Haiku Review: Pioneer AVIC-S1

GPS System

portable, bright screen, and more

with weak POIs

The full length, free-verse version of the Pioneer AVIC-S1 review can be found at PCMag.com.

Sprint users will be the first in the U.S. to be able watch pay-per-view, full-length studio films on their cellphone. Sure, it's exciting, but cellphone screens are so teeny! I can't even stand to watch anything on a video iPod. I suppose it could come in handy when traveling or if someone keeps you waiting for a really long time.

Available on select Sprint multimedia sets, Sprint Movies can be viewed anywhere as long as you are connected to Sprint's Power Vision network or nationwide Vision network. The Sprint site has not yet been updated to reflect which of their phones will be compatible.

Disney, Sony, Universal and Lionsgate will offer their films for $3.99 to $5.99 each. Users will be able to watch films over a 24-hour or one-week period (depending on the movie) and can pause and replay at will.

Viewers can now select from 45 titles (and the list is growing) including Scarface, The Breakfast Club, and Larry the Cable Guy: Health Inspector. Racier movies are edited to meet TV-14 standards. (boo!)

Last year, Sprint launched its mSpot Movies service, which allowed subscribers to watch full-length movies on their cellhone for a monthly fee. The company noted a lot of growth in this service and decided on-demand would be in demand.

A few services are offering studio films on mobile devices abroad, but I don't know how popular they are. What do you guys think? Will this be a hit or a miss?

For a full list of the current library of films and more information about the Sprint Movies, read Sprint's full press release. 

Have you ever wanted to shop for a car without leaving your couch? DriverTV, a customized cable channel, turns that wish into reality with its virtual showroom. There you can compare vehicles and obtain you all the information you'll need to buy a car; you can also take a 3-minute virtual "test drive."

DriverTV takes a consumer-oriented approach to showcasing new cars. Instead of glamour shots, vehicles are filmed in a no-frills sur-rounding. You'll see a 360-degree shot of the interior and shots of the exterior on a desert terrain and also on a rotating stage. The neutral environment allows a consistent basis for consumers to compare numerous vehicles objectively.

The test drive feature is a 3-minute video of new cars and light trucks driving identical courses. It's filmed from a driver's point of view; all the vehicles make the same turns and stops and are driven at similar speeds, to give viewers an idea of the driving experience.

Since its launch last November, DriverTV has grown from 40,000 to 800,000 viewers as of this past August. The service is available in 46 of the top 50 cable markets. Cable customers have to pay an extra charge to have on-demand service, which includes DriverTV, but there is no additional fee to watch it. And by the end of 2006, DriverTV will feature 75 percent of all available U.S. models.

You can already fill your car's tank with ethanol, but you may soon be able to fill your shot glass as well. Two Iowa State University profes-sors are searching for a cheap and easy way to turn ethanol fuel into food-grade alcohol to be used in beverages, pharmaceuticals, and per-sonal care products.

The obvious question is, why?

Professors Hans van Leeuwen and Jacek Koziel anticipate that the automotive industry could embrace fuels other than ethanol, but "the demand for liquor and mouthwashes and cough syrups will always be there," said Leeuwen, a civil, construction and environmental engineer-ing professor. As fuel-ethanol production climbs, companies can use surplus production to turn food-grade alcohol into big business.

Their research is focused on perfecting technologies that purify fuel ethanol, a grain alcohol most often made from corn and used as a gasoline additive. Fuel ethanol is yeast-fermented, then distilled like beverage alcohol, but has many more impurities to remove. The key is to keep the production price down, so that food-grade ethanol produc-tion will pay for itself in less than a year. For liquor lovers, van Leeu-wen has said food-grade ethanol "tastes just like vodka."

Via AutoBlog Green.

To learn more about fuel alternatives, click here.

Someone at T-Mobile really needs to get on the horn with Samsung's advertising people. First came the TV ad for the slim T629 slider, which T-Mobile hasn't announced yet. Then today, I got an email about "September at the Samsung Experience," Samsung's showroom here in New York City. Down at the bottom of the email, it says I can "purchase a T509 or T719 mobile phone and receive your choice of mobile phone cases designed by Derek Lam, compliments of Samsung and T-Mobile."

Oh, really? Someone should tell them that T-Mobile hasn't launched the T719 yet. When they do, it'll be a big deal - a flip phone with Blackberry's patented SureType keyboard and Blackberry Connect e-mail functionality. I've been waiting for that phone for months. I assume that if Samsung is e-mailing about it to all and sundry, it's coming pretty soon.

Does RAZR + iTunes = crazy delicious? It's definitely a no-brainer to combine the best-selling phone form factor with the nation's dominant online music store, so really, the question is what took Cingular so long to release the new RAZR V3i. Available online only (at the moment) for $299.99 minus a $50 rebate, the V3i pumps up Cingular's existing RAZR with a 1.2 megapixel camera (the older RAZR has a VGA camera), a MicroSD card slot, and of course, that tasty, tasty iTunes goodness. The V3i is still crawling along the Internet at glacial GPRS speeds, though, so don't think you'll be downloading songs over the air or anything like that.

When I review the phone, I'll check to see if the RAZR V3i has the famous 100-song limit that bedeviled the Motorola ROKR E1. For now, check out Cingular's product page for the new phone.

I have a Kodak EasyShare Printer Dock at home, but I rarely ever use it other than to charge my Kodak camera. I know I know, seems like money well wasted, right? I really should use it more, but going to Walgreens to print my photos is much faster (and cheaper).

Perhaps, if I ever decide to get a new camera, I should invest in Epson. The company's three new photo printers, announced today, sound like a great buy.

The Epson PictureMate Snap ($200) measures 5.7 by 8.5 by 6 inches (HWD) and includes a 2.5-inch LCD, built-in editing features (such as cropping and the ability to print from USB keys, zip drives, and external CD and DVD drives), and supports external Wi-Fi adaptors.

The PictureMate Flash ($299, pictured here) is similiar to the PictureMate Snap, but dons a combination CD-RW burner and DVD reader! Plus, you'll find that the one-touch control for saving photos to a CD is quite handy.

The PictureMate Pal ($150) also measures 5.7 by 8.5 by 6 inches (HWD) and features a 2-inch LCD. However, it's the slowest of the bunch, rated at 60 seconds for a 4-by-6 photo.

All three can print 27-cent 4- by 6-inch photos from a PictBridge-enabled camera, most memory card formats, computers, or an optional $40 Bluetooth adaptor.

Both the PictureMate Snap and Pal are available now (but currently sold out at the Epson store), while the PictureMate Flash will ship at the end of September at Best Buy.

[via PCMag.com]

Remember the old Borscht Belt joke about the octogenarian? Wrongly accused of sexual misconduct, he pleaded guilty anyway, because he was flattered. Similarly, when I was accused of dinging the back bumper of an Acura by spinning out at speed, the accusation was more flattering than the reality was. The truth was that I backed into a rock at about 2 mph. On a car with a backup camera.

Of all the technology tools you can add to your car, the most important are pre-tensioning seatbelts, airbags, antilock brakes, and stability control. They'll keep you alive in the kind of accident that happens maybe once in five lifetimes. But the most useful technology, day to day, is backup assist, and the best cars give you both video and audio. That combination would have saved me when I scraped the rear bumper trim panel of the prototype 2007 Acura TL, of which there were only a couple dozen in existence at the time.

The TL had the optional navigation system, which includes a backup camera. Few cars have better navigation systems, but the screen is in middle of the center console stack and has no hood or shading. So it's susceptible to glare, and it's even dimmer when you're wearing sunglasses.

Under those conditions, a rock the size of a beer keg at the edge of the parking area wasn't that noticeable. Backup sonar would have picked it up. But most users prefer a backup camera, which, if you already have an LCD, may be cheaper (about a $100 to $200 upcharge) than four ultrasonic sensors embedded in the back bumper. And backup cameras help you back out of unfamiliar driveways.

For about $500, you can have both a backup camera and parking sonar, and over the life of your car, you'll probably avoid at least one parking-lot mishap that will cost a couple thousand dollars to repair, and cost you $500 personally in deductibles. (High insurance deductibles are the way to go, statistically.)

A handful of high-end cars, such as the Mercedes-Benz S-Class and Acura RL, have both. Coincidentally these were two of our PC Magazine Digital Drive Awards winners for excellence in technology.

It gets better: A few automakers, such as BMW, use the standard LCD on most models to display an overhead shape of the car with green, yellow, and red waves pulsing out from the four corners (some cars have front sonar, too) that show distance to an object. Now that the next-generation X5 will have a backup camera available, there will be three ways to protect people like me from haphazard backing: video, sonar, and warning bands of color overlaid on objects you're approaching. The only thing missing is backup radar. Sonar is good for objects a few feet away, but it wouldn't pick up two cars angling toward each other at 10 mph or 15 mph in a parking lot (until it was too late to respond).

To read more about BMW's new iDrive controller, including the sonar backup technology, click here.

If automakers want to do it right, they'd embed an LCD in every car that costs over $25,000, not just optionally on nav-equipped vehicles. Then adding a backup camera would be cheap ($200 through the dealer), and rear parking sonar could be a $300 option. While they're at it, automakers need to put deep sun-blocking shades on their LCDs or recess them into the dash, jettison high-gloss trim that reflects glare on the screen or into your face, and offer an optional ultra-high-brightness LCD for those willing to pay an extra $100. Count me in.

Here at the office, I'm constantly hearing people sneeze or cough due to allergies. In fact, sometimes it becomes a daily contest to see how many times a person can sneeze in one sitting.

So, I've been on a continuous mission to find something to help my fellow allergy allies, especially our Web Producer Rachel Florman whom I say "Bless you" to every day.

Then this morning, I had a relevation. I found the Swiss Aromatherapy Jewel Pens.

Each pen contains a replaceable roll-on jewelSTIK that is filled with 100% pure essential oils that are made in Switzerland.

The available aromas are:

• Ginger/Red: energize, revive, awaken and uplift.
• Eucalyptus/Blue: boost the immune system and help fight off allergies.
• Mint/Green: reduce tension and soothe headaches.
• Lavender/Purple: relax your mind and soothe the body.
• Orange Blossom/White: relieve stress and reduce tension.
• Grapefruit/Yellow: reduce motion sickness and help suppress appetite.
• Rose/Pink: lift your spirits and create a feeling of love.

Each pen also comes with a napa leather pouch to protect your pen.

Get the Aromatherapy Jewel Pens for $50 each from SatinBox.com.

[via TechieDiva]