shifter

Fanatec CSR racing combo for Xbox 360 (hands- and feet-on)

I've previously confessed to being a fan of Fanatec's series of racing wheels, I even use its original Porsche 911 Turbo styled wheel, pedal, and shifter combo as my daily digital driver when piloting the virtual cars 'round the tracks of my racing sim du jour.

But my now-discontinued Fanatec kit sits at the bottom of manufacturer's line of racing peripherals and leaves much to be desired.The plasticy buttons on the wheel's face feel cheap with vague tactile feedback; the pedals, while accurate throughout their travel, are too light and mushy for furious racing; and the H-pattern shifter's poorly defined gates have cost me more races than I can count. Most of these issues have been addressed with subsequent versions of Fanatec's Porsche wheels and at the core of this kit is a fantastically accurate 900-degree racing wheel with strong force feedback, great sensitivity, and the ability to be customized on-the-fly to the user's needs. I always wondered, what would happen if you took that awesome core steering wheel hardware and upgraded the components and build materials?

This is the point in our story where the Fanatec Forza Motorsport CSR wheel and shifter kit and CSR Elite pedal set landed at my desk. These components aim to address each of the issues that I have with my current setup.… Read more

Kart Racing Lives at Infineon Raceway

As I alluded to in my previous blog, Infineon Raceway plays host to a variety of auto racing events. Today's video blog will take a gander at the sport of go-kart racing, and its place at the famous race track in Sonoma, California.

Kart racing of all competition, skill and age levels have taken place at Infineon over the years, and the track occasionally hosts multiple go-kart events per week during its peak season. Kart racing has a deceptively loyal following and fanbase that makes it possible for so many organizations and events to exist, and their dedication to … Read more

MacHeist II uncovers more great Mac deals

Last year about this time, several independent Mac software developers teamed up to put together a bundle of nine award-winning Mac apps for the vastly reduced price of $49--with 25 percent of the purchase price donated to the charity of your choice (chosen from a list). The whole thing took place at a very well-designed site called MacHeist.com and more than 16,000 users snapped up the limited time offer--it was really a great deal! The fun part about the offer was that the developers of MacHeist made it into a kind of scavenger hunt by letting users search … Read more

AniBOOM's ShapeShifter: easy user-generated animation creation

Old-school Mac users might remember a little application called HyperCard. Originally a database application, it doubled as a casual animation tool--letting users create fairly basic cartoons, frame by frame. This morning I've been playing around with AniBOOM's ShapeShifter, a Web-based animation creation tool that brings back those old feelings of black-and-white computing, with a new social bookmarking twist.

ShapeShifter is pretty simple to use. There are four shapes to choose from, and you can place them wherever you want on the canvas. Each shape can be rotated, resized and grouped together to make new forms. When you're … Read more

An FM radio with creative license

For those who like manually tuning in FM radio stations instead of using the automatic scanner, this stick-shift FM radio is the way to go.

According to Tokyomango's translation of the vendor site, you shift left and right to change stations and up and down to adjust the volume. You just throw it in park to turn off the unit.

The product page also shows a couple of output ports on the shifter radio, although it's hard to tell what they are. Ideally, one of them is an audio-out port, because I'd imagine the sounds coming out … Read more