New BMW Concept Electric Car with iPhone App?

BMW already have an electric car in their stable, the Mini-E, which has begun trials with selected members of the public. Now BMW are adding to the fleet of electric vehicles with the BMW Concept ActiveE; an electric vehicle under the BMW brand. More specifically it is a 1 Series Coupé. The interesting thing and the reason why I am writing about this is that in the press release there is mention of BMW’s ConnectedDrive services which allow a phone to connect to the vehicle to operate certain vehicle features and statuses:

“This includes specific remote functions which enable the use of a mobile phone to check the charge status of the battery, search for public charging stations and activate the vehicle’s auxiliary heating and air conditioning functions.”

While there is no mention of any brand of phone in particular, the press images do include some images which may be mock-ups of an iPhone application.

Some of the features which seem to be shown in the iPhone app images include: locate a charging station; schedule climate control; charge status and mileage remaining.

The vehicle itself is is said to give a maximum output of 170bhp and a maximum torque of 250Nm. 0-62mph is expected to be less than 9 seconds with top speed of 90mph (electronically limited) and range of up to 100 miles. If you have access to a 50amp connection, the car can be fully charged in as little as three hours.

Hopefully we will see some of these ConnectedDrive features from other manufacturers also without having to resort to third party add-ons in the near future.

Official Tesco.com iPhone App Coming?

Nick Lansley’s Tech for Tesco.com blog is in my Google Reader subscriptions, it’s the sort of blog I like as Nick gives an insight into the technology goings on behind a company that probably everyone in the UK is familiar with. The interesting part is seeing new technology being considered and used as part of a highly successful business and knowing that it could provide improvements to the way we shop or interact with the company.

I had previously followed Nick’s blog after seeing him present the Tesco application created with Conchango at Microsoft’s PDC2008. Since then, the opening up of the Tesco.com API had been announced along with a prototype ‘Beauty Room’ Silverlight app amongst other things of interest. I hoped to get on the API bandwagon to create an app where items in the kitchen could have their barcode scanned, or if they come with RFID tags, could be detected and potential recipes be suggested for that evening or even suggest items to add to the shopping list to increase the number of recipe suggestions.

My app thoughts aside, there is another channel for those wishing to create applications linking into Tesco, how about an iPhone application? On Nick’s blog, the latest post talks about how Tesco.com are open to creating an iPhone app and have asked the developer community to continue and create their own apps which will also have access to the checkout as will the official Tesco.com app. Nick makes it clear that the official app won’t have any “…secret privileged access to our service so will not present an ‘unfair advantage’ over third party apps.” So all the more reason to continue working on your apps. The application the Tesco.com team will be working on aims to be a simple one which can do the basics of shopping well. This leaves the door open for others to create apps with funky features such as data visualisation, list suggestions, connecting with other online to-do apps and information sources to create unique and engaging apps.

Now, if anyone is reading this, how about a Tesco.com app which compares items in your shopping basket, with the deals listings on HotUKDeals.com and other offer sites to see if you could make a saving elsewhere or even suggest Tesco deals from Hot UK Deals that may be of interest depending on which section of the store you are browsing, eg. If I was in the Dairy section of the app/site/API, a search would be run on Hot UK Deals for items relating to Tesco’s dairy selection and then display this at the top or bottom of the page or a small star with a number superimposed, denoting the number of offers available which, upon tapping/clicking would display the offers.

Read the post on Nick Lansley’s blog.

Want Hotmail on your iPhone? POP3 Access is Enabled

In January, the Windows Live team announced that POP3 access was enabled for Hotmail in the following countries: United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, France, Japan, Spain, Germany, Italy and the Netherlands.

Having just read on Lifehacker that an insider tip to Ars Technica revealed that POP3 access has been rolled out to the US and Brazil, I thought it might be appropriate to remind those with iPhones what this means…

 

Yes, you can now access Hotmail on the iPhone, no need to pay for apps from the App Store, just put the following settings into your device’s email client:

POP server: pop3.live.com (Port 995)  
POP SSL required? Yes
User name: Your Windows Live ID, for example yourname@hotmail.com
Password: The password you usually use to sign in to Hotmail or Windows Live
SMTP server: smtp.live.com (Port 25)  
Authentication required? Yes (this matches your POP username and password)
TLS/SSL required? Yes

  Enjoy!

Google Latitude now lets you stalk friends!

I’m trying out a different post method for this one in an attempt to get to the point!

Today, Google launched Latitude, which is a location based feature integrated into Google Maps and accessible from the iGoogle and most expandable mobile devices.

Who: Google

What: Google Latitude – a location aware app that lets you see where your friends/contacts are on a map and lets you provide your GPS location information via a GPS enabled device for others to see. Manual location selection is available.