Sometimes I get interesting emails that are worth passing on, and this one from 3UK is one of those.  Promoting their new 3UK In Car WiFi, they have undertaken some research, and come up with the following research:

• 71 per cent of British people believe portable Wi-Fi access in a car, where up to five passengers can connect to Wi-Fi devices, would be useful for work and entertainment while travelling

• Car travel with children is so painful that 54 per cent of British travellers would rather stay home and avoid discovering the UK by road

• What’s worse is that almost 10 percent would rather have root canal therapy than endure car travel with the kids

• The M25 is considered the most tedious motor journey by 40 percent of British people, followed by the M1 (22 per cent) and the M6 (20 per cent)

• 8 out of 10 parents have battled with kids when travelling by car because they get bored or restless if left without entertainment

• 60 per cent would be more likely or would consider travelling in a taxi with Wi-Fi

• One in three British people (34 per cent) would use In-car Wi-Fi for social media purposes and emailing friends, followed by one in five (21 per cent) for work purposes and one in six (18 per cent) to stream online videos (eg BBC iPlayer and YouTube)

Some interesting figures in there, however, the key point is that the 3UK In Car WiFi (using a version of their MiFi device), which was launched at The Gadget Show Live earlier this year (see here), is now available for sale for £59.99, which includes the MiFi device, mains charger, car charger, windscreen holder, and 1GB of data which lasts 30 days.  Today you’ll have to head to a 3UK Store, but as from next week they should be available on line in the 3Store too.

This is a very good device, especially for the price, and given this is a PAYG deal, you aren’t forced to keep it running all the time if you literally only want to use it in the car for long family journeys, although I suspect once you / your passengers / the kids start using it, you’ll soon be buying TopUp vouchers every month or two, and given 3UK charge PAYG users the same rate as contract users for Internet access, you aren’t being penalised for going for the PAYG rate.

3UK have announced an updated bundle for their 3UK MiFi, called the In Car Wi-Fi.  As well as the device itself, and 1GB of data allowance (valid for 30 days), they have included a mains charger (as before), but now a car charger and also a windscreen suction mount, and all for £59.99.  In comparison, normally you would pay £69.99 for just the device, although with 3GB worth of data valid for 3 months.

Suddenly providing Internet access for Sony PSP / Nintendo DS / iPod Touch devices whilst travelling has just got a lot easier, and with the ability to share the internet with multiple devices, this does seem a nice offer; especially with a car charger to keep the device working even on long trips.

This new bundle is not yet available online, but I’m sure it will be soon.

Although possibly only for the US, Garmin are planning to release an ecoRoute ESP Cable, which allows you to connect a Bluetooth enabled Garmin Nuvi 1xxx device to your car’s OBD on board diagnostic connector to be able to display certain information, including:

• Fuel and Intake Air Anformation (Fuel Flow, Intake Air Temperature, etc)
• Coolant Temperature & Oil Pressure
• Throttle Position
• Combustion Mixture (Emissions)
• Engine Component Operation & Status
• Battery and Charging System Information
• Climate Control Information (Heat & AC)
• Drive Train Status and Condition

Interestingly, this is referred to as a cable, yet something that needs to be paired via Bluetooth, so it’s not clear exactly what it is, and how it works, (unless the cable is used between the device and the Nuvi as part of setting it up).   However, offering this information is an interesting new take on providing SatNav functionality, and something that we hope comes to the UK and other Nuvi models next year.  It looks like it will cost $150 in the US when it formally launches in the New Year, and there’s no word of UK availability (although there should be no reason why not).

Information courtesy of GPSCity [via Engadget]

This is the new 2010 Jaguar XJ, revealed today by Jaguar UK.  Although we don’t often feature whole cars, we’ve certainly featured some elements of the tech included before, so we thought we’d look to see how well it brings the tech together…

The styling reminds us of both the Jaguar C-XF Concept car, and the current Jaguar XF, with maybe a hint of the Citroen C6 in those vertical LED rear lights…

Like the Jaguar XF, the new Jaguar XJ features the JaguarDrive, a fly-by-wire rotary gear selector, but also features “JaguarSense reading lamp and glovebox switches” (basically the switches are touch sensitive); if you want to customise the interior beyond the normal choices of colour (14 choices), trim and wood veneer (11 choices), you can also replace the word “Jaguar” in the top-middle of the dashboard with another word of your choosing…

Laser thin phospur blue lines of light highlight the centre-console switches, and around the JaguarDrive gear selector, the handbrake, door handles, door mounted switches and even the door storage panniers, and to save you needing to even take the car key out of your pocket, it can be specified with Keyless Entry and Keyless Start.

The Steering wheel features lots of control buttons using thumb-operated switches and five-way pads, which will include controls for an iPod.  Oh, and if that’s not enough, you can specify an optional heated steering wheel!

The instruments in front of the driver is actually all virtual, with the ability to replace the tachometer with another warnings or information required by the driver and the display features a “spotlight” feature to highlight the most important information.  The large touchscreen for the SatNav also gives access to many of the cars functions (as have previous Jaguar touchscreens), and for some countries (including the UK, but not the US) the touchscreen is a dual-view screen, allowing the passenger to watch a film or TV whilst the driver cannot (he instead gets SatNav or controls, but never the film / TV, which is illegal here), with an additional set of wireless headphones for the passenger to allow them to hear the different source too.

That’s not all in terms of multimedia, you can specify a rear entertainment package, a Premium Sound system (600W) or even a 7.1 Bowes & Wilkins 1200W system.  Finally, there’s also a DAB radio option, which we would recommend everyone takes, with the UK Government suggesting that DAB should be standard in most cars in the next few years to allow a potential shutdown of FM signals in the future…

Of course, these options don’t come cheap…

• DAB radio: £250
• TV support: £500
• Dual View screen £850
• Rear entertainment £1500
• B&W 1200W Sound System £2000

all of that, on top of the car instelf, which goes from £52,500 upto £88,000 (we should point out that many of those features above are actually standard on the higher spec cars (eg the 3.0litre £62,900 XJ Portfolio includes Dual View, B&W 1200W Sound System, a rear camera and even a panoramic roof with electric sun blinds).

For more information, head over to Jaguar UK’s website here.

If you fancy leaving a USB car charger device in your car permanently, but don’t like the look of a normal device that sticks out (both physically and asthetically) then this might be the solution for you.  This miniature USB car charger is exclusive to Mobile Fun at the moment (in the UK) and is less than £15.  That’s more than a normal USB car charger, but in this case, you are paying for something that is more discrete.  If your current mobile phone / mp3 player charging cable has a car cigarette adaptor on the end, then Mobile Fun also have a range of USB based charging cables to help you out.

Head over to Mobile Fun for more information, although don’t forget the UK Gadgeteer Offers page currently includes a Mobile Fun offer.

Now, this is an interesting idea.  Mercedes Benz and developing this technology whereby a single screen is capable of presenting different images to each of the front seat passengers, allowing the drive to see, for example, the SatNav display, whilst allowing the passenger to watch a DVD (in most European countries it’s not allowed for the driver to watch moving images, such as DVD or TV programs whilst driving).  This should become available on the S-Class around Summer 2009.

The screen is an 8″ Active Matrix TFT screen with special filters built into the screen that control at what angle each picture can be viewed.

More detail at eMercedesBenz [via Engadget].

TomTom have updated their software for the 520, 720 and 920 models, with the new version being v7.480. Along with a few bug fixes, it adds support for the new HD Traffic receiver addon. There are reports of some problems with voice recognition no longer working, but these problems seem to stem from an accidental beta release in the US only, and should not affect users who download the update after yesterday. Some items (custom voice, custom cursor) will need resetting, and it’s best to take a backup of the unit before applying the update.

Story courtesy of Pocket GPS World.

There are a lot of rumours flying around that TomTom is planning a response to the Garmin nuviphone by producing their own equivalent. The device will possibly combine an HTC hardware device with TomTom pre loaded (removing some of the problems TomTom has had over the years with compatibility problems with their software working on some Windows Mobile devices). Hopefully more information will be revealed over the upcoming months, and we won’t discover this is a early April Fool’s.

Story courtesy of Pocket GPS World.

As well as the TomTom ONE HD, TomTom have produced a replacement power supply for the TomTom GO x20 and x30 ranges which includes a SIM and GPRS service to connect and download reliable and accurate traffic data, including data collected from Vodafone mobile phones up and down the country. This will cost €100 to buy and €60 for 6 months service, and TomTom plan to increase the range of devices supported later in the year. TomTom claim the HD traffic service provides 5 times as many traffic updates as their standard service and covers up to 10 times more roads. This should help when there is an accident, and traditionally you would have been simply diverted onto other equally busy roads.

Interestingly, the HD traffic receiver actually contains a Li-Ion battery, so does not appear to need an external power supply to function, although when connected, it will power both the traffic receiver and the main SatNav unit.

Although available separately, it will be provided as standard on the TomTom GO 730 HD Traffic and the TomTom GO 930 HD.

The only downside (in the short term) is that it appears it is not compatible with third party mounts, such as the CarComm mount we featured here, although we expect Brodit and CarComm to update their solutions fairly soon after the devices are widely available.

Hopefully this service will be available soon in the UK (it should be before the end of the year).

TomTom has used CeBIT (as usual) to announce it’s new units for the year. These are the 530, 730 and 930 units. In a similar way to last year’s x20 units, the 530 will have UK & Ireland mapping, the 730 has Western and Eastern European mapping, and the 930 will have US, Canada and Western and Eastern European mapping. The units are of a similar style to the existing x20 units, although these new units come in “very sophisticated soft touch black with “real metal” detailing”. Again, as usual, these units come with new software.

More information in the rest of the article.

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