Two:Thirty AM

Today we look at an iPhone app called Dynolicious. A Dyno in my phone? what? how does that work?

The idea of an in car dyno is nothing new, G-Tech is a popular product in this arena, but at $200 – $300 it’s kind of pricey for the average person with curiosity. The iPhone is the same price, but hell you already have that. This is only an additional $13. The iPhone has a great set of accelerometers in it, which is what this app uses to measure HP.

This app measures the following and does it pretty damn accurately I must say:
* 0-60 MPH
* Other Speed Tests (0-10 MPH through 0-100 MPH in 10MPH increments)
* Quarter Mile Elapsed Time
* Quarter Mile Trap Speed
* Elapsed Time and Trap Speed for standard intervals (60′, 330′, 1/8 Mi, 1000′)
* Lateral G’s (current and peak)
* Braking G’s (current and peak)
* Wheel Horsepower
* Estimated Engine Horsepower

Below are some screenshots of the app. For 13 bucks it’s a cool little gadget to mess around with if you are a car enthusiast, or just curious about your cars performance.

Also check out Garage419′s video: Dynolicious vs. G-Tech

click images to enlarge.

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So my girlfriend and I got invites to a research study about “small cars” a couple weeks ago since we both have a “qualifying” car (both MINIs). At first we just figured it was a US car market ploy to get us to not call their cars crap, but after we arrived at the study we found out there were 5 cars total, and one of them was a car that isn’t even sold here in the US.. the Fiat 500. I was intrigued to say the least.

The 5 car line up was as follows:
1. Toyota Yaris (ehh, ok outside. Boring inside. Very underpowered.)
2. Honda Fit (Overall Blah.)
3. Smart Car (COMPLETE AND TOTAL PIECE OF SHIT, WORST CAR EVER!)
4. Fiat 500 (The only one in the bunch I would consider buying)
6. Nissan Versa (boring as all hell)

The idea of the study was to do some driving in the cars and simulate some normal driving conditions you might come up against in day to day life. So we went and drove all the cars around a course and had some interview questions that followed. Typical questions like, “what did you like and what didn’t you like”. But then the questions began to get very heavily waited toward the Fiat; all questions somehow relating to the Fiat. Long story short it was very apparent this was most likely put on by Fiat to gauge interest in bringing the Fiat stateside to compete in the small car market.

Im not even going to bother talking about the other 4 cars in this post because frankly, they were a non-event. Although I really should do a post about how much of a piece of shit the Smart car is.

The Fiat 500 was a pretty good little car. The trouble was that there IS a MINI, so every part of it was compared to a MINI. The car felt very MINI like, with some of the styling interior and exterior. To be completely honest if there was no MINI, I would definitely think about getting one. Trouble is, there IS a MINI.

I thought the transmission was kind of weird because it didn’t have the creep like most cars, it just completely disengaged when you let of the gas, which was supremely annoying and jerky when doing little stop and go type driving, but solid when driving normal (fast). One of the guys that worked on designing the transmission was there and after hearing me talk about it, took me out again on the course to drive it fast with no supervision. After that I was a little more pleased with the car’s overall performance. (him being there also hinted that this was put on by Fiat). I felt the car was underpowered too, coming from driving a modified R53 for so long, but he assured me there would be a “JCW like” kit for the Fiat 500 soon, so thats a plus for the little Fiat.

Overall it was a pretty solid car, but as I said before, I would still choose my MINI over the Fiat any day of the week.

I snapped a pic of the Fiat on my iPhone before getting yelled at for taking pics and posted it on twitter.

Fiat 500 Site

UPDATE 10/16/08:

Just got a follow up email that states the following:

“During the drive study, we asked how likely you would be to consider purchasing the green Fiat Cinco Cento for a future car, at a price of $13,500 (MSRP) at 40 miles per gallon on the highway. A picture of the car is provided below for your reference.” After yelling at me for taking a pic, they send me a high res pic directly to my email.

“What if you found out that the car was actually manufactured by a different company?  Would that change your purchase consideration?  Please indicate how likely you would be to purchase the same car if it was manufactured by each of the manufacturers below.”

The listed manufacturers were Chrysler / Honda / Ford / Hyundai. With a scale of 1 – 10.

Quite interesting, guess we will have to wait and find out what they do.

So we are walking toward the checkout at the local Staples, and out of the corner of my eye, I see see DVD’s for $4.99. I was somewhat intrigued because for the price and the newness of the DVD titles. I walked over and discovered a display rack titled “Flexplay.” I had never seen these before but they were calling it a “No Return DVD Rental”. I remember Circuit City tried this with their DIVX disposable rental DVD’s back in like 1999. It only lasted about 6 months before they shut it down because it was a horrible idea. Well the idea apparently seems to be a good idea to someone again, namely flexplay, because they are back. Same 48 hour period, same disposable nature, same everything really.

Packaging
The DVDs come in cardboard gatefold sleeve wrapped in shrink wrap. Once you open the cardboard sleeve you find a DVD disc in a vacuum sealed plastic wrapper. The cardboard sleeve has all the typical dvd info that a normal DVD case would have. Once you crack the seal of the vacuum sealed case your 48 hours begins. After 48 hours, the DVD will become unreliable. They do this by using a glue to adhere the 2 halves of the disc together that when introduced to air, starts to become cloudy, making it unreadable by your DVD player.

Ripping / Cracking the DVD
My first thought when seeing these DVDs was, can you rip them like a standard DVD, or did they add another layer of copy protection. Since they are so cheap, they would be a good choice for ripping. I used Handbrake to get a good quality MP4 out of it with no issues. The disks are no different from normal DVD in respect to ripping. If you want the raw VOBs, use your ripper of choice, MacTheRipper, DVDshrink, etc.

Usage / Playing
The DVD has a special (cheap looking) Flexplay menu system, but other than that, it’s the same movie. Pop it in your DVD player and you are off. We actually were able to play it past the 48 hours, so it’s not an exact time, just an approximation that it will “play reliably” for AT LEAST 48 hours. I tried playing it on various computers and DVD players with no kind of play back issues. I really don’t think these discs are gonna make it being sold at Staples, or anywhere for that matter. It’s simply a product that I don’t really think has a market. Not to mention it is SO wasteful. It says they are recyclable, but how many people are really going to do that? Not enough. Maybe I could see this being useful in an airport scenario? You are there and need a movie for your flight? Perhaps.

We will see how successful this idea is this go around. It will be interesting to see if in 8 years people have changed their mind about this technology.

Check out some photos of the packaging, disc changing properties, and of course it being microwaved :) LINK TO PHOTOS

Let me start by saying, I have been trying to find a set of headphones I like, for probably about 5 years. So this was no easy task to say the least. Finding a set that I actually say is good, that is. Some of the criteria for searching was that they must be ear bud type, comfortable enough to wear all day if necessary, not fall out of your ears every 35 seconds, and finally not have a cord that is over 3 feet. The pair I had previous to this was a set of Etymotic ER-6′s. They were ok at best, but I wont go into that, since this review is for the Bose. At first I was looking at some of the over the ear Bose headphones, and ended up with the in ear ones. My girlfriend had a set for about a month before I got mine, so I was fortunate enough to be able to do a try before I buy deal. I pretty much knew I was going to buy these within minutes of trying them out. They are by far the most comfortable set of in ear headphones I have ever used, not to mention they sound great too. Now I know what you are thinking, Bose, they must cost a fortune. Well no, they don’t. They are $99! Sometimes on sale for $89! That is really cheap in the grand scheme of things. If you have an iPhone don’t worry, they work with both the first gen iPhone as well as the 3G. In the box, you get several gel sizes to fit in almost any size ear comfortably. I can say first hand, you can literally wear these headphones all day with no discomfort. If you have been looking for a really good set of headphones for not a lot of money, these are the headphones you have been waiting for.

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