GPS

SAN JOSE, Calif.--Over the past decade, new in-car electronics have helped us navigate and made more music easily available while driving. But if the work shown at Nvidia's GPU Technology Conference (GTC) is any indication, bigger and better changes are in store.

Among the many automotive seminars at this year's GTC, Honda showed off its development of a head-up display, while Audi discussed its initiatives to make urban driving safer.

In Honda's seminar, Victor Ng-Thow-Hing, principal scientist at the Honda Research Institute in Mountain View, Calif., showed head-up display technology that makes current production examples look … Read more

Abalta's just-released WebLink system makes use of smartphones to power popular apps on a car's dashboard. Although no automotive partners have been announced, the technology could let drivers see and control apps for navigation, music, news, and social media through their cars' touch screens.

For the WebLink launch, Abalta Technologies included integration with Slacker Internet radio, WebNav navigation, Parkopedia parking information, and WCities event information apps.

Abalta says WebLink will work with any major smartphone operating system. The technology makes use of the HTML 5-compatible browsers of smartphone operating systems, showing the content and accepting touch-screen control input … Read more

Traffic data, fuel prices, weather, and even streaming music make for great connected car features, but Internet-based local search has gotten surprisingly short shrift from automakers.

In my opinion, local search is the killer feature you probably don't have.

Whether from Google, Bing, or another search engine, Internet-based local search integrated with a car's navigation system can help you find everything from hamburgers to hair salons.

Only a few automakers offer local search. When I recently reviewed a BMW 750Li, I found Google search among its BMW Online services. Audi also offers Google integrated with the navigation system … Read more

On March 10, 1849, eight score and four years ago yesterday, a future president brought forth on this continent a new notion for improving river navigation.

That was the day Abraham Lincoln filed a patent application for his imaginative method of "Buoying Vessels Over Shoals."

At age 22, Lincoln had been a crewman on a flatboat that got stuck on a dam at New Salem, Ill., a bit of Lincoln folklore depicted in the 1940 film "Abe Lincoln in Illinois," with Raymond Massey in the starring role.

After another riverboat grounding incident in 1848 when he … Read more

Over the weekend, the TomTom app for iPhone and iPad devices updated from version 1.12 to 1.13. This 1/100th of a full version update included compatibility with Apple's new 7-inch iPad Mini and added support for Apple's iCloud data synchronization service.

After installing the update and establishing a connection with your iCloud account, TomTom automatically backs up your settings, recent destinations, and favorite POIs to the cloud where they can be recalled in the event you ever need to reinstall the app, switch devices, or need to sync your data across multiple devices. Data synchronization … Read more

After moving to a new city and buying a new car to get around in, a close friend of mine found herself needing some sort of GPS navigation to guide her around her new hometown. So, she bought a used portable navigation device and hit the road.

"This GPS sucks! The maps are out of date and it didn't come with a cable to connect to my computer for updating!" she declared after just a few trips.

"Wait, didn't you just buy a new iPhone?" I realized aloud. "You have to be the … Read more

The latest update to the Inrix Traffic app for Android is a fairly large one. The app gets a visual refresh that makes use of Android's Holo design language. An updated and clearer Places screen makes it easier for drivers to estimate travel times and share those times with others.

Inrix is, simply, a traffic app. It will let you know how much traffic you'll encounter on your way home and to work, but it won't actually give you directions as to how tol get there. Can such an app be useful? Let's take a closer … Read more

LAS VEGAS--Ford and GM both surprised the automotive and technology worlds by announcing developer programs for their in-car software platforms, essentially replicating the ecosystem of the smartphone on the dashboard. The two launched Web sites with nearly identical URLs, developer.ford.com and developer.gm.com, to support independent development of apps for their cars.

Ford already boasts about 20 apps integrated with its Sync AppLink system, with nine new apps announced at the show. GM is behind in the dashboard app game, but the open development program should give it a jumpstart.

The programs are designed to encourage developers … Read more

LAS VEGAS--A bright-red Cayenne GTS parked at CES 2013 showcased Porsche's newly announced integration with Aha, an online service combining channels for radio stations, Slacker, audiobooks, podcasts, and other Internet-based content. And in a first for both Aha and Porsche, the system adds Google local search.

Drivers will need to load the Aha app on their smartphones and create an account, after which they can browse through Aha's collection of 30,000 channels, adding them to a favorites list. Hooking the phone up to a Porsche equipped with the Aha Online Services option, drivers will be able to … Read more