same for a thin-and-light notebook. And those are just your 1:1 service fees for devices.

Now throw in all of the wonderful content and service subscriptions you either already have or will soon. You’ve got TiVo, which is better and cheaper than most cable-provided DVRs but still about $11 a month. Netflix, to rent or stream unlimited movies. Hulu’s free for now, but we know they’re going to start charging any week. If you’ve got an Xbox 360, you’ve got an Xbox Live Gold membership. I’m a city slicker with no car, but if I had one I’d need a navigation app that’s good enough for everyday use. A free Flickr membership is fine today, but once HD camcorders gain prominence, you’re going to want a Flickr Pro membership for high-def playback. And so on.

If that doesn’t sound so bad, see how it looks when you add it all up:

That’s right: if you want to stay even close to fully connected, you’re expected to cough up nearly $1,000 a month. Not for hardware. For fees. And that doesn’t even include niche services like Vimeo and Zune Pass, or one-off purchases like eBooks or iTunes downloads. Or, god forbid, food and shelter.

A couple of years ago, we talked about the Infinite Video Format War, and the dozen-plus disc-free video formats that each come with their own subscription models, fees, and offerings. There’s still no resolution there. Think of the Subscription War like that, only extrapolated across all of your devices, content, and services.

The problem isn’t subscriptions themselves. Content subscriptions reward risk-taking, which is great! How many movies have you discovered because of a Netflix recommendation? How many shows have you watched on Hulu that you never would have found on your TV’s channel guide? And individually, they seem cost effective.

The problem is fragmentation. The problem is that each service provider thinks within a bubble, without recognizing the larger ecosystem of payments we live in. It’s like those nights in high school when each teacher would assign you two hours of homework. There weren’t enough hours in the day then, and there’s not enough money in a paycheck now. And there shouldn’t have to be.

There are some ways out: you don’t actually need cable or satellite TV to enjoy your favorite shows. If you’ve got a smartphone, you really don’t need a land line, and you can probably get away with the minimum 450 minutes if you lean on messaging and Skype. There are also free navigation apps that’ll work in a pinch. But at the end of the day, you’re still looking at hundreds of dollars a month for services you don’t need constant access to.

So what’s the answer? Well, ad-supported content generally comes free or highly discounted. But ad-supported solutions require people to purchase the things being advertised. Hulu’s plans to start charging indicates that that model’s not sustainable in the long run. One blanket subscription that lets you access several different sites or services works for the online porn industry, but those linked sites all operate under the same umbrella parent company. Not feasible when the participants are major competitors.

The honest answer is that there may not be one. Not yet, anyway. Eventually the monthly bills will stack up so high that people will have to start cutting ties with companies, who will in turn have to either lower prices or fade away. You’ve already started to see it with AT&T and Verizon cutting prices on unlimited plans last week. Until everyone gets on board, though? We’re all just casualties.

Get there faster and enjoy the drive with the upcoming JVC KW-NT3HDT. For deep-pocketed car enthusiasts, this attractive installed navigator provides quality map data as well as better-sounding HD radio. The navigator includes maps for all 50 states, Canada, and Puerto Rico, and text-to-speech for street-name pronunciation, plus a host of useful extras including lane guidance, speed limit display, adaptive volume control (it raises the volume when engine noise is higher), and Bluetooth for hands-free calling.

The 6 million points-of-interest database is oddly small, but you can update it by downloading free PC Link software, searching for new POIs on Google Maps, saving your results on an SD card, and uploading them to the navigator. That’s something you’ll never do, but at least you know you could. You’ll also get two-way iPod control and the HD radio includes iTunes tagging. All this will run you $1199.95 when the KW-NT3HDT is available in March.

User experience — the focus of any savvy consumer electronics company (though not all) looking to differentiate itself in a marketplace saturated by imitators. Now an auto company is hoping to capitalize on this fundamental tenant of modern consumerism: Ford. With the introduction of MyFord, the Detroit institution will attempt to refashion the driver’s interface so as to more closely align with the rich graphic displays found on today’s consumer electronics. Derrick Kuzak, Ford group vice president, Global Product Development, says “it’s not just a technology; it’s an experience… that will cause people to fall in love with their vehicles again.” Powered by the second generation of Ford Sync that is itself built upon Microsoft Auto 4.0, MyFord Touch offers improved voice recognition, touch-sensitive buttons, touch screens, and thumb-wheel controls that replace most traditional knobs and switches scattered about the driver’s cockpit. MyFord also boosts connectivity with the help of an SD card slot and WiFi. Information is displayed on a pair of 4.2-inch full-color LCDs flanking an analog speedometer with five-way navigation buttons on each side of the steering wheel crossbar that give the driver control over data on the corresponding left- or right-side display; vehicle data on the left (fuel economy, mechanical status, safety features) and infotainment on the right (audio setting, climate controls, phone communications and navigation menus). An 8-inch touchscreen LCD at the top of the center console stack is the centerpiece of phone, navigation, climate and audio/entertainment functions and features fingertip slider controls for adjusting the audio volume and fan speed — voice commands can also be used in most cases.

In yet another blow to makers of personal GPS navigators, Ford is also making its existing Traffic, Directions & Information application standard on all MyFord and Sync-equipped cars. Enhanced 3D map-based navigation is enabled by upgradeable SD cards (supplied by TeleNav) containing the map database and voice data, 3D map graphics, and enhanced point-of-interest data from Wcities. Naturally, the navigation system takes full advantage of those 3x MyFord LCDs to displays visual cues like street names, directional arrows, and distance makers in addition to spoken turn-by-turn directions.

Expect to see MyFord branded as MyLincoln Touch and MyMercury Touch on respective Lincoln and Mercury branded rigs kicking off with the 2011 Lincoln MKX set for reveal at the North American International Auto Show next week.

MyFord Touch yields three screens and a Ford from Microsoft Auto 4.0 originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 07 Jan 2010 00:01:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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LAS VEGAS — It isn’t just geeks who want connected cars. By 2016 mainstream buyers will base much of their buying decisions based on the car’s ability to communicate to the outside world and also to connect phones and entertainment devices. So says the keynote speaker at the Consumer Telematics Show conference held each year before the start of CES. Within six years, says Thilo Koslowski, the automotive practice leader at the Gartner consultancy, “Connected vehicle features will be a critical buying consideration criteria for the average consumer … Product differentiation must extend beyond mechanical engineering [of cars to] include software, service, and application distincton.”