Ford / Bug Labs partnership makes SYNC look like old news

It's a big day for the forward-thinking folks at Ford. Over in Frankfurt, the American auto giant showcased electric bike and cloud car concepts, and several timezones away at TechCrunch Disrupt in San Francisco, the company talked up its new partnership with Bug Labs. The result is OpenXC, a platform that promises to deliver increased integration for third-party software and hardware, like new audio interfaces, safety products and environmental sensors, plugged into Bugs' hardware and software modules. According to Ford, OpenXC makes developing for Ford vehicles far simpler than before, while lowering the cost and installation difficulty for car owners interested in adding on to their vehicles.

Mercedes-Benz's hydrogen-powered F125! concept slips out ahead of Frankfurt

Mercedes-Benz is certainly no stranger to hydrogen-powered fuel cell vehicles, and it looks like the automaker is now about to show off its latest concept at the Frankfurt Motor Show. That's dubbed the F125! (apparently pronounced F one twenty FIVE), and it promises a top speed of 137 miles per hour, 0 to 62 in 4.9 seconds, and 100 kilometers on 0.79 kilograms of hydrogen (or 621 miles on a full tank). Apparently, the concept is also intended to demonstrate the design direction for 2025 CL-Class, although there's no indication as of yet that Mercedes-Benz plans to put a hydrogen-powered CL-Class into production.

NEC LaVie Touch Windows 7 tablet comes packed with DVD-sporting dock

If this nifty little bugger looks familiar, that's because it should. NEC's LaVie Touch sports the same design and specs as the VersaPro model we spotted back in May. The difference here is, it comes packed with a bevy of accessories, including a keyboard, mouse and a dock that happens to hold a DVD drive. Underneath the 10.1-inch, 1280 x 800, IPS touchscreen is a 1.5GHz Oak Trail CPU, 2GB of RAM and a 64GB SSD. Sure the pair of full USB ports, HDMI jack, WiFi, Bluetooth and SD reader are welcome, but it's that optical drive packing stand that really makes this a unique package. The NEC LaVie Touch should be landing in Japan next month for around $1,200 with the accessories. Sadly, here's no word of whether or not it'll ever find its way stateside.

Tokyoflash reveals Kisai Night Vision wristwatch, makes telling time fun again

Tokyoflash is on the loose once more, and this time it's introducing a concept that has been in the works for months on end. The Kisai Night Vision -- which was made official moments ago, first appeared on the company's blog as a mockup in August of 2010 -- and as they say, "what a difference a year makes." As of today, the LED wristwatch is up for grabs, constructed with black stainless steel, sub-surface LEDs, a hexagonal form factor and support for USB recharging. Despite your initial assumptions, it's actually capable of displaying both time and date, and there's even a built-in alarm with a "light-up animation." Fancy! It's available in black with blue, green or red LEDs, and if you order soon, you'll be able to snag one for $129 / £79 / €89; procrastinators will face a sticker of $149 / £91 / €103.

Marshall Electronics outs glasses-free Orchid 3D monitor for pro filmmakers

If you're trying to turn your next film into a three dimensional cinematic masterpiece, having a quality camera to record things is a necessity. But, prudence demands that would-be James Camerons film with a first-rate monitor to view all that video as well. Good thing Marshall Electronics has made the Orchid OR-70-3D monitor to meet all your moviemaking needs. It's got a 7.2-inch, 1600 x 600 glasses-free 3D display that works using parallax barrier and lenticular hybrid technology -- all in a package that weighs just under three pounds. In order to let you fine tune things in all three dimensions, there's real-time waveform and color vectorscope monitoring along with a suite of other 3D tuning tools. The cost for such prodigious production value? $7,899, which sounds like a lot

Leeds researchers tout gel-based batteries as better, safer and cheaper

They're some fairly bold claims, but a team of researchers at the University of Leeds say they've managed to develop a new type of polymer gel that could lead to batteries that are safer, cheaper to manufacture and more flexible than traditional lithium-ion batteries. That last detail could have some particularly interesting consequences, as the researchers say it allows for batteries that can "shaped and bent to fit the geometries of virtually any device." What's more, all of that apparently comes with no compromise in performance, and the team has already licensed the technology to Polystor Energy Corporation, which is now conducting trials to commercialize the battery cells. The only catch is that there's not so much as a hint as to when such batteries might actually be available

Tech News: Microsoft prepares Windows 8 for battle against th...

Tech News: Microsoft prepares Windows 8 for battle against th...: Microsoft is set to unveil the next generation of Windows today. The new operating system, currently known asWindows 8, is the tech giant'...

Wacom Cintiq 24HD hands-on

We've felt a strange attraction this 24-inch slab of professional graphics wonderment ever since we caught it trying to sneak its substantial bulk through the FCC. How do we feel about it now that it's all official, priced up at a daunting $2500 and we've had some time with it in the flesh?

Volvo unveils Concept You luxury sedan, dripping with touchscreens

The Frankfurt Motor Show is underway in Germany, where Volvo has just taken the wraps off the Concept You -- a new luxury sedan that features some pretty nifty, touch-based controls. Directly behind the car's steering wheel lies a monitor that digitally displays your basic driving information, including speed and a map of your trajectory. The wheel also features some sensor enhanced panels, which you can use to adjust your radio or cruise control settings. A touch interface on the center console, meanwhile, uses an infrared sensor to pick up on any hand or eye movements before activating to bring up the system's infotainment control mode, which boasts an unreleased FreshAir subwoofer from Alpine. From here, you can surf the web, swipe through radio stations, check for safety alerts or control your air conditioning, using only your fingers or customized gestures. Plus, there's an extra touchscreen placed between the two rear seats, meaning your kids won't be left out of the action, either. Cruise past the break for an exclusive video of the Concept You's so-called smart pad technology

Blackwater founder Erik Prince enters video game business

 More and more, today's video game business is driven by huge military shooters like Activision's "Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3" and Electronic Arts' "Battlefield 3."

Now, Erik Prince, the founder of a controversial, real-world military group, is stepping into the virtual war zone with a new first-person shooter, "Blackwater."

Designed exclusively for Microsoft's Kinect for Xbox 360, "Blackwater" was developed by Zombie Studios and overseen by Prince, a former Navy SEAL.

The shooter is set in a fictional North African town overrun by warlords and opposing militia forces. Players enter the fray as team members of Blackwater, the mercenaries-for-hire company that Prince founded in 1997.

Featuring licensed real-world weapons, the game can be played with a traditional controller. But it has been crafted to take advantage of Kinect's motion controls. Gamers will be able to aim, crouch, and interact with the on-screen action using only body gestures and moves to take out enemies through a series of action-packed missions.

The game has already courted controversy, since Blackwater employees were linked to the deaths of numerous noncombatants and civilians in the Middle East while employed by the U.S. government.

Critics have complained about the game because Blackwater employees take on missions for money, while U.S. soldiers, the focal point of games like "Modern Warfare 3" and "Battlefield 3," fight for their country.

Following inquiries by Congress into Blackwater actions in Iraq and Afghanistan, including a shootout that led to the deaths of 17 Iraqis, Prince changed the company's name to Xe and, in 2009, resigned as CEO. He sold the company last year.

Although the game was created with the aid of former Blackwater employees, the gameplay does not put players in situations where civilians or noncombatants are targets.

The same cannot be said about "Modern Warfare 2," which earned more than $1 billion for Activision a couple of years ago. That fictional game featured an intense airport sequence in which players were forced to target innocent civilians as an undercover terrorist or risk having their cover blown and being executed.

Prince talked to CNN in an exclusive interview about the first shooter designed for Kinect, why he decided to enter the games business and what gadget he can't live without.

Cars don't waste fuel. Drivers waste fuel

 Researchers at the University of California, Riverside's Center for Environmental Research and Technology (CERT) are developing a new way of boosting fuel efficiency by as much as 30% without changing a car's powertrain at all.

Their secret? Finding ways to change our behavior so we're more attuned to maximizing their mileage while behind the wheel.

Sure, it may sound easier than reducing vehicle weight or adding batteries or developing some new engine technology, but it's a daunting task. It's relatively easy for engineers to tinker with a car, but even Sammy Hagar knows that people tend to resist efforts to change their behavior.

With a $1.2 million grant from the Department of Energy, the research team is in the very first stage of developing their study.

Researcher Kanok Boriboonsomsin said he's studying ways cars with network connectivity might offer a fuel-saving route on a GPS system, and how infotainment systems can provide real-time feedback on fuel economy without distracting or annoying drivers.

"When you get in the car, you have the vehicle recommend the route you could take based on traffic conditions on the route, and on the way if there's anything wrong with your driving it may provide some feedback to you to adjust your driving behavior," Boriboonsomsin said.

That's key, because, as any hypermiler will tell you, the best way to increase fuel efficiency is to adjust the nut holding the steering wheel. Snarky, yes, but CERT's research could help automakers help us improve our fuel economy without spending a dime on powertrain engineering.

But first, the researchers at CERT have to find the best way to change driver behavior. That means creating a system that immediately emphasizes the benefits of efficient driving without creating a needless distraction or aggravation.

The nut holding the wheel

The team at CERT is hardly the first to try changing drivers' habits to improve fuel economy.

They were, however, the first to prove that drivers presented with real-time feedback about their fuel economy turned into instant hypermilers -- reducing their fuel consumption by 6% on average by coasting to stoplights, laying off the gas while accelerating and upshifting as soon as possible.

It's getting easier for drivers to know how their driving affects their gas mileage. Many modern internal combustion -- and every EV and hybrid we've ever driven -- features a dashboard display showing real-time and average fuel economy.

Ford's is among the best, encouraging drivers to embrace their inner hypermiler through an LCD display that turns lush and verdant when you're cruising nicely at 55 but withers and dies during an impromptu stoplight drag race.

We've experienced this first-hand using the engaging and intuitive SmartGauge (shown above) in the Ford Fusion Hybrid and Lincoln MKZ Hybrid, and the very impressive energy management systems in the Nissan Leaf and Chevrolet Volt. In every case, the real-time info made us much more vigilant about our behavior and, yes, improved our fuel economy.

Fiat has gone so far as to give drivers extremely detailed report cards of how to improve their fuel economy. All Fiat 500s have Eco:Drive, a system that saves vehicle diagnostic data on a USB drive. Plug it into a computer, and the Eco:Drive software will generate a progress report that analyzes CO2 emissions and fuel consumption in terms of driving style. It'll also compare you to all Fiat owners who use the program -- about 66,000 people.

"Even though our cars are fuel efficient, we don't want that to stop at the factory," said Fiat brand manager Andrew Waterhouse. "We want people to continue to be mindful of how they're driving and how to improve their driving."

No time like the present

Cliff Nass, a professor of psychology at Stanford University and author of "The Man Who Lied To His Laptop," said there's one problem with telling drivers how to improve their fuel economy after they're out of the car: People learn best when they're being coached in the moment. It's called just-in-time learning, and it's crucial to developing new skills.

"When you're not driving, you're not thinking about driving," he said. "When you get this feedback and analysis, you're not in the car. That's one of the problems with these systems: When you can't act on the problem right away, it's not as effective."

The only thing harder than teaching old drivers new tricks when they're not driving is teaching old drivers new tricks while they are driving.

"When your car is moving, especially at reasonably high speeds or in cities where there's lots of stop and go, that's the wrong time to try to transmit messages to people. Their brains are elsewhere," Nass said.

It's a problem that Boriboonsomsin knows well.

"If a vehicle provides too much feedback, a driver could be overwhelmed," he said, suggesting that audio feedback may be less distracting than visual prompts. Additionally, feedback must be nuanced and positive so it doesn't become a source of irritation.

"The way we provide the feedback could turn off the driver if it's too aggressive or commanding," he said.

Don't tread on my lead foot

Cars that actively try to change a driver's behavior inherently run the risk of making a fast enemy of the driver.

Take, for example, Nissan's Eco-Pedal, a system that makes it increasingly difficult to press the accelerator pedal in a way that would waste fuel. We once drove an M56 equipped with the feature, and immediately became exasperated with its nagging before turning it off 30 seconds later.

The Eco-Pedal certainly is effective at providing just-in-time learning, Nass said, but it's useless if it's always off.

"Not shockingly, people don't like to be nagged," he said. "The reward for not pressing the gas is it doesn't nag you. Well, the sensation of a negative is not a positive. So people get angry and resentful and turn it off."

Cars with "eco" modes are just as ineffective, said Nass, because they usually require drivers to flip a switch to engage them. They don't provide any immediate benefit to the driver -- people don't think things through and realize saving gas saves them money -- but they do give a noticeable drawback in the form of decreased throttle response.

That's why Fiat made its most fuel-efficient throttle mapping (and fastest upshifts in the automatic gearbox) the default mode. Drivers must "opt-in" to a more responsive, and less fuel-efficient, sport mode.

Even passive feedback systems, like fuel economy displays, may not be terribly effective if they force drivers to think in the abstract. Nass said the public good of "helping the environment," as represented by an LCD pictogram of a growing vine, isn't nearly so strong a motivator as saving money. For that reason, it might be far more effective if the LCD display showed dollar bills flying away as the driver laid on the gas.

"It's an issue of people doing better understanding consequences for themselves," he said.

Boriboonsomsin said the financial reward of fuel-friendly driving is a powerful motivator, as we so often see when fuel prices spike and sales of small cars increase.

"If gas is cheap, there's not much incentive for them to change their behavior," Boriboonsomsin said. But as fuel prices rise, "they may be more willing to change their driving behavior."

Accentuate the positive

Boriboonsomsin said a large aspect of driver feedback research will focus on connecting cars to intelligent transportation networks that determine the best routes for fuel economy.

Such a system could help drivers avoid congested road -- and therefore spare them from idling in gridlock -- or direct them toward routes free of stop-and-go traffic. He calls this "completing the loop," using real-time driving data to create useful strategies that keep drivers from wasting fuel.

Nass said that kind of feedback, the kind that encourages positive behavior such as, "make a right to avoid unnecessary idling at a stoplight," is sorely missing in current dashboard displays and meddling gas pedals.

"The problem is, the negatives in these systems are much bigger than the positives, and that's a mistake," he said.

Another powerful motivator? Getting fired for lead-footing or getting a bonus for saving fuel. That's why fleets are especially interested in changing driver behavior to reduce fuel bills.

"In a fleet system, you have someone else who can penalize you or reward you," said Nass.

He said a fleet driver's corollary to the abstract goal of "saving the environment" may be helping the company's share price, which has little effect on the individual driver. However, getting a bonus for having the lowest overall fuel consumption directly impacts the individual.

"The key in fleet is there are direct consequences," he said.

Driver's ed

Cars already can tell us how to save fuel, but they can't effectively convince us to change the way we drive with a happy tree, a report card or a dashboard display.

They may, however, help us save fuel with a smartphone app that can detect stoplights. The SignalGuru project, from researchers at MIT and Princeton, uses a smartphone camera and traffic signal data to tell drivers whether they should start slowing down to avoid waiting at an upcoming traffic light.

In trials on the streets of Cambridge and Singapore, drivers using SignalGuru have been able to cut fuel consumption by 20%.

Thanks to researchers like those at MIT, Princeton and CERT, the cars we drive in the not-so-distant future may become better teachers, subtly guiding us to fuel-efficient driving patterns.

Connected with an intelligent transit network, they'll help us save money, showing us more fuel-efficient ways to get to work, gently reminding us to lay off the gas pedal and allowing us to make decisions on engine programming based on our own historical driving patterns.

And instead of people redesigning cars, cars of the future will change the people who drive them.

Microsoft prepares Windows 8 for battle against the iPad

 Microsoft is set to unveil the next generation of Windows today. The new operating system, currently known asWindows 8, is the tech giant's attempt to regain ground that it has lost to Apple, which surpassed Microsoft last year as the world's most valuable company.

It isn't the MacBook or Mac OS X Lion that has Microsoft executives worried, though. It's the sheer dominance of the iPad.

The iPad hasn't skipped a beat since its debut last year. Thanks to Apple's ingenuity, a shockingly low starting price and a strong marketing campaign, the device has sold more than 25 million units in less than a year and a half. More importantly, it has defined a whole new category of consumer devices. And it dominates that category with an iron fist.

iPad competitors have come and gone, but none have been able to make a dent in the iPad's rapid growth. HP has given up on the TouchPad, the RIM Playbook has underperformed and countless Android tablets have fallen by the wayside. Nothing has emerged as the alternative to the iPad.

Windows 8: One OS to rule them all

This presents a dangerous problem and an opportunity for Microsoft. The tech giant cannot let Apple monopolize the tablet market like Microsoft did with the desktop OS. That would seal its fate as a technology power destined to diminish into a shell of its former self.

There is a need for a legitimate alternative to the iPad, though, and the company that gets it right will emerge in a strong position to take a big piece of the fast-growing tablet market. Success in tablets would boost Microsoft's profits, ease investor concerns about the shrinking PC market and set it up for future growth.

That's where Windows 8 comes in. The next generation OS, which will be unveiled at the Microsoft Build conference on Tuesday, is not only designed for PCs, but it is also made to work on tablets as well. We got a taste of its touchscreen capabilities at the D9 conference earlier this year, but we expect Microsoft to unveil the first Windows 8 tablet during Tuesday's keynote. Our sources tell us that the device will be manufactured by Samsung but has been designed meticulously by Microsoft in an attempt to create the iPad alternative.

Will Microsoft's gamble work? Can the company create an OS that works seamlessly on both tablets and PCs? And most of all, will it be useful enough, different enough and cheap enough to give the iPad a run for its money?

We'll be closer to knowing the answers to those questions Tuesday morning. The tablet wars are about to begin in earnest.