park assist one step ahead

park assist, a technology still in development and in limited application is where the car parallel parks itself while you twiddle your thumbs behind the wheel, and when the Fasten Seat Belt sign is extinguished you can get out and go on about your business.

however, the folks at VW think that's not enough. the latest development from VW is called Park Assist Vision (PAV), and it will park the car for you in any kind of spot -- parallel or perpendicular -- and you don't even need to be in the car.

a PAV-equipped car is rigged with cameras and ultrasonic sensors, and when you find a spot you want, you select it on a touchscreen. You place the car in "P" and get out if you have that much faith in technology not to scratch your paint. Your remote control keyfob tells the car what to do from then on, and the car parks itself, shuts down and locks itself up, as any happy car should.

PAV is still in development, but it's a neat idea. It could especially come in handy when trying to slip into one of those ever-shrinking "compact" parking spaces, since it's so hard to get out of the car once you get in the space. Now if they could develop a feature that actually locates available parking spaces for you, we'd be in business.

Mustang GT500KRs going on for another year

the special edition Mustang GT500 King of the Road was originally planned to be a '08 model only, but the demand was so high that Ford and Shelby have decided to keep the production rolling for another year, with plans to offer an additional 746 units for 2009.

these beasts are powered by a 540-horsepower version of the GT500's supercharged V8.

Supersize Earbuds

these giant earbud speakers take the ipod fetish to a new level.

very interesting indeed! i would love to have them on my desktop.

features:
* 500 times the size of normal earbuds
* Built-in amplifier
* 3 watts of power!
* Speakers measures approx 7" long x 4" in diameter.
* Powered by 3 AAA batteries (not included) or USB power from your PC
* Frequency Response: 250 to 10000Hz
* Weight: 415g
* Impedance: 4 Ohms

the new eeepc

Asus has launched the eeepc 900 in followup with their much acclaimed eeepc. the lauch is restricted to a limited region at the moment but is expected to be out in the wild by mid-year.

the price tag has slightly gone up but its much better in specs. here are some comparisons of the two models:

Specifications	Asus Eee PC 2G Surf	Asus Eee PC 900
Display	7"	8.9" Display, 1024 x 600 resolution (widescreen)
Color	Pure white/Blush pink/Sky blue/Lush green/Galaxy black	Pearl white / Galaxy Black
Memory	512 MB (DDR2	DDR II 1GB
S.S.D. Storage (Solid-State Disk)	2G	12GB (4GB built-in + 8GB flash) SSD (Microsoft Windows OS Version) / 20GB (4GB built-in +16GB flash) SSD (Linux OS Version)
Camera	N/A	1.3M Pixel webcam
Tracking Control	Standard	Utilizes FingerGlide (ala multitouch)
Weight	0.92 kg	0.99 kg

so there you have it! one thing however is that both models lack bluetooth.

overall, an amazing machine for outdoor computing in affordable price.

Facebook chat

Facebook has been developing a chat applet within the site, much like the gtalk within gmail. it is being launched in phases in various regions, so some of you may not have seen it yet.

it resides in a bar at the bottom of your screen and displays your friends that have the chat activated and are online.

its going to be pretty big as more and more people are activated!

i hope meebo picks this up soon and adds it to their arsenal of IMs so you can manage everything at one place.