Cheap Tech

Do you trust Google to drive your car?

Google announced on Sunday that they have been testing a car that drives itself.

They sent out the automated cars (after mapping the route ahead of time and talking to the police) manned with a trained operator (who was charged with grabbing the wheel in case things went awry) and a software engineer who monitored how things were working.

Google claims it has logged 140,000 miles in its automated cars.

Which begs the question: If Google were to license the product and automated cars were available at your nearest auto dealer, would you buy one?

Google says the initiative was borne out of a desire to make roads safer. They say that automated vehicles could cut the number of U.S. accidents in half.

And if you had an automated car, what would you do during your commute? U.S. drivers spend an average of 52 minutes on the road to work and home.

Would you nap? Fire up the netbook and work? Surf the Web on your smartphone?

Ebooks are enticing, but I'm not sold

I borrowed a friend's Nook for a few days last week to give the much-talked about ebook reader a try.

Nook, is Barnes & Noble's entry into the ebook hardware market that started with Amazon's Kindle and has now expanded to include the Sony Reader, the Borders Kobo and others. ZD Net does a good job of rounding them up.

All use E Ink technology displays, which read just like a paperback and are easy on the eyes.

The Nook has an E Ink display on top and a rectangular touch screen below. You use the touch screen for managing your library and ordering material and for navigation on the page.

The Nook I borrowed was the full fledged $199 model that included both WiFi and 3G connectivity. The 3G options allows you to purchase and download material from anywhere you have cell phone coverage. For my purposes, the 3G option is overkill. Since I have a WiFi network at home and free hotspots are fairly pervasive, you can save $60 by purchasing a WiFi-only version.

The book experience with the Nook was impressive. Ordering and purchasing was a breeze, and the download was fast, even over the 3G network. The device was relatively light (about the weight of a Robert Jordan paperback), but narrower than an open a book. I read for about an hour before I felt the need to set it down for a rest.

Turning the E Ink page is slow if you compare it to the response of today's computer screens or mobile phones, but it really takes no longer than physically turning the page of a book.

I was interested in how the Nook would work with a newspaper or magazine, so I downloaded single editions of the New York Times, Chicago Tribune and the Star Tribune. Each cost 50-75 cents. While the text display was fine, moving from article to article and from section to section was painfully slow.

Halfway through a lengthy NYT piece, I lost interest. But to get back to the article directory, I had to page through the entire article, one pokey page at a time.

Navigating the article directory is also a bit perplexing at first. Once you get to the directory, each page displays one or two article headlines and summaries. You select your desired article by using the touchpad, then use the navigation buttons on the Nook's bezel to turn pages. But if you spend some time on the article, the touchscreen goes to sleep (likely to save battery life) and you have to tap a button to bring it back to life. It's not bad once you get used to it, but it's painfully slow when compared to leafing through a print edition.

One bonus: None of the periodicals I downloaded included any advertising.

Bottom line: If you travel a lot, an ebook is a no-brainer. If you're a stay-at-home reader, you can buy a lot of Stephen King paperbacks for $150!

Google Earth adds ocean discovery

Google Earth, the super-cool way to go where you can't afford, has just released version 5.0, which now allows users to dive beneath the surface of the ocean.

Google teamed with marine experts from National Geographic and the BBC to offer people underwater topography, points of interest and marine biology.

Version 5.0 also includes historical photos and imagery, so you can see how a place looked over time.

It's pretty cool stuff. And best of all, it's free!