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Get Me To The Church On Time |
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Written by Gary M Kaye
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Wednesday, 12 October 2011 19:50 |
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Magellan’s RoadMate 5175T-LM Tells Time
Okay, so yes, just about every automotive GPS out there will give you an estimated time of arrival (ETA). But the Magellan RoadMate Traveler 5175T-LM just seems to do it a lot better. It updates throughout the trip based on what the changing traffic conditions on your route. The 5175 is slimmer than many of the previous Magellan versions. It has a very readable five inch diagonal screen. The unit comes with lifetime live traffic and automatic lifetime map upgrades. And because it has Wi-Fi capability, you don’t need to tether it to your computer for software or map upgrades. One of the things I like about it is a drop down display of road signs when you’re coming up on a complicated highway intersection. It also gives you plenty of advance warning (up to two miles) for upcoming turns. That’s double what some other units offer. It includes all the features you’ve come to expect from these units, including a comprehensive points of interest directory.
There are a couple of things I wasn’t thrilled about. For some reason, the volume on the unit I tried out just wouldn’t hold steady. When I set it relatively loud, after about ten or fifteen minutes, it went back to the default volume setting. Not sure if that’s a problem with my particular unit. My one other complaint is the “warning” announcement. You have to set it at least ten or even twenty miles above the speed limit so as not to be an annoyance. But admittedly those are both relatively small issues that should be resolvable. Overall this is a nice little unit that really gets the job done well. We’ve seen pricing from about $210 to $250.
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Last Updated on Wednesday, 12 October 2011 19:49 |
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Recording Maintenance on your Car |
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Written by Ryan Lange
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Friday, 18 March 2011 13:18 |
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 If you’re a car owner you’ve asked yourself “When is my next oil change” The good news is there is now an an Android Application that you can use to track all things related to your car. This nifty gem of an application called aCar lets you record the amount that you fill in your tank, to when you bought the car. It will calculate your total cost to run the car on any information that you feed into it. It is a maintenance persons dream as it has preset notifications on specific maintenance services that your car needs. If you don’t like the maintenance schedule you can even modify the schedule to fit the custom needs of your car.
If you have multiple vehicles you can enter in stats for both of the vehicles individually. I did find this to be a little difficult if you live in a 2 or more vehicle household and tend to miss a few of those trips to the pump. This will throw off the stats of your car a little. The good news is that you can put in “missed” entries and it will estimate what it should have been based on your past performance.
The charting piece of this application is where it really shines. If you want to know how your car has been performing over the last month, or year, it’s at the touch of your fingertips.
aCar is a free application on the android market. However paying for the application lets you export all the data so that you can back it up. I would highly recommend doing this if your going to be using the software actively. But I love applications that don’t lock features on you so you can see the full scope of the application before buying it. So I would definitely download the application and if you use it for 2 weeks, I would then make the purchase.
To unlock aCar it will cost you a 5 USD from here to get the proper code to unlock the export feature of the application. Happy driving! |
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Last Updated on Friday, 18 March 2011 13:19 |
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Staying Awake at the Wheel |
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Written by Gary M Kaye
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Friday, 11 March 2011 15:02 |
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Anti Sleep Pilot Fights Drowsy Driving by Gary M Kaye  According to the AAA Foundation for Traffic Safety, roughly one out of every six fatal car crashes is the result of drowsy driving. Numerous other studies conclude that drowsy driving is far more pervasive, and far more costly, than previously thought. Yet unlike blood alcohol tests there’s no easy way to measure drowsy driving, and very few means to fight it. Two products from a Danish company, ASP technology, are out to change that. The Anti Sleep Pilot is a $20 iPhone App, and it’s available now. The Anti Sleep Pilot device is expected to be available this summer for a price of under $200. Is the gadget really worth ten times the price of the app? You be the judge.
With either the app or the device, you start off by answering a series of questions about your age, driving habits, medical history, and your current state of alertness or drowsiness. That’s boiled down to a drowsiness risk index that you feed into either the app or the gadget. Then you start your trip to train the application. The gadget will periodically alarm and flash lights to test your response time and if necessary caution you to take a break. If you’re feeling like you need to nod off, this could help you snap back. It’s pretty easy to setup and very easy to use. An app or a gadget to distract you by helping to keep you alert may also be a good idea. But if you’re already driving along with windows wide open an the music blaring, will the Anti Sleep Pilot be enough to stop you from becoming a statistic? And finally, are you going to take the time to answer the ASP’s alertness questions before you turn on the ignition? Something to sleep on. Anti Sleep Pilot iPhone App 
Anti Sleep Pilot App  Anti Sleep Pilot device on dashboard |
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Last Updated on Thursday, 17 March 2011 08:10 |
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Written by Ryan Lange
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Sunday, 13 December 2009 15:21 |
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Ever wonder how your car was feeling? Or had your check engine light go on while you’re driving and you were not quite sure why it was happening? Davis Instruments makes a product call the CarChipPro that can read your cars internal computer and see exactly what is going on with your car, and has some cool features that you will not find with normal diagnostic tools.
The CarChipPro works by plugging into your cars ODBC slot. You then just turn your car on and drive. It will automatically read what the cars computer information. You can then later download the information to your personal computer using the included software, and know what is going on with your car. This however is just the tip of the iceberg for this product.
When you are driving, this device will monitor everything about the car including throttle position, car speed, g-force when breaking and accelerating and many other various items. You can set thresholds within the software to even beep at you when you’re driving if you reach a custom threshold. It holds about five days worth of data and every time you take a trip it can tell you how many miles you drove, how many times you were breaking and it reads from the computer at an interval that you specify, down to 1 second.
You can use this device to check up on how you drive, or how someone else drives in your family. It’s setup so that you can have multiple users for the CarChipPro, and multiple cars. This makes it so that you can check up on those new drivers that you may have in your family to "see" how they are driving. The CarChipPro runs for about 119.00, and offers very valuable information about your vehicles and drivers.
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Last Updated on Wednesday, 16 December 2009 21:42 |
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