My wife has just taken a job with a large American emergency medical services company. (EMTs will have already guessed which one). As an EMT, she gets to drive the ambulance a lot. Sometimes she drives because her Paramedic partner doesn't want to and she always drives when taking a Code 3 (lights/siren) patient to the hospital.

For Christmas, I'd like to give her a GPS unit she can carry in her gear bag and  easily install in the ambulance she's driving on a particular shift. Here is a list of the features/specifications I think she needs. I don't believe they exist in a single device. If you know of one, I'd appreciate hearing from you.

Major requirements:

• Turn-by-turn directions with voice.

• One-touch memories, for easy selection of common destinations like hospitals and ambulance stations. This may be the most important feature since a big use for this device will be finding the way back to the hospital from unfamiliar locations. Typically, this would mean using the GPS to get pointed in the right direction and to a known major street from which she'd already know the best way in.
• Automatic rerouting, so that when she takes a particular route, for whatever reason, the GPS will find a new route to the selected destination.
• Easy entry of locations not already in memory.
• My Magellan RoadMate 700 meets many of these requirements, though address entry could be improved. However, the unit is a tad large, requires external power, and really needs an additional external antenna for this application. I want a unit that can be easily operated while being hand-held, which seems to require an antenna on the dash or outside the vehicle, both of which complicate things. Bluetooth be used to link the GPS receiver to the display, but is also a complication that makes the unit less reliable and not as easy to use as I'd require.
• The RoadMate is too large. I want pocket-sized.
• Major non-requirement: My application does not require a hard drive to hold the map, since it would be used only in a regional area that could be uploaded to flash memory.

Features that I don't think exist:

• Support for major map grid systems, like the Thomas Bros. maps we use here in California. It ought to be possible to route to a particular page and grid without actually entering an address.
• Time-based routing. There ought to be some way for the system to understand that during "drive times" it's best to avoid certain routes. I am not sure the best way to do this, but it will take some learning/user input, probably involving a PC and mapping program that can upload data to the GPS to accomplish this. Lacking this, the rerouting feature is the best alternative. (A driving strategy during rush hour is to run streets that parallel more congested major thoroughfares).

"Someday when they work" features:

• GPS units are becoming available that receive traffic information. The problem right now is how limited the information might be and whether it would be current enough to be useful. My thinking is that this feature, today, might be more misleading than useful. Ideally, it would have encyclopedic knowledge of local traffic conditions (could support the time-based routing) as well as construction (hour-by-hour) and accidents. Whether this information will ever be available for a city of 250,000 outside a major metro area isn't clear to me, but it would certainly be useful in more populous regions.
• Voice recognition for entering addresses. Probably requires too much processing horsepower right now, but this would make the GPS really useful. Right now, it's a race between finding the location in the paper map book and entering the location into the GPS. Paper often wins.

As I said, there isn't a GPS unit I've found so far that meets most of these requirements. Maybe the Garmin Nuvo? I'm going to do some more research, but if you know of a unit that comes close to fulfilling my wish list, I'd love to hear about it.

Wearable technology is one of those things that always seems like a good idea, until you actually try to use it. This may be changing. I am testing out one of Scott eVest's tactical jackets right now, but Eleksen came into the office today and showed off something even more cutting edge: electronic sensors built into fabric itself. PC Magazine's Lance Ulanoff was in on the demo and describes the fabric as:

...essentially carbon-embedded nylon sandwiched between layers of nylon mesh that, when a milliamps charge is passed through it, can recognize touch (and it's location), pressure and even the direction and path of a stroke. This thin, flexible, durable and washable fabric connects to a small 8-bit processor, which then can be connected to a standard electronic device like an iPod.

Best of all the products using Eleksen's technology is on sale now, a iPod-enabled Kemp ski jacket will run you about $250 at Macy's or CompUSA. Check out Lance's full story for more details and photos of the technology in action.

Nokia announced their 6282 cell phone today for Cingular's upcoming high-speed UMTS network, making it the fourth potential Cingular UMTS handset floating around in the ether, after the Nokia N80, Samsung SGH-ZX10, and a little LG slider I glimpsed last spring. Okay, so, Cingular, you've got a lineup. Where's the network? Cingular has been promising 10-15 cities juiced up with UMTS service and a few cool handsets by the end of the year, and we hate to break it to them, but they're seriously running out of year.

Cingular's strategy gets even more perplexing when you realize that they've made public commitments to both the 850 Mhz frequency band and the even higher-speed HSDPA technology. But only one of those handsets I listed uses HSDPA, and the Nokias lack 850 Mhz UMTS support. (They run UMTS on the 1900 Mhz band, which is the other commonly-used cell phone frequency in the USA.)

For everybody who isn't a crazed phone geek, UMTS promises 250-350 kbps/sec data transfers, two-way video calling, streaming video and full-track music downloads. HSDPA, an upgrade to UMTS, raises the ante to 500-700 kbps/sec, putting it on par with Verizon's and Sprint's EV-DO networks.

Considering Sprint and Verizon are forging ahead great guns with high-speed networks and phones, Cingular needs to get their act together soon.

There's a couple of things that fancy my liking of Sharp's M4000 WideNote laptop.

First, it has a 13.3-inch widescreen. (What's that you say? It can't be done!) Why yes, it can. Most ultraportable laptops come with a 12-inch or less screen, but this machine seems to be starting a new trend.

Second, the M4000 uses Sharp's proprietary power-management suite. Simply press the Mobile button and choose from three modes—MAX Power, Mobile, or MAX Mobile—that lower both your CPU clock speed and the screen brightness to lengthen battery life. I, for one, love that easy functionality, because on my Sony VAIO, I'm constantly having to change the screen brightness either when I'm in a dim-lit area or don't want to run out of battery.

Third, it weighs just 3.7 pounds. I think my VAIO weighs around 4.5 or so.

PC Magazine did find some not-so-likeable things about the M4000 when they tested it. Read the review.

The M4000 WideNote is $1,799.77 at SharpSystems.com.

Here's one of those, "huh, why didn't they think of this sooner" kind of ideas. A company called TuneBooks is releasing interactive digital liner notes—filled with lyrics, games, album artwork, band annotations and other fan-centric extras once reserved for CDs only—with the purchase of select albums on iTunes.

The first TuneBook is being released, for free, with The Darkness' One Way Ticket to Hell ... and Back. Another one is being bundled with the December 20th release of The Notorious B.I.G.'s The Final Chapter. Not convinced that these little interactive album jackets are the next big thing in digital music? Just play around with the diverting liner notes for, oh, 30 minutes (they come packaged as simple QuickTime files), and you'll insist on receiving them for all future digital album purchases. Simple, yet brilliant.

For more info on TuneBooks, check out the company's slideshow.

[Thanks to Rob Bernstein]

PC Magazine Senior Editor Carol Mangis pointed me to better butter:

Ever read about a new invention and wonder, "Why didn't I think of that?" This isn't really one of those occasions. Still, I wish the ButterWizard well: Any gizmo that Wallace might have invented makes me feel downright jolly.

The ButterWizard uses a built-in chip and fan to keep butter at an optimal spreading temperature. "We were trying to find out what people's frustration with butter was. It's either too hard or too soft," David Alfille, the managing director of Alfille Innovations Ltd., told Reuters. That's certainly been my experience.

Currently the ButterWizard's available only in the U.K. for £34.95; the rest of the world will have to risk toast rippage, for now.

[Found via eWeek.com]