The advocates for eliminating cell phone usage in vehicles have reason to rejoice due to the newest product delivered by BlueAnt this past Monday. The new S4 allows the driver to operate their cell phone with only their voice. To activate the S4 the driver only needs to say, “BlueAnt speak to me”. Not the most original phrase, but easy to remember. To make a call, all the driver has to say is, “Phone Commands” and the S4’s will activate your phone’s voice dialing feature.
Receiving calls on the S4 is just as easy as making them. When the phone rings, the S4 will announce the name of the person calling or the phone number that is calling. The driver can easily answer or ignore the call by stating his choice. The S4 goes a step further by operating with the Vlingo Safereader installed on a Blackberry or Android to read out the text messages sent to your phone. The phone also works with the Microsoft BING 411 to connect the driver with stock quotes, movie times, directions, weather forecasts, sports results, news and traffic updates.
Full story after the jump.
Full story
We all know that Jay Leno loves his cars. After all, he probably has enough cars – modern and vintage – to make his own showroom. But despite owning a fleet of some of the most expensive and prestigious vehicles in the world, we still don’t know as to how much of a car fanatic Jay Leno is. That’s until we found out that our favorite ex-late night talk show host has his own 3D scanner, which he uses to scan and print rare and irreplaceable car parts from his vintage classics. Now, that’s something you’ve never heard before.
Leno’s revolutionary gadget is a NextEngine 3D Scanner, which can scan a fully-functioning auto part in 20 minutes at 160,000 dots per inch resolution. After doing so, he takes his scanned image and prints it into a plastic 3D model using his Dimension 3D Printer. While the resulting part isn’t the final piece of the exercise – he takes the plastic, which can be scanned and printed in three hours, and uses it to make a mold that will eventually produce the metal, which he uses on the car.
We know a lot of car aficionados the world over that would go to great lengths to restore their precious vehicles, but we’ve never seen anyone that has an device that can actually make a 3D image of a vintage car part. But that’s why Jay Leno is who he is.
Since most of us don’t have a muppet to take care of our speeding tickets, this little gadget may be useful for defeating speeding cameras. This RF license plate cover features motorized panels which can cover your license plates. Now with the push of a key fob button you can drive as fast as you want. So far we’ve only seen it for international style long plates, but for those who are interested it can be found here.
P.S. When the cops catch you, and they will, you didn’t get the idea from us.
Not since Calvin relieving himself on your least favorite car brand has been so easy for a driver to show his/her feelings. "The Hand" remote controller window sign is a funny and useful gadget that signs how you feel towards the other drivers. For $40, this electroluminescent gesturing hand will allow to focus your attention completely on the road.
Just make sure you always have some expression always on. To correctly fit all the different gestures, the blank hand has six fingers.
Have you ever seen your kids bored in your long family trips? Well, today we have the solution: Carcade, a concept for an in-car videogame designed for the passengers, which actually captures the landscape and uses it as a videogame environment. For example trees and houses on your window will be recognized by the incorporated camera connected to a laptop, and then it will enter your game. Also, when the car accelerates, the game will become more difficult (that’s got to be safe.)
The bad news is that for the moment the game is only a concept. But who knows, maybe in the future you will be able to play you’re own live version of Midnight Club!
