Automatic's BYO Telematics | The Verge

Automatic is a combination app and hardware unit, launching this May for $69.95. It mixes your car's data with Google Maps and gas pricing info to create a comprehensive record of every trip you take, tracking fuel efficiency, acceleration and engine alerts. It's a familiar playbook — opening up a legacy tech into the mobile world — but few companies have tried it on the automotive world. And with backing from Y Combinator and Founders Fund, Automatic has the resources to give it a shot.

​In the connected car space, there are a few basic approaches: dumb car (BYO telematics and infotainment), connected telematics/BYO infotainment, or connected telematics and infotainment.  A majority of cars on the road fall into the first bucket.  A growing number of cars are falling into the second bucket (think of all GM cars with OnStar).  The third is an area of heated debate within the industry - driven mainly by debates around who pays for the data and radically different development cycles between telco networks and vehicle lifecycles.

This solution from Automatic is interesting because it can address the largest part of the market - the legacy non-connected cars.  It could even address the second bucket because GM doesn't alway like to share it's data with you.  So in that sense it makes this interesting. ​

I'm am a bit wear of ODB-II, however.  In the US it has been fairly standardized for quite a while.  Worldwide that is definitely not the case.  In addition, most manufacturers implement the bare minimum data set over ODB-II and the rest of the data is either in obfuscated, proprietary formats or even encrypted.​  Internationally, you also run the risk of voiding your warranty by plugging a 3rd-party device into the ODB port.

At any rate, this looks pretty compelling and at $70 could be worth a try.​

Pebble smartwatch review | The Verge

Here's a review of the Pebble Smartwatch from Nilay Patel of The Verge.  I think this is interesting for a couple of reasons.  First, Pebble was one of the most highly publicized projects to come out of Kickstarter, and more importantly, it was a successful (albeit delayed) launch.  Second, I think wearable tech is going to be one of the next two big areas of consumer product innovation (TV will be the other).

I have long argued that there isn't going to be one device that replaces the PC.  Rather, it's going to be many separate devices that work together (including PAN, LAN, and with the cloud, WAN).  The watch is one of these devices, along with glasses, phones, tablets, connected appliances, Smart TV's, etc. all working in concert.  Personal preferences are going to drive the device mix and end experience.  For example, I paid thousands of dollars to "fix" my eyes because I hate wearing glasses, so no matter how compelling, Google Glass won't be in my device mix.  I know plenty of others who hate wearing watches.