tech

Thumbs up for the PESWIAKJC

Most new cars come with steering-wheel-mounted buttons to let you control the stereo with just a push of the thumb. But what if you want to replace your factory-installed stereo with a more substantial aftermarket audio system? Usually that has meant that your steering wheel buttons get relegated to the status of mere ornaments. Not any more. AAMP of America's Peripheral Electronics division has devised a steering wheel interface that lets you retain the use of your steering wheel buttons even if you switch out the car's original stereo.

The Croatian-sounding PESWIAKJC is compatible with Alpine, Kenwood, JVC, … Read more

The SmartFish is sexier than your average flying car

I won't even bother making the requisite jokes about how it's well past 2000 and we should all be behind the wheels of flying cars by now--that humor is so 2006. But I'm really digging the design of the SmartFish, a Swiss prototype for a hydrogen fuel-cell mini-aircraft that will optimally be more efficient than a car and will be able to travel at 560 miles per hour. Ooh, speedy. It'll be about 20 feet long and will hold two people, though the designers hope to work on a 20-seater version yet. (Perfect for your kid'… Read more

Meet Windmill 2.0

It just had to come out of the Netherlands. These contraptions, called the "Light Wind," are manufactured by Dutch design firm Demakersvan, and they're outdoor lights powered by wind. They might look like design-savvy variations on those little propeller beanie hats that I'm sure a few people over at the Googleplex have been known to accessorize with, but I personally think these are a cool "green" idea. They even have the capacity to store up energy when it's windy so that the light will keep shining all night long. (For size comparisons, the … Read more

Hyundai Concept Genesis: a new beginning

It looks like Hyundai is vying to be the Samsung of the automotive world. The South Korean automaker showed it is gearing up to take on the high-end Japanese (and German) competition with the unveiling of its Concept Genesis luxury sport sedan at this week's New York auto show. The rear-wheel-drive Genesis, which will be put into production for the 2008 model year, is driven by an all-new 4.6-liter "Tau" engine, mated to a ZF six-speed automatic transmission. Hyundai says the car will produce "well over 300 horsepower," and it will go from 0 … Read more

The CNET TV blog goes live!

We did some user testing on CNET TV a while back and we brought in this 19 year old kid who was kicking around the country taking a year off before he went to school. He came in, got comfortable and we asked him to look at a new potential interface. "Cool." He says. He played with it for a while and we asked him if he would come back. He says, "Yeah, I would...I don't really like to read." I loved this guy. CNET TV is definitely for him, this blog -- maybe … Read more

Wait, before you throw out that old hard drive...

Wondering why you haven't junked that old PC collecting dust in the corner of your room? Because you knew one day you would harvest it for parts, right? With a $25 kit from NewerTech you can give its hard drive a second life as an external drive, or grab any data you may have left on it without the trouble of connecting it to your current PC's motherboard. Without so much as a turn of a thumbscrew, NewerTech's USB 2.0 Universal Drive Adapter lets you access your old drive--via USB 2.0. The adapter works with … Read more

NY rains on Mercedes' parade

No matter how well you arrange the lighting and polish up the fenders, you just can't control everything. This was a lesson that Mercedes-Benz learned here at the 2007 New York auto show when the roof sprang a leak directly above its 2008 350 sedan, making its North American debut in front of thousands of journalists on the show's press preview days. Staff from the convention center did their best to clean up the unexpected interior downpour, but not before the car got a good dousing. Unfortunately, there is nothing in the Mercedes press release on the new … Read more

In-car XM weather forecast for 2008

Here at the 2007 New York auto show, we just got a demo of the next in-car offering from XM Satellite Radio: XM WX real-time weather service. As we reported last year, XM is planning to bring the WX service (originally designed for nautical and aviation use) to aftermarket devices this summer with the release of the Bushnell ONIX 400 handheld GPS device. According to XM reps, the same technology is about a year away from being integrated into in-car navigation systems in much the same way as XM's NavTraffic real-time traffic service.

XM WX makes use of a … Read more

Life begins at 40 for the Mercedes CL65 AMG

Two digits instead of three on the back of a modern Mercedes Benz mean only one thing: enhanced performance courtesy of AMG, Mercedes' in-house tuning arm. To celebrate 40 years of souping up cars (first as a standalone company, then as a part of Mercedes-Benz), AMG is building a super-limited-edition version of the Mercedes CL dubbed the CL65 AMG 40th Edition. The car, which makes its debut here at the 2007 New York auto show and which will have a production run of just 40 units, boasts a hand-built 6.0-liter twin-turbo V12 engine that produces 604 horsepower and 738 … Read more

Tuned for the track: The 2008 Honda S2000CR

If it's not broke, don't fix it: this is the maxim that Honda has applied to its popular S2000 roadster for the past 6 years, making minimal modifications to the high-revving two seater.

Here at the 2007 New York auto show, however, Honda has finally given the S2000 a new "Club Racer" trim level, designed for those drivers looking for a little more juice out of their weekend convertible.

With a drive train unchanged from that in the regular S2000, the biggest structural modification to the S2000 CR is the replacement of the S2000's cloth … Read more