October 12, 2005
The Week in Cars: The Best of Jalopnik
This week in Jalopnik: As Tokyo readies itself for the city’s upcoming motor show—one of the industry’s majors—later this month, automakers are in high-tease mode. As custom dictates, they’ve spent the past few weeks issuing advance images of the concept vehicles they hope will attract both crowds and column inches (in pubs like this, no doubt). Nissan’s Pivo, Suzuki’s P.X. and Ionis, Chrysler’s Akino, Subaru’s B5-TPH and Nissan’s GT-R PROTO are but a Whitman Sampler’s worth (minus the coconut) of those that will be on display.
With a bulbous body that rotates 360 degrees atop a simple chassis, the Nissan Pivo looks like a toddler’s vision of the perfect Fisher Price car—no sharp corners and easy to fill up with stuff like Cheerios and dad’s best cologne. In reality, the Pivo is a showcase of Nissan’s most far-out human-car interface technologies. For example, a driver can manipulate many interior controls using hand signals, and a wrap-around video monitor retires the rear-view mirror.
Among Suzuki’s two minivan concepts headed to Tokyo is the military-chic P.X., touted by the company as a kind of mobile fort for middle-aged men. Suzuki calls the sleek, stainless-steel P.X. a “home base” for men, in which they can get on with all the fun stuff middle-aged men in decked-out vans do. (Why, practice their golf swing, of course. What were you thinking?)
The Chrysler Akino comes equipped with enough grandiloquently composed backstory to shame a Celestial Seasonings teabag. The one-box, compact concept, envisioned to be an oasis on wheels, was conceptualized by Akino Tsuchiya, a designer at the Chrysler Group’s Pacifica Design Studios in California. It‘s got an interior that incorporates bamboo flooring, a throw rug, lighting sconce, mood lighting and even throw pillows. Akino means “autumn field.” Nuff said.
Along with the most hyperbolic concepts, some trend more closely toward cars we’ll likely see someday in traffic or double-parked in front of a nail salon, as the case may be. For one, as rumors have it, Subaru’s B5-TPH hatchback concept is the bellwether of a new design direction that will inform the next-generation Subaru Impreza—for which a radical redesign is expected by 2007.
The concept that’s closest to a true production model is Nissan’s GT-R PROTO, which will become the next-generation GT-R—a sports car almost as beloved in the world’s automotive circles as the four-wheel drift on dry pavement. The PROTO also signals good news for Americans who’d been traditionally left out of the GT-R fest; the next-generation GT-R, coming in 2007, is a global sports car that’ll be sold in the US, alongside Pathfinders and Sentras at the local Nissan mart. Watch for it.
Jalopnik’s The Week in Cars appears every Tuesday on Gizmodo
Originally from Gizmodo on October 11, 2005, 3:00pm
Well, folks, it’s on. The XBox 360 officially exists, it works, and it rocks. I left a little early because I knew I was just going to sit there and play Call of Duty 2 all day and that wouldn’t have been good for anyone.
XBox Live has an odd new Anime interface that eschews the “brain in a jar” look of the XBox Dashboard. The Live features, including IM, voice chat, and match gathering, are all easy to handle and the ever present Live window pops up with a click of the silver Live button. A cute feature we already knew about—iPod support. Plug in your Nano and get rocking, was the suggestion, and we’re assuming that almost any USB-enabled MP3 player will appear as a music source. Any USB keyboard will work with the 360 so you’ll be able rag folks in Avatar mode.
I am starting to see a need for Windows Media Center Edition. The built-in extender features turns the XBox into a living room media center for the oldsters. HD content looks flawless and the movie download services are waiting in the wings for late night sessions of gaming/watching “Hard Bodies 2.”
Lenovo, makers of Thinkpad, has just announced its first wireless projector, the ThinkVision C400. Primarily aimed at business professionals, the projector is integrated with 802.11b/g wireless technology so it doesn’t need to be hooked up to a computer for it to display your latest business presentation (though you could if you wanted to). There’s also a USB slot if you want to use your PowerPoint-loaded USB memory key instead. It comes equipped with 2,650 lumens, features DLP technology, XGA native resolution, HDTV compatibility, DVI-I to VGA connector, S-Video, composite video, and picture-in-picture capability. It weighs about 7.5 lbs, and the package comes with a remote control and laser pointer. The ThinkVision C400 is available now from Lenovo’s website and is selling for $2,499.
The Linksys CIT200 Skype phone for the home has been reviewed and it’s looking pretty decent. The phone itself is sexy and loaded. Not too many home phones have a color screen with built-in menus and the added luxuries of a backlit keyboard, caller ID, and a DECT 1.8-1.9Ghz bandwidth (not that we have any use for DECT here in the U.S.). So how’s the phone perform? You can access your Skype friends easily enough, as well as use SkypeOut for regular phone calls. Call quality is excellent and the integrity of the call stays intact. Installation seems to take awhile and the USB receiver can’t charge the phone itself, but overall, it’s totally rockin’—especially the price of phone calls using SkypeOut.
Japan just can’t get enough of the nutty blue robot cat known as Doraemon. This time, Doraemon has his new watch which actually looks pretty sleek. This is no ordinary watch, however. This is a data watch. Coming in 64MB or 128MB sizes, and silver or black color schemes, the watch can store all your files, MP3s, images, porn, and cartoons pirated off of BitTorrent. A digital audio player function might have been nice, but hey, at least it tells time. At the 9-hour mark sits a crisp blue LED to show when data is being transferred. The device will cost more than 150 EUR ($182) in Japan and I’m sure it’s well worth every penny.
You know you’re dying to play an old System 7 version of Oregon Trail on the go. Admit it. That’s why there’s Basilisk II, a 68k Mac emulator for the PSP. Basilisk can run systems 7.5.5 through 7.6.1 pretty decently. You will need a mac.rom file to legally run it, but we all know you’ve got that laying around someplace. You’ll still have to wait awhile for Basilisk II to work like a real old-skool mac, because right now only emulation, video, and a few inputs like a mouse work. There’s no ethernet, audio, keyboard, external filesystems, or serial capabilities either, so it’s kind of useless—but worth watching. You’ll also need firmware 1.0 or 1.5 for the PSP to run Basilisk II, because 2.0 just isn’t gonna cut it.
Speaking of Project Gotham: The highlight of the party was racing against Kiki Wolfkill. She’s the art director at Studio RX (
Hell yes, finally NASA is getting on the ball by prepping an army of robots to take on the baddies of space. These robots are going to kick ass and take names. And by kicking ass and taking names we really mean fully assist the human astronauts in the daunting day-to-day chores of space travel. The first robot, the Robonaut, is a robot designed to assist the astronaut with daily tasks and, if there’s time, a little space love. The next robot is the Tendril, it is a robot-like snake that can get into small places and has a camera integrated for observation. The Scout is a robotic golf cart that will truck the astronauts around with all of their supplies. And by far the coolest robot is the Spidernaut, this is a 600-pound, eight-legged robot that walks around on the outside of the spaceship repairing various parts. According to the top NASA brainiacs, this 600-pound spider is designed in such a way that it would do less potential damage to the spacecraft than a human would. Expect to start seeing some of these robots within the next year and a half and expect to start seeing them in your nightmares tonight.
While everyone was ooh-ing and aah-ing over the P990, Sony Ericsson also released the HBH-PV700 Bluetooth headset to much less fanfare. It’s handsfree obviously, with a 5-hour talk time and 150-hour standby time. The headset has an adjustable ear hook for additional comfort, and features an array of voice controls (answer/reject calls, voice dial, etc.) It’ll work within a range of up to 10 meters from the phone, so you don’t have to worry if the phone’s all packed up in your backpack. Will be available in Q4 of this year.
