Be careful where you leave your iPad. It might end up impaling some poor lady’s bumper.
That’s what happened to one unlucky iPad owner who forget they placed their iPad on top of their car. After getting onto the road, the iPad eventually fell off the roof of the car, slammed into a Georgia woman’s front bumper, and then stayed there for the rest of day.
Glympse is a clever — and potentially lifesaving — feature that we’d love to see in more smartphone-connected cars.
It started out as a free app that can broadcast the user’s location to selected contacts, Facebook friends or Twitter followers. But it’s become a valuable tool for drivers of smartphone-connected Fords and Merecedes-Benzes, allowing them to broadcast their location without taking their hands off the steering wheel.
Now BMW and Mini have partnered with Glympse, raising the marque total to four.
We’ve seen some really neat car hacks that use the iPhone and iPad to do some crazy stuff, but this one might take the cake.
A group of Russians decided to take their Opel Vectra car and turn it into the “James Bond car” that could be driven with a cellphone in Tomorrow Never Dies. The result, is a beat up beauty that can be driven with an iPad. Check it out:
The Automatic Link is a new iPhone accessory that’s been built to provide you with all of the important information you’ll ever need to know about your vehicle. It plugs into your car’s on-board diagnosis port, then transmits all sorts of data to an accompanying app on your iPhone.
Not only will Automatic Link help you identify why your “check engine” light is on, but it’ll also give you all kinds of data about the journeys you make, it’ll help you remember where you parked your car, and it’ll help you change your driving style to save gas.
Robotic technology developed by England’s Oxford University is working alongside the iPad to enable an electric Nissan Leaf to drive itself. Apple’s tablet is built into the vehicle’s dashboard, and can be used to activate the robotic technology that will take over the vehicle for short stretches.
The clever system, which is designed to take the strain off of drivers during busy commutes, uses small cameras and lasers built discretely into the body of the car that allow it to recognize its surroundings and avoid collisions.
You know about Magnetyze, right? It’s a system that lets you charge an iPhone 4/S or Galaxy S3 without the need for a cord. Pop your iPhone into the provided case, then drop the case on the magnetic charging base and your iPhone will charge (and sync) — it works kind of like the MagSafe power adapter on a MacBook. It’s really cool on the S3, because the Magnetyze case replaces the S3’s original back, so there’s almost zero extra bulk. Neat.
Cars are a fairly boring topic for me, but I just sat through this 15-minute documentary by Audi completely enthralled by the amount of dedication the Slots Mods team poured into making an iPad-controlled slot car race track utopia for Audi.
Basically, Audi asked Slot Mods to make an iPad-controlled slot car race track that would give people the experience of driving an Audi from their iPad. You can control the speed of the car from the iPad and a little video camera behind the windshield shows you what it’s like to be the driver. The concept is cool on its own, but the amount of details and obsession poured into the project make it truly enthralling.
It’s winter. It’s probably cold where you live. Running outside to start your car is probably one of the most dreadful experiences you have every morning, and then you gotta sit in your cold car for a few minutes before the heat really kicks in. You’re shivering. Trying to drive faster. And it all just sucks.
You could buy one of those remote ignitions, but then you gotta carry around an extra block on your keychain, and its range isn’t so great. Will O’Brien came up with a better idea – starting your car with your iPhone by sending it an SMS. It’s brilliant, and anyone can replicate his hack.
This is the original Parrot Asteroid Classic car stereo head-unit ($349), and it made quite a splash when it launched last year. The single-DIN, 4×55 watt receiver boasts a formidable array of features: Bluetooth connectivity, powerfully accurate voice recognition for both calls and music, a GPS receiver, a bright, 3.2-inch LED screen and a quiver of apps that run off its customized, upgradeable, early-vintage Android 1.5 OS (all of which require a data connection via a dongle).
Though this model was originally called the the Asteroid (no Classic), the Classic nomen was added to lessen confusion as three new models were announced a few months ago. However, the Asteroid Classic still very much in play; in fact, as this review goes live, the Classic is the only member of the Asteroid family currently available, as its new siblings haven’t shipped yet.
With its Android-based OS, you’d be forgiven if you thought the Asteroid Classic was more friendly to Android phones than the iPhone. In fact, the opposite is true, as I’ll explain later. And while it suffers from something that can probably be described as teething trouble, it’s still a lust-worthy system.
The Boomerang is a new Kickstarter iPad accessory from the one-device-to-rule-them all crowd — it’s a combination universal mounting system and frame. The hinged, X-shaped frame snaps onto the back of your iPad, while a powerful, centrally located magnet of its back allows it to attach to a wide variety of stands and mounts that Uros Cadez, the project’s creator, has already designed. Even without any accessory mounts, the frame’s hinge can ratchet to prop the iPad up at three different angles. Another plus: The Boomerang’s corners were designed so it wouldn’t get in the way of a Smart Cover.
This week's most...
Read our latest...
Cult of Mac is a daily news site that follows everything Apple. Our goal is to provide timely news, insightful analysis, helpful how-tos and honest reviews. Find out more about Cult of Mac.
Published in sunny San Francisco.
All times are in PDT (GMT-8).
![Parrot Asteroid Classic Car Sound System: The Deck I Wish I’d Had in High School [Review]](http://www.cultofandroid.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/12/parrot-asteroid-7-1.jpg "parrot-asteroid-7 (1)")
![This Boomerang Looks A Lot Like The iPad Mounting System We All Want [Kickstarter]](http://cdn.cultofmac.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/11/boomerang.jpg "boomerang")
