Magellan RoadMate Navigation: iPhone Review

The world of personal navigation devices is rapidly changing, and the big players are adding full-featured software applications for devices that don’t bear their names. Magellan is the latest to offer a serious navigation app for the iPhone. It’s not cheap, but it’ll make you shun those clunky nav units.

What We Like
Rapid auto-fill keypad, Points-of-interests lists are clear and customizable, Uses iPhone contacts, Screen clarity

What We Don’t
Huge file size, Slow-moving between screens, No traffic reports, Long loading time

Price: $79.99 for a limited time

Mercedes Launches Mobile App

Add Mercedes-Benz to the growing number of companies using mobile devices to integrate their products into daily life. The automaker has launched mbrace, a new service for its owners that will allow a car to be locked, unlocked and located — whether stolen or lost in a parking lot. It also has collision notification and roadside assistance notification.

You can use the service via an iPhone or BlackBerry, and there is a full brochure detailing everything offered here.

The cool tech is not free, of course. New buyers get six months of the mbrace package free, and then it costs $280 a year. There is also an mbrace Plus package, which you can get for free for three months and then it’s $520 a year. It adds weather, traffic and route assistance for navigation.

Pocket Radar: A Less Bulky Way to Catch Speeders

The most obvious use for the Pocket Radar—the world’s first and so far “only pocket-sized personal speed radar”—would be on the baseball field, but we’re sure automotive consumers and car enthusiasts can come up with a way to have fun with this toy.

The Doppler-based Pocket Radar is about the size of a typical cell phone and has the same accuracy of more traditional radar guns—within 1 mph, according to the manufacturer. A set of AAA batteries will get you 10,000 speed measurements.

No word on pricing just yet, but the Pocket Radar website says the device will launch in spring 2010. Check out a video of the gadget in action after the jump.

Pocket Radar Is the “World’s Only Pocket-Sized Personal Speed Radar” (Gizmodo.com)

GPS Now Here for iPods

We’ve routinely covered the numerous navigation options for the Apple iPhone and its competing smartphones, but if you own an iPod Touch or a first-generation iPhone, which didn’t come with GPS, there’s now a solution for you.
 
PosiMotion is selling a portable GPS router for $99; it can enable up to 200 devices with accurate GPS locations. The company also sells a navigation app in the iTunes store for $39 to make the whole thing work.

Why on earth would you spend as much money on this device and its software as you would on a decent unit from Garmin or TomTom? We’re not sure. Perhaps you don’t like the clutter of having yet another handheld — although the GPS router looks to be more clutter — or you’d rather utilize your iPhone’s or Touch’s other features like network gaming. Otherwise, we’re guessing that most folks who want an Apple product for navigation have already moved on to an iPhone 3G or 3GS.

www.posimotion.com

iPhone-Controlled Car Goes Low Budget

We’ve previously reported on sophisticated systems that allow drivers to control vehicles through iPhone applications, but the team at Waterloo Labs decided to take the B-movie, low-budget route for their high-tech remote-controlled car.

Their vehicle certainly is not getting a good crash-test rating from the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, and it doesn’t help matters that the mechanics choose to perch on the car’s roof and hood while driving.

Check out the video after the jump to see how the guys at Waterloo did it using a first-generation iPhone (and yes, that is a wrench depressing the gas pedal).

Dangerously Driving a Car With an iPhone (TAUW.com)

Garmin to Add Customizable Gauges to GPS

Garmin says it will add customizable diagnostic gauges to their Nuvi GPS devices. The new system, EcoRoutes ESP, will connect to your car’s onboard diagnostics port (OBD-II) to deliver previously inaccessible information about the car’s performance and likely more accurate driving data such as arrival times.

Available sometime next year, the EcoRoutes ESP module will send information to the GPS unit through Bluetooth. You’ll be able to choose which information you want displayed on the screen, including things like fuel economy, throttle position, intake manifold pressure, intake air temperature, coolant temperature and emissions.

The iPhone has similar programs available, but the Garmin module looks preferable because of its bigger screen, which makes room for more gauges covering more information. As Gizmodo points out, though, Google Navigation is also on the way and will make the competition in this realm fierce.

Garmin Communicates With Your Car Via ESP (CNET via Gizmodo)

No Google Navigation for $99 Droid Phone

Today, Verizon released a new, affordable smartphone running Google’s Android operating system. The HTC Droid ERIS is just $99 after rebates, and it looks and works a lot like the Motorola Droid phone, which was released last week.

However, the more expensive Motorola is running a slightly newer version of Android, which can use Google’s new Navigation Maps Beta application that we detailed last week; the new $99 HTC Droid ERIS can’t run it. HTC says it will upgrade to the new system eventually via a software update.

We’ll keep you posted on when the upgrade will be available because a $99 phone running a sophisticated  — and free — navigation application is enticing.

Ford Asks Students to Bring Social Media to Sync

When it comes to figuring out what’s next for in-car technology, Ford is turning to an outside group: University of Michigan students.

The project, American Journey 2.0, will give students unlimited access to a developmental operating system where they can test Ford programs. This will allow the automaker to figure out how to add social media experiences to its popular Sync communications and entertainment system.

Does this mean Facebook will pop up on your windshield at the push of a button? Not quite. Ford wants to see how young people will use a car’s technology to communicate and share information with the outside world. What form this will take remains to be seen (OK, Facebook Windshield is still a possibility).

VW and MIT Introduce In-Car Robot

Does that headline have too many acronyms? Trust us, it’s worth the initial confusion.

Volkswagen has partnered with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology to introduce AIDA, the Affective Intelligent Driving Agent.

AIDA is a robotic device mounted onto the dashboard that uses a number of different information sources to help you plan travel routes, skip traffic jams, discover entertainment locations you’ve never previously heard of and even help you avoid running out of gas. It also happens to look like something out of a sci-fi movie.

AIDA is more than just a GPS on steroids, though. It also “learns” how you drive by monitoring features and systems like the gas pedal, brake pedal, windshield wipers, seat position, fuel gauge and tire pressure. It knows the city you live in, your home and work locations, and it learns your driving priorities.

For instance, you could be trying to make a 7 p.m. movie but a traffic jam threatens your on-time arrival. AIDA would then step in and direct you around the traffic using the quickest possible route. On the way home, it might recommend that you stop for gas based on how far away you live. Or it might suggest a restaurant to grab a bite at because it knows you’ve been in a movie for two hours and might be hungry.

AIDA sounds a little too much like HAL of “2001: A Space Odyssey,” but as long as AIDA doesn’t refuse to “open the pod bay door,” so to speak, this system could be very cool.

AIDA: It’s More Than an Opera (Up to Speed)

Chrysler Adds Live TV in Vehicles

Starting in December, Chrysler will offer the option of live mobile TV in its vehicles—a first for a U.S. automaker. The service will include 20 channels, with offerings like CBS Mobile, CNBC, Comedy Central, FOX News, MSNBC, MTV, NBC 2Go and Nickelodeon.

It will be available as a $629 factory-installed option, plus installation. This comes with a one-year free subscription as well.

The signals will flow through FLO TV’s dedicated multicast network, and will be available only in 100 markets and along some interstate driving corridors. In other words, if you live in rural areas or are traveling outside of the 100 markets listed a lot, the service probably won’t be worth the money.

The service can also be added to certain 2008-2010 vehicles that have already been purchased, but you’ll have to have the specific Mopar headrest or seat-top DVD entertainment systems installed first.

Previously, Chrysler used Sirius Satellite for in-car video viewing but they used only three specific channels created just for them, not existing networks’ live feeds.