Each week Ross Rubin contributes Switched On, a column about technology, multimedia, and digital entertainment.

As demonstrated by last year's purchases of map providers Navteq and Tele Atlas, companies are betting big on the future of location-based services. Knowing, processing, and integrating the location of people and things can be a valuable bridge between the digital and physical worlds, but today most of the activity is in the simple direction of cars from a location to a destination.

Zoombak offers a portable unit about the size of a Zippo lighter that integrates a GPS receiver and cellular radio that reports back on its location when queried. The company offers the unit in two packages -- one for use in vehicles and the other for use with dogs.

The receivers in both products are identical and the packages are distinguished by their included accessories: the one for pets includes a collar attachment. Unlike that of one competitor, PocketFinder, the Zoombak receiver is not waterproof, but the company offers tips on how to make it better withstand the elements.

If you can believe it (and we think you can), Toyota is already hard at work on a new battery system to replace its lithium-ion units currently slated for use in upcoming models. According to a report in Automotive News Europe, the company is hoping to adopt a more advanced battery for its hybrid vehicles in about 12 years as part of its Global Vision 2020 plan. The automaker won't say what technology it plans on moving towards, though it has suggested that air-zinc batteries could be a possible solution for maintaining its dominance in the hybrid vehicle market. In June the company will launch a new division dedicated to developing technologies for future cell power, while its lithium-ion vehicles will hit the roads around 2010.

[Via Autoblog]

Apparently, Microsoft has plans for Sync that extend beyond the standard voice-activation scheme they've got going right now. The company wants to deliver a wider range of network connectivity for in-car use, and they're debating the possibility of moving away from subscription-based services to an ad-funded scenario. What exactly does that mean? We'll let Martin Thall, general manager of Microsoft's Automotive Business Unit explain: "We know where you are and we know where you're headed," he says, seemingly unaware of the Orwellian implications. "We could target that advertising directly to your car." You getting that? Targeted ads. In your car. While you're driving. Apparently, execs don't think you'll mind being bombarded inside your vehicle because you're, "used to advertising in the car. We hear ads on the radio and see billboards on the road." Of course, this is speculation on future technologies, so nothing is set in stone -- hopefully someone comes to their senses before our hovercar interiors glitter with holographic spam.

Let's face it, car designers need to look deeper for next-generation designs these days. In a more carefree time, you could put two nasty, rectangular hunks of metal on top of one another, stick on a few over-sized tires, mount a faux-wood steering wheel to the dash, and call it a Ford. These days, it's a buyer's market -- and you need to step up your game. Enter Chrysler's Jeep Renegade 2008 concept, a design boosted directly from the collective unconscious (namely, the minds of Halo players everywhere) that looks like a tank, yet runs on a lithium ion-powered electron motor and a small Bluetec diesel generator, giving this never-to-be a combined 110 MPG range. Roof mounted gatling gun and Covenant-destroying missiles not included.

MIT -- long known for winning all sorts of competitions involving modern technology -- has entered into another heated contest which will test its mettle against a wide-variety of opponents... and that contest is the DARPA Urban Challenge. DARPA, who we know and love for its fantastic flights of scientific fancy (see the shoot-through shield and laser-guided bullets) has posed a challenge to contestants to create an autonomous auto (AKA a self-controlled vehicle) which can traverse an urban landscape (such as city streets) all by its lonesome. To create such a vehicle, a team at MIT has taken a typical Land Rover, outfitted it with 40 CPU "cores", high-end GPS receivers, inertial sensors, laser scanners called LIDAR (light detection and ranging), highly sensitive odometers, and a slew of video cameras. The team hopes to pool all of these disparate sensing technologies into a cohesive whole which will imbue their vehicle the preternatural ability to operate on its own in an urban setting. These are truly exciting times to be a car.

So it looks like the last two decades have been hell on the once proud Knight Industries: after a disastrous attempt to leech onto the dotcom boom by having Michael Knight trawl the internet for cyber-criminals with his virtual sidekick C.L.I.P.P.Y., the company was forced to disband its FLAG division and sell off most of its assets, including cars, semi-trailers, and saddest of all, RC3 and Bonnie. The upside of this blow to vigilante law enforcement was that car nuts could finally get their hands on an original Knight Industries Two Thousand (only ten were ever made), with a version hitting the auction block in 2004, and now one of the four original K.I.T.T.s up for sale by a California business. Kassabian Motors is offering the 1982 Pontiac Trans Am V-8 for a cool $150,000, which gets you a restored interior, those retro light up controls, and of course the snazzy red nose scanner, but unfortunately, no oil slick or Super Pursuit Mode. Finally, as a special bonus to overseas bidders, Kassabian will also reportedly retrofit the car with a CD changer sporting all of David Hasselhoff's many hits at no additional charge: "Michael, we seem to have a problem; these songs totally suck."

[Via Boing Boing]

In a bid to "stop automotive theft" from occurring so frequently in Malaysia, the Road Transport Department will begin fitting vehicles with RFID-equipped license plates that can be quickly scanned and analyzed by the boys in blue. The plate itself will receive a few minor aesthetic changes, but the integrated microchip is where the rubber hits the road; only authorized mechanics will be able to actually install the plates, and the microchip onboard will house information about the vehicle's model, make, and even driver information. The e-plate, as it's so aptly named, has already quelled theft in Japan (and hit Britain, too), and the RTD hopes that Kuala Lumpur will see the same drops in crime as the new plates make things much more difficult for carjackers since swapping out the plates won't exactly bypass security. The RTD's director-general has already set the implementation in motion, aiming to equip "new cars" first, while "older" (read: less desirable) whips will get the RFID treatment later on.

[Via Inquirer]

If the Cardinal (or Tartans) think that the 2007 DARPA Urban Challenge will be a gimme, they may want to sneak a peek at the looming competition. Students from NC State's College of Engineering are readying a highly modified Lotus Elise for next year's autonomous vehicle contest, and are working with Insight Technologies as well as Lotus' own engineering group to craft what's likely to be the sexiest unmanned vehicle on the track. Dubbed the Insight Racing team, the crew is loading the whip with "sensors and onboard computers that have been programmed to autonomously maneuver it through an urban setting complete with traffic, intersections and traffic circles." Moreover, the highly-coveted machine will be able to handle its own parking duties (and pose for glamour shots) when the day's done. After finishing 12th overall with just a Chevrolet Suburban in the 2005 Challenge, the Pack hopes its newfangled toy (and subsequent cornering abilities) can propel them to the top come next November.

Lest you think Honda's devoting all its attention these days to developing future instruments of destruction, you can take some comfort in the fact that it is (for now) primarily a car company and, as such, is still working on technology to help us humans while we're stuck driving ourselves around. To that end, the company's just unveiled a new diesel powertrain system that is says will run as clean as a gasoline-powered car, not to mention provide better mileage. Diesel-powered vehicles are already known as gas-sippers, of course, but also have higher exhaust levels of nitrogen oxide. To cut that down, Honda incorporated a rather dangerous-sounding two-layer catalytic converter into the drivetrain, which converts the nitrogen oxide into less environmentally-harmful nitrogen. The first cars using the new diesel technology are set to hit the U.S. market in 2009, with Honda also open to the idea of licensing the technology to other automakers. In related news, Honda also announced an updated version of its Honda FCX fuel-cell vehicle, upping the maximum driving range to 354 miles and the max speed to a respectable 100 miles per hour. It'll be available in limited numbers in Japan and the United States in 2008, and we assume that when they say "limited" they really mean it.

Yes, we know you all weren't expecting this invention until about the year 3000 from a shifty scientist named Wernstrom, and yet here we are in -- hold on, let us check our watch -- 2006 and already the reverse wetsuit for fish has nearly been perfected. Now granted, Seth Weiner's Terranaut II rig doesn't allow its Blood Parrot fish occupant to run around like a madman on robotic legs -- in fact, the "pilot" is lucky to hit 1MPH in this wheeled contraption -- but imagine the freedom it must feel being able to navigate its once-stationary bowl throughout some of the world's finest art galleries. (Unlike us, we bet the little critter can even distinguish a Manet from a Monet). The rather simple vehicle uses a digital camera to track fishy's movements in the bowl, and propel itself in the corresponding direction -- although from the quick cuts on the sample video, it would seem that there's less forward momentum and more spinning around in circles. Still, it's nice to see someone giving these creatures a shot at mobility, and when all the radioactive waste we dump into their natural habitats eventually turns them into super-smart mutants, we hope they'll remember this small gesture before stuffing us into glass cages and feeding us processed members of our own species.

[Via digg]

Since the National Transportation Safety Board "recommended" that all new vehicles be equipped with some form of black box -- more appropriately known as an Event Data Recorder (EDR) -- manufacturers have slowly but surely been sneaking them in. Deliberately or otherwise, a vast majority of automakers have neglected to inform customers that their vehicle has such a device installed in it, and as you'd probably expect, it's driving privacy advocates up the wall. As these EDR boxes become more popular, some form of control and notification system apparently needed to be devised, thus the NTSB stepped in and threw down some uniform regulations. Beginning in 2011, all automakers must include "information in the owner's manual" about the specific data that the EDR collects. Fortunately for car companies, the mandate goes a step further by standardizing the data collected by each box, so everyone's privacy is invaded equally. We'll just have to wait and see if those newly disclosed deets include a step by step guide to de-activating the incriminating evidence data collection, but we don't have a good feeling about all that.

[Via Slashdot]

Finding real-time traffic data is becoming less unusual thanks to nav units popping up more frequently in vehicles nowadays, but real-time data about about potential road hazards, pedestrians in the way, and other random tidbits that could prevent a serious headache (or worse) isn't quite there yet. Japan's National Police Agency is on the ball, however, and hopes to take the currently installed Vehicle Information and Communication System (VICS) to the next level (and make sure that more than 10 percent of the population actually takes advantage of it). The Driving Safety Support System (DSSS) is being developed by the Universal Traffic Management Society of Japan (UTMS), and aside from creating a maze of acronyms to keep track of, it plans on utilizing two-way infrared beacons -- installed about 5.5 meters above the street -- to analyze real-time information about street conditions, hazards, and pedestrians who aren't paying attention. The beacons will reportedly beam the data to your in-car navigation system, and depending on your specific location, will be tailored to address intersections and crossroads that you are actually approaching. Approximately 20 types of subsystems could be installed by 2008, with 5 of these currently being tested -- the beacons are placed in "accident-prone" areas, and are each designed to help prevent a certain type of mishap, be it a rear-end collision, right-turn fender bender, or flattening of an innocent bystander or two. While this sounds like an excellent way to curb vehicular chaos in a nation where traffic is becoming a serious issue, we can't exactly envision this taking off like the UTMS probably hopes -- it's going to take quite awhile before a significant amount of drivers can rock navigation systems in their rides, and who's to say that all this pertinent information demanding the driver's attention won't become a hazard in and of itself?

[Via Pink Tentacle]