traffic

We heard Audi was using Google Earth for the navigation systems in its cars, but it was a completely different experience driving down the road, seeing satellite imagery of our surroundings flow by on the 2012 A7's LCD. Through the streets of San Francisco, we suddenly became aware of what the rooftops of buildings we had passed a million times looked like. Parked by the bay, we weren't just looking at a cartoony representation of the coastline, but photos of actual boats in a marina.

And the maps were just the beginning. The T-Mobile data pipe into the … Read more

Following the Fiesta, the new Focus is the next car from Ford to rely on European design. The result is a sporty-looking compact with practical interior space. Ford's efforts to push fuel economy with technologies such as direct injection and electronic power steering give the Focus 38 mpg on the highway. And Sync remains a core cabin technology for connecting cell phones and MP3 players. Ford even offers automatic parallel parking as an option.

But the Focus still has a few rough edges. The automated manual transmission occasionally misfires, and the onscreen cabin tech interface is crowded. Not to … Read more

It was business as usual on the Web in March, ComScore found in its latest Media Metrix survey.

According to the research firm, more than 212 million Americans surfed the Web last month, and once again, Yahoo was their top destination, scoring nearly 180 million unique visitors. Google trailed Yahoo with more than 176.8 million unique visitors. Microsoft, Facebook, and AOL followed the search giant with 176.4 million, 153 million, and 118 million unique visitors, respectively.

Perhaps the biggest surprise of the month was the growth of Zynga.com. According to ComScore, the FarmVille creator's site saw … Read more

The last iteration of the Acura TL launched with too bold a look, and after only a couple of years in production, the 2012 version comes out with a toned-down grille piece and more subtle lines. Although the 2012 Acura TL SH-AWD is not as distinctive as its predecessor, its Acura identity remains intact.

And although it doesn't sit at the top of Acura's model lineup (that position is reserved for the RL), the TL SH-AWD shows off Acura's latest technology, and exhibits a level of comfort and luxury that outstrips its siblings. New features for the … Read more

Over the last five years, BMW pushed technology in its cars, launching such features as adaptive cruise control, head-up displays, navigation systems with topographic maps, and night vision. Recently, the company has even added data feeds to its cars for stock and fuel prices, along with e-mails read from BlackBerry devices. But among all this tech goodness, one car was left behind. The poor X3 remained stuck with technology from its 2004 launch.

Finally BMW paid attention to the redheaded stepchild of its lineup, lavishing almost every technological feature in the hope chest on it, and even coming up with … Read more

If you're a commuter stuck in traffic, it doesn't help you all that much to know what road conditions are like right now. You already know you're being delayed. But what if there was a way to alert you to problems before you even get in your car?

That's the premise behind a new project being announced tonight by IBM Research, the California Department of Transportation (Caltrans), and the University of California at Berkeley's California Center for Innovative Transportation (CCIT).

The idea behind the project is simple: as a commuter, you're better off if … Read more

Today we're talking about car navigation. Of course, when navigation units first came out, they were seen by users as magical. But how quickly we've become accustomed to having a device in the car that can tell us how to get where we're going. Now people want to know how to get there faster than everyone else--and that means getting traffic data into our navigation systems. We're going to talk about the state of the art in car navigation, and how traffic data is becoming a bigger part of it. In particular, we're going to dive into the interesting conceptual battle between sensor-based traffic reporting and crowd-sourced traffic.

We have two great guests today. Di-Ann Eisnor runs U.S. operations and is working on the "live mapping" function for Israeli crowd-sourced navigation and real-time traffic start-up Waze. Di-Ann is a neogeography pioneer and serial entrepreneur. Prior to Waze, she started Platial, the world's first social atlas.

Craig Chapman is the co-founder and chief technology officer of Inrix, a major provider of traffic information, directions and driver services. He was previously development manager for the automotive business unit at Microsoft.

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Some of our discussion points… Read more

Toyota and Microsoft head for the clouds, 2010 the safest year ever on U.S. roads--the technologies behind that, what Lexus has up its green sleeve in New York, and we hit the road in the 2011 Chevy Volt.

• 2011 Chevy Volt review and video

• Microsoft and Toyota team on telematics

• New way to monitor where all the bad accidents are

• Largest automotive lithium ion battery plant completed

• CNET's LOLCars gallery!

You know what's great? Portable GPS navigation systems. Best thing since sliced bread. You know what's not so great? Having to pay extra for map updates and real-time traffic data. Worst thing since moldy bread.

So this is particularly awesome: BuyDig has the TomTom XL 340TM 4.3-inch GPS for $89.25 shipped. (That's after applying coupon code SLICK25OFFTTTM on the lower left-hand side of the checkout screen.)

Update: Not only is this sold out, but the entire product page has been taken down! Well, all the more reason to get here earlier in the day, as … Read more