Tag Archive for: Funk Butcher
Smartphone Car Problems
US regulators want to limit what people can do with their phones whilst driving. Sounds good to us! The US’s National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) have published their first safety guidleines regarding driver distraction which specifically target things that you connect to your car such as music players or better yet, smartphones.
The guidelines, which are part of a second phase of NHTSA proposals are for the cars console. These were back in 2013 and they suggested that you got to touch a button to call someone rather than dialling a number. Which sounds really safe to us!
At the heart of it it is all about making things ‘dumber’ and ‘easier’ to use while behind the wheel to reduce the amount of distractions that we have while driving. The NHTSA suggest a thing called “Driver Mode” which are like Apple’s CarPlay and the Android Auto. Where a selection of apps or tasks are easily attainable through easy to use big button interface. For example Drivers could see maps that are on their smartphone in short chunks of texts that can be easily read from a quick single eye glance from the road, but with more reliance on voice activated commands than physical touch.
Sounds good right. But the NHTSA’s “Drive Mode” system, wants to go one step futher and prevent certain features being used whilst driving. Which makes sense as you shouldn’t be manually entering text whilst driving or adjusting maps to see where you are. The NHTSA suggests that it would be better with their “Driver Mode” to do things through “Driver Mode” where the user wouldn’t have to turn it on and it is automatically switched on once you enter the car and it the car is in motion.
However all this sounds really cool and safe and would go a long way to prevent accidents, these guidelines are exactly that guidelines. Car makers don’t have to implement the technology into their cars. Not only that some tech doesn’t play well with others like Google Maps doesn’t work with CarPlay so a driver has to mount thier phone on the dash.
While it is important to make our drives safer, it still requires users to use self will not to get distracted and it does seem quite nanny state like to control what we can and can’t do with the stuff we own when in certain situations.
Will there be ways to prevent us from having more and more accidents, only time will tell, but this seems like a cool way to do it.
To hear the guys chatting about this please click here!
Electric Car Charing Ports for all!
Electric cars are becoming more and more popular the past several years especially with the introduction of the Tesla. Now there are several huge car firms that are prepping for the future of car travel and are creating high powered charging networks across Europe. 400 Charging Sites to be exact.
The firms are BMW, Daimler, Ford and Volkswagen Group, including Audi and Porsche.
The charging stations (sounds like a massive dock for your car!) provides really quick charging for your electronic cars, along many major roads across Europe. (However we think 400 is a little small for such a large area of land) Tesla’s can’t use these charge points as their cars use different electronic systems, so if you have a Tesla, you’re out of luck. Sorry!
Reason being as the network will use combined charging system standard technology, while Drivers of electric cars can plug in and charge at speeds of 350kw which is a lot lot faster than you can get today!
To hear the guys chatting about this please click here!
WORKING Apple Mirror (Concept)
Someone has created an Apple Mirror that actually WORKS! It’s just a concept from YouTube user “dymekraf” but it gives a cool insight into what Apple could actually do with an iOS intergrated Mirror. It can do a whole heap of stuff such as:
- Show the Time/Date and weather
- Touch activated (to bring up the apps and information)
- Can move apps easily
- Can send a message directly from the mirror
- Play music from connected speakers
Check below to check out this guys cool invention!
To listen to the guys chatting about the Apple Mirror please click here!
Sonos: Play 1’s
We love our music here at How To Kill An Hour and we love our wireless speaker technology even better! Ever since Apple took the 3.5mm adapter away from us all we have been looking at ways at getting your music out there and in the room wirelessly. We love the Bragi Dash’s but what about if you want to share the music?! Well the SONOS:Play 1’s are here to save the day!
These little speakers pack an incredible punch and they sound absolutely magnificent! Pack some great base and some decent high ends these guys really sound good! But what’s even better is that if you have more than one or a selection of SONOS speakers you can control them all from the SONOS Controller app. Adjust the sound levels independently of one another. So the one in the bedroom can be quiet and the one in the office can be incredibly loud or control the sound levels at exactly the same time. But what’s cool about them is that they will be playing the same piece of music at the same time from the exact same source! They can also:
- Two PLAY:1s work as Sonos home cinema rear speakers.
- Or as Stereo Speakers
- Wall or stand-mountable.
- Be updated over Wi-Fi
- Uses Trueplay Tuning
To download the SONOS Controller app please click here!
To buy your own SONOS Play 1 please click here!
To listen to the guys chatting about the SONOS: Play 1’s please click here!