Here’s a device that makes Big Brother look a lot more fun and accessible–the Driving Reporter Gadget.

It’s a USB device that’s also an in-car 16 channel GPS system that stores about 100 hours of your driving.  All the data, all the activities are routed into this thing so you know exactly where you were, where you turned, and where you went.  Not to mention your speed getting there.  It’s a lot like the black box on an airplane, just for your car.  Okay, granted, the Driving Reporter Gadget is also black in color, but that’s just a funny coincidence.

The device runs on a pair of AAA lithium batteries, and secures anywhere on your car via an attached magnet (doubly odd since this seems to at least have some limited memory right next to a magnet as part of the design.), and you can even watch your trip on Google Earth, which is awesome if you have a tendency to get lost and want to watch your own highlight reel to figure out how you got so abjectly butt-lost in the first place.

I’m a bit concerned about having a device tattle on you constantly, but for parents this may be a godsend.  They cost $229.95 each, so finding out where your car’s been is pretty easy.

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Wow, just wow.  Not even 24 hours has gone by and the Google Maps with turn-by-turn directions for Android devices rumor has become official.  As suspected this will be a free app and will be available when Android 2.0 launches sometime next month.

The feature set is robust to say the least and will easily rival, if not eclipse previous GPS applications and even some stand alone GPS devices. My favorite is that ability to view ’street view’ before the turn such that you can view landmarks before you change direction.  Much like most stand alone GPS devices, Google Maps Navigation offers voice guidance, turn-by-turn directions, 3D view and the ability to search by point of interest instead of just address.  And they’ve also added Google Voice Search.  There a few vids of the app after the ‘leap’, so be sure to check those out.

Right now the app is advert free, but given Google’s model I’d expect them to start plugging those in as we move closer to a nonbeta version.  So for instance, you’re taking a trip to San Francisco from LA. You might see ads for food stops, gas stations and such.  More local routes might show you coffee shops or stores that relate to your previous search history, and so forth.

Unfortunately, I don’t think we’ll see this version of maps appears on the iPhone anytime soon, if ever.  This would supplant any paid app in the app store and cause Apple to lose out on potential earnings, something they seem to have a problem with.

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Today rumors emerged that Google is in the process of developing their very own navigation app for smartphones running the Android OS.  It’s not clear if the application would be more robust than the iPhone’s current Google Map application and offer turn-by-turn directions, but given that they own the Android OS, and can essentially do whatever they want, it’s more likely than not.

Providing greater credence to the rumor is that Google just discontinued their relationship with Tele Atlas earlier this October, which charged Google for use of their map info – Google has a contract with them until 2013 to work on International maps.  The break away from the map service provider indicates that Google has amassed enough map data over the years to go at it alone and in all likelihood offer an ad supported free version. 

How this will play out with US carriers is another story – they profit from charging for turn-by-turn directions – since they could very well stop offering phones with the Android OS.  But that would probably result in what will be perceived as business suicide, especially seeing as the Android OS is the #1 competitor to Apple’s iPhone OS, something only AT&T has access to at this point.  As to whether or not this will impact the iPhone’s Google Map offering is not clear, but since Apple profits off the sales of other map applications in their iTunes app store, it’s highly unlikely that well see a free Google Maps version in the app store with a turn-by-turn feature.

[via TFTS]

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Today I’m going to introduce you to a truly awesome gadget that you can’t possibly get your hands on before Christmas unless you know somebody or can shell out epic bribes.

We’re talking about the eDGe, and this little beauty is worth the $490 you’d shell out for it for one very good reason: it’s a netbook and an e-reader.  All at once.  That’s right, it’s BOTH.

It’s WiFi enabled and looks vaguely like a Nintendo DS that you hold constantly upright, like an actual book.  It runs on Google’s Android system, joining a growing family of same, and can serve all the functions of both a netbook (send email, instant messages, surf the web, run apps, write notes and so on) and an ereader (it’s got a 9.7 inch E-ink e-paper display on one side and a 10.1 inch LCD screen on the other, just so you know what side gets what)

Their creator, Virginia’s Entourage Systems, has started taking preorders for the devices, so you can sign up for them now.

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Sweet Mary!  Google is offering free WiFi on all Virgin America trips from November 10th to January 15th.  If there is/was ever a way to get me to buy a ticket via email solicitation this has to be it.Similar Posts:

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Okay all  you gadget crazed shoppers.  I was just doing a search on Google about the new Sanyo Eneloop batteries when something odd popped up: a bar code.  At first glance I thought this might be part of Google’s new shopping experience.  It turns out that they’re simply celebrating the invention of the bar code and that it some how spells out Google.  But this does bring up an interesting idea?  What if Google started providing bar codes for product related searches?  Once you find the product you’re looking for you could just print out, or better yet fire the page up on your phone and present it at the retailer of your choice to expedite your search.  Sounds smart to me.

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That’s a strange thought to wake up to, isn’t it?  Well, it turns out they’ve got reason.  Read on:

Words like “clunky”, “slow”, and “a real pain” have come up, as students trying out the Kindle DX in classes are discovering that the ereader may not be the replacement for overpriced textbooks they’d hoped for.

One student found it awkward to hold down the “alt” key every time he wanted to type in numbers.  Since the Kindles have no page numbers, but rather, “location numbers”, students requiring source documentation find themselves typing out huge location numbers rather than simple two or three digit page numbers.  Plus, anyone working out of a regular book will be utterly lost by the Kindle’s location numbering system and be unable to crosscheck the reference without a Kindle of their own.

More suggestions emerged, citing that the Kindle needed page numbers, but also asking for improvements to note taking and highlighting.

So, okay–maybe the Kindle isn’t an academic’s dream gadget just yet.  But there’s every possibility that it will become so in the future.

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Cell phone buffs, listen up, because the long awaited arrival of the Samsung Behold II in the United States is coming on the order of soon.

The Behold II, which uses Google’s Android operating system along with Samsung’s own Touchwiz interface offers a 3.2 inch AMOLED touchscreen, a five megapixel camera, GPS and Bluetooth, plus a host of built-in Google services and a 3-D cube menu interface which is reportedly cooler than the other side of the pillow.

A lot more cell phones are working Android these days, and Google’s becoming almost ubiquitous in the cell phone arena.  It’s a wonder not every cell phone includes this by now, and leaves me wondering just how long until the Justice Department wants a crack at Google.

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Sometimes you want nothing more out of life than to be able to step through your computer monitor and go live on that magnificent stretch of beach pictured on your desktop.  Google has sensed your plight, o cubicle dwellers, and offered up something to make it worse: a Google gadget called My Daily Hawaii.

My Daily Hawaii not only shows incredible beaches, but also offers up Hawaii trivia, history, travel tips and more.  If you actually answer the Hawaii trivia right, though, you win a “super cute puppy picture prize”, which actually makes some sense.

Admittedly, if you live in, say, a cold Northern climate, you may well consider My Daily Hawaii to be a huge dose of masochistic glee, but for those of us who just like to look at a sunny beach as a quick pick-me-up in the cold black depths of winter, then this is a great piece for us.

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Hewlett Packard’s just recently introduced a new software gadget designed to help you get a little more green with your daily computing and offers the Power To Change gadget, part of a whole lineup of said energy saving widgets from HP, Google and Microsoft, among others.

This gadget syncs up with various Windows power management features to shut down monitors and turn off unused computers completely throughout the day.  HP will let you download that gadget for free, as well a host of other companies offering a similar gadget.

This is actually a really good idea.  There’s more than a little potential for waste involved with computers, so helping users find a fast and easy way to save a little extra juice.  Once you save a little extra juice one day, saving it every day can really add up to stomething big, which just might be the way to help everybody go a little greener.

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There’s been a crap load of talk about Google Wave in recent, especially since they just invited 100,000 lucky folks to join the beta.  But if you’re like me, you’ve probably paid little to no attention since the product seems far from going public and is probably just another complicated tool that is designed to simplify our lives.  Well, not quite.  At the core of Google Wave is good old fashioned email (ha!, who would’ve thought email would’ve been ‘old fashioned’?).  But Google Wave is different.  Hit the video below, but in short Google Wave offers a very succinct way of managing email communication between multiple parties and then some.  There’s no public beta so I really can’t tell you more.

[via Giz]

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You’ve already read about the Hero HTC phone here back in June, but what you don’t know is we’re not the only ones interested in the phone that uses Google technology was just elected Gadget of the Year by the 2009 Stuff Gadget Awards.

The Hero, which uses the Android operating system and features a five megapixel camera and 3.2 inch screen, can make calls, take pictures, and thanks to Android, check your email.  One of the judges at the annual Gadget festival declared that the HTC Hero is “as clever and as sexy as the iPhone”, which is actually pretty awesome unless you take him literally, then it just sounds like he’s hitting on it.

Further highlights of the Stuff Gadget Awards were the iPhone 3GS snagging Phone of the Year and Readers’ Gadget of the Year, Spotify for Audio Gadget, and the Sony KDL-40WE5 as Eco Gadget of the Year.

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If you love surfing the websites of foreign countries but find it too much of a hassle to learn to speak their language first, then you’ll love what Google’s about to do for you.  They’ve issued free software that allows website operators to automatically translate online pages into any of 51 languages.

It’s called the “translator gadget”, and it will automatically shift the language on the page to match the default browser’s language.  Let’s say that I’m a guy from somewhere near Iran, and my browser’s set to Farsi.  I surf on over to Craigslist to look for a job writing for a fashion magazine, and they’ve got the gadget installed, and boom!  Suddenly Craigslist is coming to me live in Farsi.

Granted, the system isn’t foolproof.  As everyone who’s surfed Engrish.com knows, translation isn’t always an exact science, especially for software.  But still, those occasional errors should at least be entertaining!

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YouTube has spent the entirety of its existence relying on user submitted content to catch traffic, but no longer is that the case.  The Google purchase is now in talks with some large movie studios in regards to scoring the licenses to host motion pictures.  These studios include but aren’t limited to: Sony Pictures, Lions Gate Entertainment Corp., and Warner Bros. Studios.

Does this sound like something you’d be interested in?  Not to blatantly quote Entourage, but doesn’t it seem a little to late for this type of service?  Apparently YouTube has been spending some time trying to acquire a catalog of premium content. To what avail I say.

Like Hulu, some of the content will be free as long as you watch some ads and there will then be the more premium content which will cost around $4.  I have a feeling that this is going to tarnish the slogan “Broadcast Yourself” as users won’t take kindly to the notion of paid content especially when it can be found for free in other places.  Thinking positive, if the regular format went unchanged, what would be the harm?

We’ll see.

Read

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Here’s a novel approach to Google Street View: the Google Trike.  Designed specifically to reach historical landmarks, the Google Trike will first appear in Genoa, Italy (yum, meat) and then make its way to the UK sometime later this summer.  Google has requested that the British public provide suggestion on what historical landmarks and places to focus on.  Later, a vote will determine the top 3 locations Google Trike will visit first.  Now for some additional info regarding the Google Trike and Google’s Street View policy:

• The trike weighs nearly 18 stone!
• We will use specially trained super fit Google employees and contractors to ride the Trikes.
• The “trikers” wear Google cycle helmets and clothing
• There are 5 categories under which people can submit their ideas. The categories are: Castles, Coastal paths, Natural Wonders, Historic Buildings & Monuments and (Sports) Stadiums.
• We will be accepting suggestions for a limited time and we’ll then work with Visit Britain to choose the most original ideas from each category. The public will then be able to cast their final votes and choose the top 3 locations we’ll try to add to Street View (pending sunny weather).
• As we only collect images from public roads we’ll work closely with the relevant organizations to collect images of privately-owned locations.
• As with all Street View imagery in the UK, we will apply our face-blurring and license plate blurring to all these images to protect people’s privacy. People will be able to report images for removal in the same way as they can now by clicking on ‘report a problem’ on the bottom left hand corner of the image. From here they complete a short form where they indicate the precise image to be removed

[via Wired]

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Rumors from unnamed sources suggest Google is considering a buyout of the popular Twitter service. Other reports suggest they’re only collaborating on a real-time search engine. Whatever the case may be, a joint ‘twoogle’ project is sure to be something very interesting.

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I don’t do it often but I get a fair share of emails with the attachments missing and another email quickly following it with the attachment intact.  Google Gmail has just added an “Undo” feature that allows you to retract a sent email for up to five seconds in case you forget an attachment or a CC, etc.  When you see the email sending, there will a cancel button you can hit to halt the email in its tracks.  This then brings the email back to draft status allowing you to make the necessary changes.  What it won’t do is exhume emails that have made it past the 5 second mark.  You can enable this option under the Gmail settings tab and then the labs tab in which undo will be towards the bottoms of the list.  Easy enough.

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A couple weeks back when I posted on some dude finding treasure on Google Earth, I faux challenged somebody to find some mythical s**t.  Low and behold the UK’s Sun Tabloid just reported someone finding the Lost City of Atlantis on Google Earth.  The picture you are looking at is the size of Wales and is 3.5 miles deep and 620 miles west of Morocco near the Canary Islands.  Most tattered scrolls indicate Atlantis to be somewhere in the Atlantic Ocean near the Bermuda Triangle to near islands outside of the Italy and Greece areas.  Here’s what a Google spokesperson had to say about it:

“What users are seeing is an artefact of the data collection process.… Bathymetric (or sea floor terrain) data is often collected from boats using sonar to take measurements of the sea floor.… The lines reflect the path of the boat as it gathers the data. The fact that there are blank spots between each of these lines is a sign of how little we really know about the world’s oceans.”

I’m so glad this happened.  Here’s a link to the actual spot on Google Earth.  Leave a comment on what you think the next find will be?

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How much fun would knowing this dude be?  Nathan Smith, a musician from Los Angeles was wandering around Google Earth and claims to have stumbled on the location of a sunken Spanish boat wreckage buried underneath some waterway near Refugio,Texas.  Containing riches beyond his modest musician’s salary, the estimated 3 billion dollars was apparently enough to get his ass off the computer.  So he packed a metal detector in his guitar case Desperado style and on headed down to Texas.  When he got there he ran into his first roadblock.  Owned land.  The late Morgan Dunn O’Connor was the rightful owner of the land, and Mr. Smith was halted by an infamous Gandolfism.  Unable to get at the “Dead Man’s Chest”, the scenario shifts to the courtroom.  Mr. Smith’s lawyers claim that the ship is buried in a “navigable” waterway, and according to US law, would be a finder’s keepers type of situation.  Texas state lawyers say that there is no waterway, and the O’Connor family wants first dibs too.  This is just too awesome!  So what, no one has seen the Lochness?  Or BigFoot hitting the bong with Phelpsie?  No Cthulhu?  What about Area 51?  C’mon people, get to it!

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I read this decent article in Wired about GPS apps that will change the world, and I must admit that Android will have some cool stuff.  The biggest selling factor for me is that applications can run in the background whereas an iPhone cannot.  On an iPhone, using an GPS app like BrightKite or Twinkle requires you to manually post where ever you go, but on Android you can just go somewhere and the phone will automatically post for you.  That’s a huge deterrent for me as I don’t want to be straight posting all the time.

At any rate, the Android app store hosted and operated by Google will begin selling apps this week.  So far the only phone available using the open source Android OS is the T-Mobile G1.  Now that developers can profit from their programs, we should see a serious bump in quality and quantity applications for the G1 and all future Android handsets.

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