Perhaps computers with control over everything in cars aren’t such a good idea. I’m sure more than one movie script author has predicted this kind of thing.

carbotPC.com was covered on Slashdot and the NYT today. They’re another entry into the PC-in-a-car market, and look to have a pretty nice product, at least on the surface.

The title of the Slashdot article (Your car is reading your email) caught my attention, because one of the other projects I’m working on involves putting a PC in cars and using voice commands to communicate. The inclusion of a GPS receiver and WiFi capabilities would simplify things for me quite a bit. All it’s missing is a cell-based Internet connection, which wouldn’t be too hard to add, although a PCMCIA slot would make things much easier.

Parking your car could be a whole lot easier in future.

This past week the fuel gauge on my GTi stopped responding properly. The needle would swing to full and stay there; I know my mileage isn’t that good. A search on the net turned up a couple of people who had similar problems, but they’d filled the car while the key was in the ignition. Apparently the gauge doesn’t reset properly.

My scenario was different - I always keep my keys in my pocket when fuelling - but it got to think about “rebooting” the car by disconnecting the battery for a minute. Sure enough, the gauge seems to be working again.

This isn’t the first time I’ve “fixed” a problem on the car this way, and none of the problems have resurfaced later (other than when I had a faulty mass airflow sensor). I can only imagine how much I’d have paid the dealer to fix this.