Just when we thought pricing on GPS systems was going down, out comes Audiovox with their new Jensen NVXM1000 navigator. The XM-ready unit comes in at a whopping $800 and features an 8GB drive, a 4-inch screen, and an external SD slot. Unfortunately, there’s no Bluetooth, which at $800 is a slight miss. The navigator is expected out soon, though personally my budget screams more for something like this. – Louis Ramirez
XM Capable Jensen GPS [Navigadget]
Anyone who is off to somewhere very hot this summer—it could be the Burning Man Festival or a tour of duty in Iraq—might find Romteck’s heat stress monitor useful. The gadget, which is a miniature weather station, can predict whether your body is in danger of collapsing due to excess heat and humidity. It also works on buildings to measure airflow in partitioned offices and for health inspectors to assess food outlets for food regulations, and you can even use it as a stand-alone weather station.
The only question Gizmodo readers are really interested in, though, is, Jason, will you be pantsing this one? – Ad Dugdale
Handheld Gadget Predicts Heat Stroke [The Raw Feed]
The U.S. Army is about to roll out these six-wheeled vehicles that may be the granddaddies of all of our robot overlords of the future. All the army’s bots up until now have been larger-scale versions of radio-controlled model cars, but the army’s injecting these bots’ souls with autonomy, giving them GPS points and then setting them free to move between them, and even teaching them to eventually lay waste to all in their path.
The Multifunction Utility Logistics and Equipment (MULE) vehicle pictured at left will be packing iron, too, loaded with two 7.62mm machine guns and a couple of serious anti-tank missiles. Not content with that, the army has put together an even bigger bot (pictured at right), a six-ton version that can open up an even huger can of whoop ass. Hey, soldier boy geeks: just make sure you teach these hefty hunks of steaming junk the three laws of robotics. – Charlie White
Army Tests Fighting ‘Bot [Danger Room]
Former PlayStation Big Kahuna Ken Kutaragi has finally left the company. However, instead of going home to fish, play Wii or pinch bonsais, he plans to keep contact with Sony, helping them to cut costs on the PS3 after making it so expensive himself. He says he also will advise them on the next versions, while at the same time working “with a much wider world.”
“As a matter of course, I have the vision of PlayStation 4, 5 and 6, which will merge into the network.”
I also have a vision about Kutaragi-san. It involves rubber chickens, a bathtub full of tar, five bags of marshmallows and a Blu-ray laser on overdrive. Must be the same LSD on my cornflakes. – Jesus Diaz
Sony is going for a pretty significant update of its laptops this summer. Pictured above is the 15.4-inch Vaio FZ19, which will use Intel’s Santa Rosa chipset and integrated X3100 graphics card. There’s also the TZ, a retread of the current TX series, which will be an ultra-portable number with 11.1-inch screen, and a refresh of the SZ4 called the SZ5.
July will see a couple more models – the CZ series, which boast a 13.3-iunch screen, and the CR, a 14-inch widescreen notebook. Both of these have unknown specs, but I guess we will know more soon. There’s no picture of the TZ, which sounds like the most interesting of the lot, but its specs are after the jump.
The make-your-device-a-Wiimote craze continues. Now is British Telecom researchers at Ipswich who, putting on their Mario hats and completely ignoring the fact that this technology already exist in some laptops, have developed a Tablet PC with motion detectors to make easier for people with disabilities to use the computer.
They say they want to use their combination of hardware and software to make easier to control de computer and allow people to turn pages just by moving it. In other words, the same things you can do with a MacBook today, but with an add-on thingy. Well chaps, call us back when you can do a light saber with that. – Jesus Diaz
Motion-sensitive laptop developed [BBC News]
Ouch. LG’s new LCD TVs have been named the Quidam after that bendy, fiery, circus troupe, the Cirque du Soleil. There are six models to choose from, all with a rather spanky circular base design and sensors which automatically adjusts the brightness depending on how much surrounding light there is. 32 inches will set you back $1,614 and 42 inches $3,336. – Ad Dugdale
LG introduces XCanvas Quidam TV [Digital Chosunilbo]
Me and the BloggerZone are friends again now. :-)
Everything got silky smooth in the afternoon, as you can see from the flurry of entries I got in over the past couple of hours. Hopefully we get more of the same tomorrow. We’ll be back then to show off anything else of interest at the show.
If all goes to plan we’ll have more up tomorrow than we’ve managed today. Yip Yip! -Seamus Byrne
No press release yet, but wordfrom Fabian Rodriguez (a member of Ubuntu’s support staff) is that Dell’s going to offically support Ubuntu installations on their machines. And by support, we’re assuming they mean install and ship machines with Ubuntu as the main OS. Ubuntu, if you’re not familiar, is a very friendly and very easy to use—relative to other installs, that is—flavor of Linux.
More as we get the release, but this is pretty big news for fans. – Jason Chen
Utunbu [via Fabian Rodriguez via Boing Boing]
The ATEN guys are a KVM crew at heart, but these days that kind of expertise makes for a lucrative new market for switching sources in the living room. Here they have a simple little HDMI switcher, the VS481. 3 in at the back, 1 in at the front, and 1 out. You can hit the buttons or use the remote to do your switching, and you get some nice little lights so you know what’s what.
More info and a price after the jump… and the price is pretty sweet.
