Nothing ruins a car fanatic's day like his or her favorite ride getting a check-rating from Consumer Reports. (Imagine if your Maria Sharapova-endorsed sneakers earned a Codgers' Choice mark for comfort from Modern Maturity. You'd be conflicted, too.)
Actually, CR's testers are car nuts and SCCA racers, if not necessarily the editors who turn the testers' enthusiastic thoughts into somber prose suitable for the finished pages. The magazine reported these top picks for 2006 cars from its April issue.
• Honda Civic (sedan under $20K)
• Honda Accord (sedan $20K to $30K)
• Acura TL (sedan $30K to $40K)
• Infiniti M35 (luxury sedan)
• Subaru Forester (SUV under $30K)
• Toyota Highlander Hybrid (SUV more than $30K)
• Toyota Prius (green car)
• Subaru Impreza WRX / STi (fun to drive)
• Honda Odyssey (minivan)
• Honda Ridgeline (pickup truck)
Check back in a couple weeks to see the PC Magazine Technoride Ten, where we'll honor our favorite technically adept vehicles. We're happy (or sad) to say, a few cross over.
Here's a high-tech way to stay in sync with your honey: Hand him or her a KOTOHANA, a terminal in the shape of a flower, developed jointly by NEC, NEC Design and SGI Japan. Each flower contains a microphone that captures voice data for emotional processing, the results of which are sent via wireless LAN to the counterpoint flower. Then, the embedded LEDs in the KOTOHANAs change color -- yellow for happy, blue for sad, and so on -- depending on what the person who's hanging on to the other one is feeling. Got that?
They're able to figure out moods with an "emotion recognition engine" called Sensibility Technology (ST), developed by SGI Japan with the cooperation of AGI, which detects joy, sorrow, calmness and excitement in speech patterns. As emotions change, the changes show via color gradations and variations in brightness.
The KOTOHANA isn't in production yet, but it'll be shown at CeBit in Hannover, Germany, which starts on March 9.
I'm definitely no early riser--never have been. I hit the snooze button every morning at least three times. I've never been able to wake up to that loud, buzzing sound either; I've always waken up to the radio. But even that is getting a bit annoying, especially when some hard-rock song comes on, and it scares the living crap out of me in bed.
As an alternative, I found the TV Alarm Clock. It lets you wake up to your favorite TV show, whether it's CBS' Early Show, Good Morning America, VH1's Music Videos, or reruns of Who's The Boss. All you do is set the clock at a desired waking time and then the TV Alarm Clock will send an infrared signal to your TV to turn it on. You can set up to three times for the alarm clock to turn the TV on or off automatically. Best of all, if you get tired of using the TV method, you can always use the traditional alarm included.
It also features a 2-inch screen with a bright blue backlight that displays the time and date. Operates on 2 AA batteries (included).
My brother owns a Whippet named Gigi. She's such a cute little puppy, but is really rambunctious. When my brother's at work in the evenings, I'll take her outside for a walk. I'm too lazy to grab a flashlight though, so when I'm outside, I just hope that I don't step in anything, you know, gross.
But with ViaTEK's Glo Leash, there's no reason to carry a flashlight with you. The 4-foot long Glo Leash has a built-in dual-beam LED strobe in the handle, and the leash itself glows in the dark and flashes. It also comes with a wrist strap for easy handling. Requires 2 AA batteries.
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