Tag Archives: safety

Save Hundreds On Gas Every Year

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Automatic Smart Driving Assistant is a gadget designed to unlock your car’s full potential, making driving safer and more efficient. Automatic can help you spend up to 30% less on gas (about $800/year) by learning your driving style and giving you real-time audio feedback when you do something that wastes gas. Automatic also monitors your car health and warns you when something is wrong. It provides written details of the problem and possible solutions; it tells you if it is something you can do yourself and save a trip to the mechanics or if needed, helps you find a mechanic nearby. But most importantly, if you are ever in a crash, Automatic provides a full-service crash response 24/7 and alerts 911 with your location and can even contact your loved ones to let them know what happened and that help is on the way.

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Automatic is extremely simple to set up and use: plug the Automatic link into your car’s onboard computer with no tool required and connect it to your smartphone via the App (on iOS or Android). Automatic is only available in the US.

What Sparks Our Fire: A gadget that redefines people’s relationship with driving, making it safer and more efficient by giving you useful information.

Are you ready to be a better driver and adopt a smart driving Automatic Assistant?

A New Internet

We all know the internet today is not nearly as secure as it should be, especially with all of the private information we share such as credit card and social security numbers. It seems ever more frequently we hear of another data breach, where personal online data has been hacked. Maidsafe is here to create a new internet – one that removes the issues of the internet today and creates one that is safe, secure, and free.

Maidsafe is a new internet that doesn’t rely on external servers to store data – instead it takes advantage of the enormous amount of unused space on everyone’s computers. The data is distributed in bits and pieces randomly through a complex algorithm and then is stored on different computers across the network, which can only be accessed by you through a password. No one knows where the data is stored – making it unaccessible to anyone trying to steal it. Maidsafe also removes all third parties from the management of the internet by steering clear of using the Domain Name Service that controls URLs. This makes the internet safe from hackers.

What Sparks Our Fire: A more secure and safe internet, so we no longer have to live in fear of our information being stolen.

Do you think it’s time for a more secure internet?

TouchCar

Industry leaders are slowly finding touchscreens in new-model cars to be very distracting and can cause a loss of focus on the road. My car still has a cassette player, so this obviously doesn’t apply to me, but the minute controls and over-filled screens on many touchscreen-enabled cars can be a lot more frustrating than my current “two knobs and a button” setup. Therefore, a problem needs to be solved: how do you create a touchscreen interface that can be operated hands free?

Designer Matthaeus Krenn is testing an interface that may just solve this problem. In his words: “I propose a new mode that can be invoked at any time: It clears the entire screen of those tiny, intangible control elements and makes way for big, forgiving gestures that can be performed anywhere. In place of the lost tactile feedback, the interface leverages the driver’s muscle memory to ensure their ability to control crucial features without taking their eyes off the road.”

What Sparks Our Fire: Not following a trend, but rather native-izing an existing technology to the needs and constraints of drivers.

Do you think this is a useful concept, or would you prefer the old-school version?