Where does Ford think cars will be in the future, that is something that they are answering at the 2011 Frankfurt Motor Show with the announcement of the EVOS concept car. The idea behind the Ford concept is that your car is set to your preferences. It connects to the cloud and can check the weather, traffic, and your work schedule. It can then send the information it gathered to your in-home system. For example if you have a change of schedule the car can notify and reset your alarm clock or perhaps it can suggest an umbrella if it is going to rain. As you get in your car it is already cooled or heated to your liking. The cars audio system is connected to your home entertainment system through the cloud. The car knows what you were listening to in the house so it continues it in the car. As you drive away the car closes your garage door and sets your home to energy-efficient mode.
The car can then suggest the best route based on your schedule and traffic. The car will adjust brakes, steering and suspension as needed It will adjust the hybrid power train to give the right mixture of electric and gas to maximize efficiency. The car also measures the driver’s heart beat and as it reaches a certain level, the car will automatically turn off unnecessary gauges to aid concentration. At the same time it will also put your phone in do not disturb mode.
If you are driving through an area that is heavily polluted the car can adjust the filtration system or suggest a route that is less polluted. The car will also go into full electric mode when that makes sense. If the car is in full electric mode it will send a signal to the police and any toll booth on the route to advise them that this is an electric car even though it has a tail pipe. If the car is in full electric mood in stop and go traffic it can throttle itself. Meanwhile you can relax as it reads your emails to you. The car can find you a parking spot with an electric vehicle (EV) conductive charging pad and reserve that spot. It then can give you turn by turn directions and guide you right over the EV pad, so that when you leave work your car will be fully charged.
A concept car shows the path where the automaker believes the auto industry is going. It is a future wish list. This wish list will depend on guaranteeing security in the cloud. The building of the external infrastructure such as installing EV conductive charging pads around cities. However I like the concept and hope it becomes a reality in my lifetime. Ford has some great videos up explain the concept car
Netflix is finally coming to Android devices, albeit slowly, to specific devices at a time. So far, the free Netflix app will show up in the Android Marketplace on the HTC Evo 4G, the HTC Incredible, the HTC Nexus One, the HTC G2, and the Samsung Nexus S.
Since getting the latest version of the 32 gigabyte iPod Touch a couple of months back, one of the uses that has surprised me has been late-night movie-watching after I’ve gone to bed but am not yet drowsy enough to go to sleep. The iPod Touch works extremely well for this task. I am able to pair the iPod to my Sprint HTC Evo’s WiFi hotspot feature and generally get very good Internet connectivity.
Sometimes things no one ever thought of simply seem to come together. Services and devices end up being used to do things the individual inventors and designers couldn’t have imagined.
It’s always fun when technology intersects, and it becomes possible to do something cool that was previously not possible and/or was never thought of.
There’s a new cross-platform video calling app that just became available called Tango. There are versions for both the iPhone as well as Android. Tango does what Apple’s FaceTime does, except it also does it cross-platform as well as via 3G. Apple’s integrated video calling app FaceTime works only with iPhone 4’s and via WiFi data network connectivity.
I’ve had my HTC Evo for a couple of months or more at this point. When I first turned it on, there was an update waiting. The update installed. So far, so good.
Today’s smartphones are amazing devices and can do some pretty cool things. Some of the apps can be quite remarkable, but do they offer real-world functionality?
I’ve been living with my Sprint HTC Evo phone for a while now, and I am still learning some interesting things about Android – at least the HTC/Sprint version.
Shortly after getting my HTC Evo phone, one of the initial apps I downloaded from the Android Marketplace was the Amazon Kindle app with the idea I’d probably check it out at some point. Weeks went by, and I pretty much ignored the app.
What a pleasant surprise I was in for. Reading a Kindle book on my HTC Evo is actually a good experience. The text is quite legible. The surprising part is that twice now I’ve carried the phone with me into restaurants and was able to easily read using the phone while eating. Of course, the HTC Evo has a handy built-in kick stand that allows the phone to sit on its side at an angle. I can eat and then periodically lightly touch the right side of the screen in order to make the Kindle app advance to the next page. The Kindle app even synchs the latest page I’m on back to the server, so if I open the book up again either on my phone or on my laptop, it opens up right at the exact page where I stopped reading.
