Navit is an open source turn by turn directions app using the free Open Street Maps.

There has been a lot of discussion about community generated maps. Cloudmade and openstreetmap have made immense progress, but their big drawback is that it required active user input to have the data be routable or reliable. Teleatlas has jumpstarted community generated maps by releasing a paid passively generated database that has been created and augmented by free passive user inputs. (teleatlas press release )

In this Youtube interview Rik Temmink boasts 7 million reports in 18 months which have generated 1 trillion gps measurements on the road network. He describes the beauty of passive user inputs.

Back in march VIA announced the new automotive ivp-7500 (press release ). The announcement got some press from slashgear , crunchgear and has spurred discussions on our forums . Via claims onboard support for Bluetooth and GPS, which in all reality appear to just be add on modules. It seems like VIA took an off the shelf board, slapped on a few modules and rebranded old tech to create the appearance of an automotive solution. This might be perfect for a hobbyist or an R&D lab but you can forget about auto provider shipping silicone with a 0c-60c spec. If someone from VIA would like to explain the press release in more details, please post on the forums or e-mail us. We would be happy to write some revised commentary if there is something we are missing. Talk about this Blog post on our forums.


Continue discussion here on our forums.

Goce from mp3Car takes us through the steps to use your p2140 to hibernate and wake up from hibernation of your laptop.

mp3Car's Rob Wray interviews Mark Schunder about Ford Sync Version 3

In this video we take a ride with one of Ford's engineers to give you the technical side, and much less the marketing pitch for Ford Sync.

Some intelligent forward thinking researchers over at Hitachi, Xanavi, and Nissan have collected some data on ecological green routing that claims a 9% fuel cost savings on a test route. This technology is still in its infancy, but this is a perfect example of where a car computer can be used to accelerate development and deployment of technology. Implementing ecorouting will require Intense processing on the client or cloud for the complicated routing algorithms that factor in all the newly available data points:

· Traffic & Flow speeds

· Elevation changes and altitude

· Road quality (smooth vs. rough)

· Wind (eventually)

The cloud or development computer can also be used to coach the driver into more efficient acceleration and braking techniques which a lot of hyper milers are already using.

Goce from mp3Car will walk you through the steps necessary to power your laptop using unregulated ~6~24 volts with only the p2140 and the wire your laptop power adapter came with.

Rob Wray from mp3Car interviews Artur Seidel from Elektrobit.