In the great pantheon of things unlikely to happen, this IBM idea ranks pretty highly, but that doesn't necessarily make it a bad one. Big Blue has applied for a patent covering a sophisticated new traffic lights system, which judges how long cars have to wait and sends them ominous-sounding “stop-engine notifications” when the pause is long enough to make switching off optimal. This is done by communicating with queuing vehicles and collecting their positional data, and subsequent start-en……

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Ah, Mimo. It has been far, far too long since you've tossed out another product to appease our need for more pixels in every situation, and frankly, we couldn't be happier to see that you're back. Today, the aforesaid company is tossing out a variant of the 710-S that emerged last August, but this one's tailor made to work on VESA mounts. The company claims that the 720-F was born from requests to have a 7-inch touchscreen that could be mounted on VESA brackets, enabling easy ins……

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And you thought your Driving Force GT was pricey. Thrustmaster is today introducing its newest gaming accessory, a startlingly expensive new racing wheel designed to give PlayStation 3 and PC gamers the chance to feel as if they truly are screaming ahead in hopes of being first to fly under the checkered flag. The Ferrari Wireless GT Cockpit 430 Scuderia Edition is a complete wireless cockpit ensemble, requiring far more space than an NYC studio apartment affords to completely unfold, and given……

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The holy matrimony between smartphone and personal navigation device just keeps getting stronger, scorning dedicated GPS units like forgotten flings and leaving navigation-free handsets wandering lost and alone. Garmin-Asus has been flirting with the perfect bond with its Nuvifone series for some time now, but rather tragically from a branding perspective its strongest attempt yet comes without the nuvi moniker. It's the T-Mobile Garminfone, and its Android underpinnings go a long way towa……

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In a move that could shape the mobile landscape — or simply suck down cash, of course — General Motors just revealed that Google was its mysterious infotainment partner. In the final hours before Google I/O, we sat down with GM VP Nick Pudar to tell us what the future thus holds for OnStar. As we saw in January, GM's already developing smartphone apps for the Chevy Volt on iPhone, Blackberry and Android that will let you remotely lock doors, honk the horn, check tire pressure and more……….

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Machine translations are still years or even decades away from perfection, so rather than sending you to an auto-translated page, we now present — with exclusive permission from Southern Weekend — a human translation of this damning article on Foxconn by undercover reporter Liu Zhiyi.

(Photo: Southern Weekend)

I know of two groups of young people.

One group consists of university students like myself, who live in ivory towers and kept company by libraries and lake views. The other group w……

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Meet Earthmine's “pedestrian area platform quadracycle.” The company claims it's a way to map areas of the world that can't be reached by its camera-equipped SUVs… but we think the truth may be far more sinister than that. Diabolical, even.

Joanna: “Do you really need a helmet on one of those?”
Chris: “Google finally gets around to mapping Bedrock.”
Vlad: “My other car is a spymobile.”
Ross: “Get your cameras runnin', head out on the highway, lookin' for adventure and wha……

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If you're running an Android phone and you're lucky enough to be using 1.6 or above (our deepest apologies, CLIQ owners), we might recommend you pop open the Market and score the latest version of Google Maps that just launched today. What's new? It adds support for bicycle routing (something they've had on the desktop for a while now) and sharing of destinations via the usual array of mediums like email, Facebook, Twitter, and so on, but the most significant change might also b……

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Not one day after General Motors said they'd found a mysterious technology partner to help extend the Chevy Volt's futuristic OnStar functionality do anonymous sources step in (as usual) to ruin the surprise. Though we thought RIM made a fine contender, Motor Trend says it's actually Google that'll reportedly “sell its Android operating system for in-car use.” Last we heard, Google wasn't in the business of selling Android, but that wouldn't stop GM from using the open-s……

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If there's one thing business types love more than their BlackBerry, it's their BMW — or so we're told. It makes all sorts of sense, therefore, that the two companies would partner up to help the things they sell communicate with each other more effortlessly. Using Bluetooth MAP (Message Access Profile), BlackBerry devices can now beam emails and contacts over to BMW's iDrive dash system, where the driver can listen to his messages via a text-to-speech option or make calls usin……

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