How convenient would it be to never have to stop at a gas station? To know that your car would always be fully fueled? Imagine, too, that you'd also get the benefits—tax credits, diamond-lane access—that come with a near-zero-emissions vehicle. And, of course, that Mother Nature would smile upon you.

What I am describing is not a nuclear-powered car, a homebrew hydrogen, a hybrid, or even an electric vehicle. No sleight-of-hand here at all, just an introduction to one of the newest Honda's and its best-buddy, Phill. Did I mention that fueling this car costs half as much as gasoline?

The Natural Gas-Powered 2006 Honda Civic GX, which will go on sale to consumers this fall in New York state, has already been available on a very limited basis in California. CNG vehicles aren't exactly common, but some fleet customers here in the Golden State, like Pacific Gas & Electric, have a bunch of them. There is even a PG&E open-to-the-public CNG fueling station near my home.

But when I first heard about this vehicle, it wasn't the car that caught my eye, but Phill that interested me. The idea of a gas station in my garage is mildly fascinating, especially since I'm already afraid of all the flammables stored there. When I think of compressed natural gas, I think of huge tankers of the stuff, plying the oceans. If there's a problem, instead of the Exxon Valdez, I imagine something more like the Hindenburg. Oil-covered birds? Nah, after one of these tankers goes up, people will be asking "What birds?"

Whether that's really true, I don't know. At any rate, I was imagining something that looks like one of those Suburban Propane trucks coming to the house every week to fill a big CNG tank, which I'd use to fill the car. I envisioned needing heavy gloves to keep from freezing my hands during the fueling process, like the ones the guys who fill camper trailers or BBQ tanks use. No, compressed natural gas isn't something I'd want a tank of sitting around my garage, waiting to fill-up my new Civic.

I sent an e-mail to Chris Naughton, a PR guy at American Honda, asking about things like fire codes and explosions. It turns out I was way off-base. His response: "Phill is a home refueling appliance that takes the natural gas fed into your home and compresses it directly into the tank of your vehicle over a period of several hours. Fire codes in this case are not applicable since it is certified as an appliance, much like a washer or dryer. Building codes do apply, but they should be no more stringent than any other appliance."

So, if the pumps down at the cheap indie gas station on the corner seem to take forever to fill the Excursion, you're going to love your new CNG Civic. But, so long as you remember to connect the car to Phill when you get home, slow refueling shouldn't be a problem.

How does CNG save money? Natural gas, which is domestically produced in the U.S., has always tracked below the price of gasoline, something that doesn't seem to be changing. If you have natural gas at home and buy Phill, you can fuel your CNG Civic for about half what gasoline costs on a per-mile-driven basis. If you don't buy Phill and use a local CNG station instead, the savings drop to about 25 percent, Naughton told me.

There are some obvious limitations to CNG use, at least for now, because the stuff can be pretty hard to find on the open road. That makes CNG a good choice only for drivers who don't stray very far from their new friend, Phill. Electric cars have much the same limitation, which explains why hybrids are popular and the fully-electric models are not.

I should also mention that the CNG Civic is not a "real" part of Honda's product line. Over at Honda's media site, you won't find it with the standard models or even with the hybrids. No, the CNG Civic is with the "corporate" items on the "environmental" page. Thus, you won't be shocked when I tell you Honda expects to sell only about 1,000 of these to consumers.

Who will buy them? According to Naughton, the current customer demographic for the Civic GX is as follows:

Age: 44

Household Income: $100,000+

62% male

78% married

This lifestyle is consistent with other "early adopters" that Honda sells to, Naughton said.

The car comes with a five-speed automatic and gets an EPA-estimated fuel economy of 28 mpg city, 39 mpg highway (if the car were running on gasoline, that is). With the price differential, that makes this a very inexpensive vehicle to fuel. It also qualifies for as much as $5,000 in tax credits--$4,000 for the car and another $1,000 for Phill.

The CNG Civic lists for $24,440. Phill, however, is priceless—or, at least, I've asked and Honda hasn't been willing to say. My guess? Add $4,000 for Phill and installation.

I'm not expecting to find a CNG Civic and Phill in my garage anytime soon, if only because there is no way I could actually park a car there. But by the time I clean out enough junk to make space—I'm talking years—lower prices could make CNG and Phill a viable, maybe even an attractive, option. We'll see.

David Coursey is an Editor-at-Large for Ziff Davis Internet and a host of our PCMAGcast series of online events. He drives a Pontiac Vibe, a VW camper and has a dead Ford Explorer (head gasket, anyone?) parked in front of his home, near San Francisco.

Okay, it's time for another rant.

I received a press release in my inbox today entitled, "Does Cingular's Southern Charm Skew 'American Idol' Results?" My first response to the title, before even reading the release was, "Yes!!" For many seasons now, I've been wondering why all five American Idol winners have been from the South. Where's the East or West Coast lovin'? Maybe it's just coincidence, but something seems a little biased to me! Southern Idols have had Cingular saving their butts throughout each season due to the amount of text messages sent in for voting. And why wouldn't there be a lot of text messages coming in—you sure can't ever vote by phone because the line is ALWAYS BUSY.

Did you know that Cingular Wireless has a dominant share of its subscriber base in the South—20 million to be exact! And that nearly 18 million of Cingular subscribers text message?

So that explains why Southerner Taylor Hicks won this year; California-native Katharine McPhee just didn't have a chance! Taylor had the entire south to back him up with their Cingular votes. So why didn't the Southerners back up my man Chris Daughtry (who is from North Carolina), who really should've won in my humble opinion?

Of course, it was smart for Cingular to jump into the whole text-messaging voting thing when they had the chance. I think they knew as much as the fans that American Idol was going to be a hit. But having an exclusive relationship with the show—I don't know if that was smart on Fox's part. How can the voting process NOT be biased? There was talk that the night before Chris was eliminated, his voting phone line was redirected to another contestant's; thus skewing his voting results. I don't know if this really happened, but it has happened before on previous seasons. All I know is, I'm with the daughtrygang!

From the press release:

"Cingular has partnered with the show's producers to provide text-message voting solely from Cingular phones, so it's certainly possible that Southern subscribers might have more of a voting edge, than those in other regions in the U.S.," Hull said. "Had 'American Idol' partnered with another carrier with a higher percentage of their subscriber base in another region, the results might have been different."

Following is a breakdown of Cingular subscribers by region, based on data compiled by NPD for April 2006:

+ South:  46 percent (20 million subscribers)
+ West: 23 percent (10 million subscribers)
+ Northeast:  16 percent (6 million subscribers)
+ Central:  15 percent (7 million subscribers)

+ Taylor Hicks (2006): Birmingham, Alabama
+ Carrie Underwood (2005): Checotah, Oklahoma
+ Fantasia Barino (2004): High Point, North Carolina
+ Ruben Studdard (2003): Birmingham, Alabama
+ Kelly Clarkson (2002): Burleson, Texas

 

Don't get me wrong; we're lucky to have southerners like Kelly Clarkson and Carrie Underwood. They're both amazing singers. I just wish there was something that the show could fix with the voting process. Sometimes it just seems too one-sided to me. Maybe they should start allowing us to e-mail our votes? Then maybe it'd be a bit more fair? But I suppose in Reality TV Land, there's no such thing as fair.

Nearly twice the number of Cingular subscribers in the South

than in any other region; All five winning "Idols" hail from a Southern state

PORT WASHINGTON, NEW YORK, June 20, 2006 -- Ever wonder why all of

the "American Idol" winners have thus far hailed from Southern states?

According to information released today by The NPD Group, a leading

consumer and retail information company, the results of text-message voting

on the popular Fox Network talent show, "American Idol," might actually

affect the final voting outcome. After all, Cingular Wireless has a dominant

share of its subscriber base in the South and significantly more of those

subscribers use text messaging, than do Cingular subscribers in other regions

of the U.S.

Based on recent data from NPD's Mobile Consumer Track service, nearly half

of Cingular's subscribers are located in the South, and more than 18 million

(42 percent) Cingular subscribers in the U.S. actively use text messaging. In

fact more than twice as many Cingular subscribers (nearly nine million) in the

South do so, as in any other region. By comparison just over four million use

text messaging in the West, three million in Central states and three million in

the Northeast. According to NPD Wireless Industry Research Director Drew

Hull, this regional skew might have been large enough to affect the voting

outcome.

"Cingular has partnered with the show's producers to provide text-message

voting solely from Cingular phones, so it's certainly possible that Southern

subscribers might have more of a voting edge, than those in other regions in

the U.S.," Hull said. "Had 'American Idol' partnered with another carrier with

a higher percentage of their subscriber base in another region, the results

might have been different."

Following is a breakdown of Cingular subscribers by region, based on data

compiled by NPD for April 2006:

+ South: 46 percent (20 million subscribers)

+ West: 23 percent (10 million subscribers)

+ Northeast: 16 percent (6 million subscribers)

+ Central: 15 percent (7 million subscribers)

"We have to remember that this is a talent contest, and voting is subjective,

so there are many possible reasons -- including pure coincidence -- that

all 'American Idol' winners have come from the same U.S. region," Hull

said. "But based on the comparative consumer penetration into the South, it

is possible that sheer numbers might indeed have an effect on the contest

outcome. Of course, the South could also just have a stronger talent pool of

aspiring singers or more 'American Idol' fans, too."

The U.S. Census Department defines Southern states as Texas, Oklahoma,

Louisiana, Arkansas, Tennessee, Mississippi, Kentucky, Alabama, West

Virginia, D.C., Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Florida, Georgia,

Delaware, and Maryland. The list of "American Idol" winners and their home

towns, as listed on American Idol's Web site, is as follows:

+ Taylor Hicks (2006): Birmingham, Alabama

+ Carrie Underwood (2005): Checotah, Oklahoma

+ Fantasia Barino (2004): High Point, North Carolina

+ Ruben Studdard (2003): Birmingham, Alabama

+ Kelly Clarkson (2002): Burleson, Texas

Methodology: Mobile Consumer Track offers the industry's most in-depth and

comprehensive examination of consumer spending and usage of mobile

services and content. It specifically tracks consumer adoption, consumption,

and use of mobile services and downloaded content. Each month NPD

compiles and analyzes mobile consumer information from more than 15,000

completed online consumer research surveys. Surveys are based on a

nationally-balanced and demographically-representative sample of consumers,

and results are projected to represent the entire population of U.S.

consumers.

About The NPD Group, Inc.

Since 1967 The NPD Group has provided reliable and comprehensive consumer

and retail information for a wide range of industries. Today, more than 1,400

manufacturers and retailers rely on NPD to help them better understand their

customers, product categories, distribution channels and competition in order

to help guide their businesses. Information from The NPD Group is available for

the following industry sectors: automotive, beauty, consumer technology,

entertainment, fashion, food and beverage, foodservice, home, software,

sports, technology distribution channel, toys and wireless. For more

information, visit www.npd.com.

 

Read Gearlogger Jen's rant here.

 

This morning, Carol and I met with the UK-based company Logic 3—mostly known for its speaker products. The company has been successful in the U.S. with its new line of portable iPod speakers.

You may remember the i-Station 6: a portable speaker system for the iPod and other MP3 players. Well, it's the number 2 seller in the market right now with over 56,000 units already sold—trailing Bose of course. I find this quite amazing, considering the company never even marketed the i-Station in the U.S.

New for this year are three more i-Station models that come in black and white. First is the i-Station 3. It works with any MP3 player with a dock connector, including iPods. It features a docking station for charging, 6 Watts of sound, and includes a USB cable, AC adapter, and stereo line-in cable. And it's very compact for easy storage in any purse or bag—just fold it up and use the plastic ends on each side to protect the speakers. It's great for the dorm room or small apartment (especially for those who reside in Manhattan). For a small speaker system, the sound quality was pretty good, too.

The i-Station 3 will be available in the U.S. in August for $59.99.

The i-Station 7 is popular with surgeons. (At least that's what the company rep told us!) I just hope doctors performing surgery while listening to Slipknot—that could be dangerous! The i-Station 7 produces 12 Watts of sound with a 2.5-inch Woofer. It comes with an infrared remote control that controls both the i-Station and your iPod, which lets you mute, shuffle, repeat, rewind, fast forward, control volume, and more. You'll find a plastic cover to protect the speakers for easy portability. Includes an AC adapter and stereo line-in cable.

The i-Station 7 is available now from $79-$99 at BestBuy, Target, Amazon, and other retailers.

The i-Station 8 (pictured at the right) is the first stereo speaker system for MP3 players to offer a back lit LCD display. When the company demonstrated the sound quality coming from the i-Station 8, we were amazed! The sound was very loud and crisp. In fact, the i-Station 8 won "Best of Show" at MacExpo, and I can see why! It produces 22 Watts of sound, and each speaker is angled and set at different frequencies, so that no matter where you are in proportion to the speaker, you can hear the sound well. It supports both S-Video and Composite Video, and there's even a headphone jack.

The i-Station 8 just launched a couple of weeks ago in the U.S., and will sell for $179.99. Look for it at major retailers.

What else does Logic 3 have up its sleeves? Besides speakers, you'll also find the Crystal Case for the iPod nano and the Crystal Case for the iPod Video handy for the beach or for boating. It's made of polycarbonate plastic to protect your iPod. However, the company says it's only splash-proof, not water-proof. It also comes with a neckstrap. Both models sell for $19.99.

I got my hands on the first Blu-ray disc: "House Of Flying Daggers," which ships with the Sony VAIO VGN-AR190G. Thanks to PJ Jacobowitz, our reviews coordinator, I also have some images of the actual disc and of how it looks on the laptop. Overall, the quality is pretty darn good. There are instances of stuttering at the beginning of several scenes, especially the drum scene, but it's nothing a software patch can't fix. Intervideo has informed me that they are already working on that patch.

I was able to navigate all the "scenes" menus on the disc, unlike with the Toshiba Qosmio G35-AV650, and all of the other extras on the disc worked fine. Using the HDMI port on the Sony, I also had the chance to hook it up to a Proview 32" RX-326 HD display. The image detail is crisp despite the Proview being a 1080i max display, not 1080p. The Sony laptop is supposed to output signals at 1080p. One thing to note: The video stuttering is even more apparent on a larger display.

Look for the review on PC Magazine. It should be up shortly. You can view the other images here.

Blu-Ray disc on the Proview RX-326

 

 

 

 

 

If you want to see what the future of voice recognition holds for cars, check out voice input on your PC, or listen to the automated voice-response system next time you call an airline or phone company. Voice recognition for cars is improving, but limited processor power and in-car noise make it a still-imperfect technology.

Nuance, one of the major speech-recognition vendors, came by the PC Magazine offices, along with an Infiniti M45. The car is a showcase for Nuance voice-recognition software and is also the overall winner in our Digital Drive top-10 showdown. Nuance convinced me that voice recognition can work pretty well. I saw glimpses of the future in the Infiniti (and a few glitches) and even more so in laptop-based demonstrations.

Nuance is the umbrella company that rolls up speech- and image-processing technologies from Xerox, Philips, L&H Systems, and Scansoft. In addition to automotive and server-based products, Nuance sells Dragon Naturally Speaking (PC speech recognition), OmniPage (OCR), PaperPort (scanning and image handling), and Dictaphone (transcription) tools. Its main competition is IBM, which sells a version of ViaVoice for use in cars.

To read more about voice recognition in cars, click here.

Nuance automaker customers include Acura, BMW, Ford, Infiniti, and Toyota, along with Delphi, Garmin, Magellan, and Pioneer, and others. Nuance voice input had a high-profile design win in the Fiat 159, the first car to employ Microsoft Blue & Me: It's a $250 option that combines a Windows icon pushbutton on the steering wheel, voice recognition, Bluetooth, a USB connector for playing music from iPods and other music players, and rudimentary navigation using a cell phone to download route information.

Disambiguation Strategies

We talked about disambiguation strategies, ways to narrow down multiple possibilities. For instance, what happens when you don't know whether the "24 Morris" destination scrawled on a slip of paper is meant to be Morris Road or Street? If Morris Road has no address higher than 20, then the address must refer to Morris Street, although you may have to try one, back up, then the other.

The navigation database can't tell you which street is more traveled or which has more homes than businesses, nor can most systems plot alternate routes, show you the locations of both, and start you off in the general direction of both while, for instance, you phone your contact to verify the address. If you get it wrong, sometimes you can backtrack and select the other address, but there's no one-press "oops" button (or voice command) that lets you change Street to Road.

Similarly, you may get little help determining whether you should choose Hannover or Hannover Township, or even whether they're actually the same place known by slightly different names. (Discussing these things wasn't the purpose of the Nuance press tour, but if you've endured the quirks of in-car and portable navigation systems, these are questions you're probably dying to ask, also.)

"Somebody says speech recognition doesn't work, because a street isn't in the database. From the system perspective, [Nuance is] giving bad directions," Peter Mahoney, vice-president for global marketing at Nuance, told me. "Or the speech recognition doesn't work, and they'll say it's the nav system."

What about nav systems that lock out the controls when you're moving, either in the interest of safety or of not getting the automakers sued? That's the automaker's choice, not ours, said Mahoney, and most systems with voice input keep it active for navigation control. Never mind that a woman traveling alone may have a different priority for safety when she has to stop on a lonely road to input directions and can't get the voice input to work.

"Basic functionality, especially, is very acceptable," said Mahoney. "From what we hear from direct consumer research we do, we see very acceptable rates with things like command and control; the dialing is quite good, and even if it makes a mistake from time to time, I can [repeat] a number, and it gets it 95 percent of the time.

"From the navigation side, there's a very high percentage of people who accept it. The Infiniti dealer [that supplied the demo car] said people rave about … the voice interface," Mahoney asserted.

Server-Based Recognition

As for what's possible on cars in the future, Mahoney suggested taking a look at what server-based systems offer today. Nuance has built voice-response systems for companies such as Verizon, United Airlines, and Amtrak. Even if these companies don't represent the pinnacle of customer service in all regards, the voice systems are fairly sophisticated (and you can't really blame Nuance if a trains run late or a flight attendant forgets your drink).

The voice systems support barge-in mode, meaning you can speak commands while the computer is talking to you. They support some natural speech patterns; if the system hears your destination city Boston as "Austin" you can say, "No, Boston," and it infers that Boston should replace the soundalike Austin. If you give an Amtrak destination as Penn Station, it doesn't say "that's not a city, dummy." It tells you there is more than one Penn Station, and then you tell it whether you're headed to Penn Station in New York, Newark, or Baltimore.

Repeat that Command

Many people believe that Infiniti and Acura/Honda are the most German of the Japanese automakers, meaning they focus on serious performance and no-nonsense cockpit design. Another link to German culture came to mind in the Nuance demo: schadenfreude, delight in others' woes. Half a dozen times during the demo, the M45 wouldn't recognize spoken commands in a car with very little road noise.

Also, the Infiniti's phone-dialer voice recognition wasn't able to comprehend "dial 800-USA-RAIL," the Amtrak number. It knew the spoken "eight hundred" meant the numeral 800, but it couldn't figure out that "USA-RAIL" was 872-7245. Mahoney had to look at his cell phone's keypad to do the translation, which would have been a distracting activity had we been driving at the time.

Implementations vary by automaker, and not everyone raves. Another Nuance customer is BMW, which fell from number 3 to 27 on the recent J.D. Power Initial Quality Survey because of design and ease-of-use issues, such as issues with its iDrive controller LINK. Power vice-president Joe Ivers told me, "[BMW] design quality shows remarkable obstacles for American buyers… [including ] things like voice-activated hands-free communication that won't recognize commands."

Maloney responded, "Nuance is seeing an increasing demand in speech technology from auto manufacturers to help consumers easily and safely operate advanced features like navigation systems, Bluetooth wireless phone systems, and digital entertainment devices. While the early implementations of speech in cars offered limited functionality, the newest speech systems provide dramatic increases in voice recognition accuracy and the ability to support more words and more conversational approaches."

Beyond Command and Control

Car speech-recognition systems are pretty good at comprehending basic command and control: "Play CD" or "Turn temperature up," for example. The syntax list may vary from car to car, though, and you may be able to issue the command several ways, such as "Air conditioning 68 degrees" and "Temperature 68 degrees."

A more advanced current feature is Nuance's Driver Mode for cell phone users. It works both ways, doing text-to-speech output as well as speech recognition, so a driver can hear spoken alerts such as a low-battery warning and even incoming short text messages, then can reply using SMS dictation capabilities.

Better Music Control

Nuance is now working on natural language input for the car, meaning you won't have to speak from a set list of commands (IBM is working on this, too), as well as making control of connected music players drop-dead simple. "It allows you to do recall of music content by artist name, album name, song name, genre, era, year," Mahoney says. "This is what we're looking at for the car and for the [music-playing] cell phone."

The user will be able to say, "Play artist the Stones" or "Play era the Seventies," and the car or phone will do exactly what you'd expect. Nuance's smart parsers and exceptions libraries let you say, "Play AC DC," even if the artist tag is "AC/DC" and recognizes "Dido" even if you mispronounce it "Diddo."

If you have several playlists on your voice-controlled music player (such as on the Fiat), you could create an on-the-fly joined playlist, saying, "New mix '60s Surf." Say "Play Bruce," and the disambiguation tool will ask if you mean Springsteen or Hornsby. Also, Mahoney says, the system will boost accuracy for recently played music. So if you've listened to Springsteen more than Hornsby lately, a feature called dynamic semantic modeling will know that and won't need to ask.

Similarly on a telephone voice-response system, said Mahoney, "If you're asking for Austin versus Boston as a [travel] city, then the next time there's a question between Austin and Boston, which sound close, it will shuffle closer to Boston if that's what you want [if that's what you specified more in the past]. In a transactional environment like an airline, that's very important."

Room to Improve

Nuance came to show off how cool its technologies have become. I was impressed by the upcoming music-handling capabilities and the rapidly improving telephone voice-response systems. The future for cars looks bright. And it did my heart good to see that even the experts don't get the responses they want when talking to the car.

Summer Gadgets Countdown #2: Portable/Rechargeable Ear Dryer

Protecting your skin isn't the only thing you have to watch out for in the summer. When you're swimming in the pool or ocean, bacteria and fungi can actually grow in your ear canal. What you need is something to grab the trapped moisture inside your ear to keep it dry.

Design: Made by Ear Surgeon Hamilton P. Collins II, MD, the Portable/Rechargeable Ear Dryer is a device that regulates the flow of air into your ear, keeping it dry from moisture-causing bacteries.

Features: Portable. Five interchangeable, color-coded earpieces: blue, green, purple, pink and yellow so that your friends and family can have their own for hygiene. You can use the device over 50 times before it needs to be recharged. Comes with a rechargeable lithium ion battery that charges within five hours.
   

How It Works: This device is actually patented with a customized computer chip which "directs the heater and fan to blow a regulated flow of warm air into the ear canal. Each earpiece is specially designed to exhaust the airflow from the ear canal along with the evaporating moisture. In most cases all the moisture trapped in you ear will evaporate in about a minute" [From the DryEar site]. Let the DryEar run for about 80 seconds while in your ear.
 

Price: The Portable/Rechargeable Ear Dryer sells for $99.95 at Hammacher Schlemmer.

Lovin' Factor (1-10): 6