GRLT.com

2009 Honda Insight Hybrid to Make World Debut at the North American International Auto Show

Wed, 03 Dec 2008 22:22:00 +0100

Honda Press release:

TORRANCE, Calif., Dec. 3, 2008 - The all-new 2009 Honda Insight hybrid will make its world debut in January at the North American International Auto Show in Detroit. The five-passenger, five-door Insight will go on sale in the spring of 2009.

The Insight is expected to have annual global sales of 200,000 units per year - approximately 100,000 in North America - and will utilize a new interactive, driver-focused fuel economy enhancement technology named the Ecological Drive Assist System (Eco AssistT).

Microsoft retiring FolderShare

Wed, 19 Nov 2008 13:15:00 +0100

I just got a text message from the FolderShare team blog,

November 19

Windows Live Sync replacing FolderShare: What you need to know

Dear FolderShare friends,

We want to let you know what's next for FolderShare, and to make you aware of some important upcoming changes.

In December, we will release a new product called Windows Live Sync. You can think of it as FolderShare 2.0. It's going to look familiar and offer the same great features, plus:

More folders and files - sync up to 20 folders with 20,000 files each.

Integration with Windows Live ID - no more extra sign-in stuff to remember.

Integration with the Recycle Bin - no more separate Trash folder to fiddle with.

New client versions for both Windows and Mac.�

Unicode support - sync files in other languages.

Midlands Hybrid Owners Club Meeting

Wed, 06 Aug 2008 06:47:00 +0100

The Midlands Hybrid Club has two components, The Midlands Hybrid Club, and the Midlands Hybrid Owners Club.� The Hybrid Club focuses on spreading clean personal transportation technology and fostering environmental stewardship. While the owners club takes this concept and frames it from the perspective of the owners/operators of cleaner cars and trucks.

On the Evening of Thursday, August 14th at 6:45 PM we will hold a club meeting at Midlands Honda.� The goal of this meeting is determine what topics the Owners Club members want to focus on.� Owners of Honda and other manufacturers: Hybrid, Compressed Natural Gas, Hydrogen, Bio-Diesel, and other low-emission/low environmental impact vehicles, and Electric Vehicles are welcome.

Please see the Midlands Hybrid Club website for more information as it becomes available.

A special thanks goes out to Midlands Honda and the Gainesville Hybrid Club for their continued support of the Midlands Hybrid Club and Midlands Hybrid Owners Club.

Zune integration Car Audio

Mon, 12 May 2008 08:25:00 +0100

This is the first part of a review series about the Soundgate Zune integration solutions due to the modular nature of the product.

Ever since I had my Creative Zen Vision:M tethered to my Civic’s aftermarket radio, I’ve dreamed of a direct connection, like the one seen on some BMW and Scion vehicles. An iPod can plug directly into the stereo system and charge while providing digital audio and remote controls via the steering wheel or head unit; except designed for alternative players. I have always admired Apple products but there is usually something about them keeping me away, and the iPhone and iPod exude this condescending vibe at a level of eleven. After Microsoft stabbed Plays-for-sure in the back and my Urge account was sold to Real/Rhapsody, I have been using a Zune 80.

I saw Jason Dunn’s piece from CES

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where he interviewed a Stillwater Designs (the parent company for Kicker and Soundgate) employee, Joe Hobart. They mentioned my exact usage scenario, I listen to my music most in my car and I do not charge it there, arriving with a drained player and on long trips due to my listening style, a dead player. They were describing a device that hooked directly to the factory radio and the Zune; the interviewee mentioned both Honda and Toyota, radios I work with everyday. He described how I would be able to listen to my Zune through my factory radio and use my steering wheel controls and head-unit’s buttons to control my Zune but also Voice Command (He didn’t say voice command but that is an OEM control for me and I later confirmed this).

What is Earth Day? The encyclopedia entry from Encarta

Tue, 22 Apr 2008 06:39:00 +0100

Encarta has an easy read on the history of Earth Day.� What are you doing or what did you do for Earth Day this year?

I attended Earth Fare, and will help Keep Midlands Beautiful with a project early next week.� Drop a comment I'm curious what everyone is up to this year.

Article: What is Earth Day? The official encyclopedia entry from Encarta

Positions available

Mon, 21 Apr 2008 23:48:00 +0100

I have needed to make this post for some time now.� FLhybrid.com needs a local event coordinator, and a volunteer editor.� Midlands Hybrid can use an assistant event coordinator and a volunteer editor as well.� Please send your information via the Contact us page at GRLT.com

When planning some of the recent events for the Midlands Hybrid Club I realized that the physical distance between the club and myself has made regular events difficult for me to orchestrate from South Carolina without hiring someone.� I want the Florida club to have the same opportunities as the South Carolina Club, what I'm looking for is someone energetic and enthusiastic who can handle the stresses of building awareness through events such as gatherings and fundraisers.� I can still do major functions and remote based gatherings with everything as it is. When going over the short-term goals for the Midlands club and after a particularly hard-hitting question from a reporter at The Gainesville Sun, I want to make sure all the clean personal transportation clubs to have the same opportunities available so that national events are not out of reach.

Kacey Green
for the GCustom clean personal transportation clubs
“Promoting the spread of clean personal transportation technology.”

Earth Day Event Saturday 4.19.2008 @ Earth Fare Columbia, SC

Mon, 14 Apr 2008 23:51:39 +0100

*This is a draft post the reason for an incomplete posting is to provide notice for members and guests wishing to attend Earth Day functions.*

�

This year GRLT.com, FLhybrid.com, GChybrid.com, Midlands Honda & MidlandsHybrid.com will be joining the Earth Day festivities at Earth Fare on Devine Street. The GCustom brands will be playing a minor role, supporting the soft launch of The Midlands Hybrid Club. The official soft launch of MidlandsHybrid.com will be Saturday April 19.GCustom and Midlands Honda are the launch sponsors of the new club. The Midlands Hybrid Club will focus on the spread of clean personal transportation technologies, and will have an owner's club open to all brands of hybrids.There will be a strong focus on green living and the green lifestyle, this club is slated to have a more frequent and bigger local presence than any club sponsored by GCustom.com to date. MidlandsHybrid.com is going to be the first green focused site in the GCustom Family not to share the GRLT.com domain, the site will have a differing number, and type of ads as the revenue model is not self-sufficiency, but rather increasing local awareness for green lifestyles, a more capital intense project.

Please welcome our first dealer sponsor, Midlands Honda, Midlands Honda has pledged full support for the new club and the General Manager, Randy Threatt (pronounced Threet), has already shown marvelous support for the “Think globally, live locally” lifestyle. In the interest of full disclosure: the PSC Automotive Group (the owners of Midlands Honda) employs me, I am also the Corporate Liaison between the company and the club.

GChybrid, FLhybrid, and GRLT will remain on the same domain for the short term but FLhybrid will be having a re-launch and finally get its own space. GChybrid will help keep all these separate clubs cohesive and will allow GCustom to focus on environmental endeavors. GRLT will return to the previous schedule of posting on interesting technology topics and will still have the automotive focus veteran readers remember fondly. Most of the sites will also sport full forums a feature our readers have request make a comeback.

The old forums are coming back!

Sun, 13 Apr 2008 16:09:00 +0100

I've received many requests to bring back the old forums and to remove the new forums.� I don't like the new forums either, so shortly after I update the site framework, I'll convert the old forums to a newer version and re-integrate them with the front-end of the site.

Kacey Green
GRLT.com
"Tech with a twist of lime!"
Express yourself by posting a comment.

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Tires

Sun, 25 Nov 2007 08:31:31 +0100

I'm still here, just working way too many hours again.

I need two new tires for the Prius, what tires have you had the best experience with?� I'm not really interested in the OEM tires.� I'm currently looking at the Continental ContiProContact Blackwall but the reviews are a mixed bag.� The tire I've heard the best reviews on from other Prius drivers is the Michelin MX4V Plus, but that is way out of my current budget.

Add a comment to let me know what you think.

Net Neutrality Revived Again

Sat, 03 Nov 2007 09:59:08 +0100

�

�� I don't know anyone who supports net neutrality more than I do and I don't know anyone who was more upset that nothing seemed to come from the recent campaign to keep the internet neutral. A new wave of concern seems to be rising after several companies have displayed that they are not keeping the net neutral.

�� What is "net neutrality" and why should you care? Take for instance this web site. If we post something on here about say Cromcast, (not a real company) and Cromcast is your internet provider, they might block our site. Do you think that someone working at Cromcast should have the ability to make decisions for you?? Can someone else really make a better decision about what YOU look at than YOU? Net neutrality would prevent that from becoming a reality. �

Nokia 6102i not what I expected

Fri, 02 Nov 2007 16:01:59 +0100

�Pictured: Nokia's 6102i.

�

I recently bought a new Nokia6102i. This phone was displayed as a camera phone with tons of cool stuff loaded into it and the ability to store pictures, ringtones, and graphics.

�

Macs attacked by trojan.

Fri, 02 Nov 2007 10:47:13 +0100

�

Are Macs as safe as they once were? Or are Macs the new target of malware authors and hackers?

As reported on WSJ.com

�

"Apple on Thursday confirmed reports of pornography Web sites where hidden software, once downloaded, could take control of an Apple computer. Apple did not immediately respond to claims that it is the first instance of a Trojan horse attack on Apple's Macintosh platform."

�

I'm BAAAACK!

Fri, 02 Nov 2007 10:18:44 +0100

Greetings to all. I would like to inform you all that I have returned from a very long time away from the site. Being away for so long has not kept me from thinking about all the articles and whatnot that I could have posted, or comments I could have made and read. I see that my counterpart Kacey has kept the site in tip top shape and i'm grateful to him.
Why was I away you may have asked yourself. Well its simple. College is expensive, and sometimes one reaches the point when they can no longer afford it on their own. Also, life can be dreadfully unfair and hit you with things that you never saw coming. Both of these things seemed to happen to me rather quickly and took me sometime to overcome.
Now however I am back, I'm healthy and I'm ready to have some fun!

Brandon M. Langston
GRLT.COM
"Tech with a twist of lime!"

Back from vacation

Tue, 16 Oct 2007 09:04:29 +0100

I just got back off of vacation; I feel much more refreshed and relaxed, the next regular post should come tonight.

GChybrid.com is now online and new regional Hybrid Clubs will be hosted there, FLhybrid.com will continue to service the Gainesville Hybrid Club and the other Floridian clubs.� Both sites will continue to redirect to GRLT.com, until I have time to develop unique interfaces for each site.� The graphics will be updated later today to reflect all the sites.

I will not be returning to the one post every day schedule, quality suffered and readers confided in me that while it was nice to have something new to read every day, they preferred my usual insightful (pun intended) musings.� The current plan is to post every other day like a long time back, and whenever I've got something to share.� For those of you who liked the shorter posts I'll mix them in to keep things fresh but the majority of the feedback was for the longer, more detailed posts.� They didn't dislike the short posts just the frequency.

I'd like to thank all of our regular readers, club members, and new viewers for taking the time to stop by and kick your feet up for a bit.

�P.S.
I'm always talking about my brother's band. We finally put the last touches on their site and set it loose on the web: www.TheUpsMusic.com, GCustom is sponsoring their web endeavours, this is the perfect opportunity to thank GCustom for their continued sponsorship of this site.

EV Mode

Thu, 20 Sep 2007 22:00:45 +0100

Yesterday I installed an EV switch in my Prius, the EV switch/button, persuades the engine not to run when certain conditions are met.� The EV button will only work below 35mph and within certain environmental and performance envelopes.� The install took about 45 minutes of actual work, but much longer in gathering the parts and studying the installation method I chose (Evan Fusco's headlight flasher method).� The hardest part of the install was getting the new pin 27 seated fully, my brother and I took the Prius out for a spin and the mod worked flawlessly.� My first commute with the EV button was a success; I noticed several parts of all of my past commutes where my Prius does stupid stuff.� The most common thing my Prius does during a commute is running the engine when the battery is at an acceptable state of charge (S.O.C.) and the emissions system is already at operating temperatures, and I'm at a complete stop for some time.� Another time my Prius runs its engine needlessly is during some downhill stretches where doing so is unnecessary.� I understand most of this is because it doesn't know what the upcoming terrain might surprise it with.

The main reason for installing the EV mode on my car was that I wanted to be able to shuffle the car around its various parking arrangements without having a senseless engine start.� How does running the engine for 60 seconds, to move the car 75 feet at the most, benefit the environment or improve air quality?� My wallet also disagrees, seven seconds is barely enough time to get out of a garage, and is not enough time to back out of most parking stalls and start moving forward. (I know it's not much but costs add up over the Prius' 100,000-150,000 warranted period).� Now I can move across small parking lots and driveways without wasting gas or adding additional pollution to the air when shuffling my car.

I added three MPGs to my commute by cutting the engine at times where the Prius was being stupid.� I will mention more when I have had more time to get accustomed to the new functionality.

EV mode as with any aftermarket modification may void a portion of your warranty.� If you have any questions about my experience let me know so when I'm writing the next article I will cover your questions right here for all to benefit.

Cross another mod off the list

Wed, 19 Sep 2007 22:42:47 +0100

Today I finished a project I had been planning since the month after delivery of my Prius. �I will provide more details in tomorrow's post(s).� What I will say is that the project involved the high voltage ECU and less than $3 spent purchasing parts.� One more hint, I'm looking forward to some of the low speed, high congestion sections of my commutes to be a great deal more silent, assuming I don't need the heater set to crazy levels.

I came across several hybrid drivers while running errands today and all but two waved, thank you all for making my day a bit brighter.

I am looking for story ideas and guest bloggers, if interested or if you have an idea, use the "contact us" page.

Hybrid watcher's jackpot

Tue, 18 Sep 2007 21:56:55 +0100

Today I struck the hybrid watcher's jackpot, two Prius at a gas station, lined up, both gassing up.� My Prius dropped down to three pips on the gas gauge after I'd dropped off the freeway to begin my 2 mile straight shot work is practically on the freeway after a 45 minute drive.� Yesterday's trip took me down to half a tank and driving home from work dropped me to four pips, I refuel at three pips when possible.� I do this because I refuse to become of the Prius owners who complain about the car suddenly stopping (because I was trying to drive without fuel) and wondering why.� NHW20 Prius have a message that pops up on the multi-function display (MFD) that says to add fuel immediately but it can be missed, though not easily.�

I had been at three pips for the latter half of my commute and the temperature was perfect for refueling, so I stopped at the nearest Top Tier gas station to work, a Shell. �The driver of a black 2006+ Prius(if anyone wants their 06 or new photographed alongside my 04 I will point out the differences) chose the same place and time to fill and the only available pump (facing the car's left) was right in front of this car and driver pair.� As I mentioned in an earlier post multiple Prius filling together are quite rare because of their fuel efficiency.

Quick summary on not taking the company car

Mon, 17 Sep 2007 22:24:47 +0100

Extremely quick update today, I left home at 06:45 Eastern so that I could make my meeting on time.� First, I drove right off the map (it is time to get My Prius' maps updated) when I realized the road I wanted to take had changed paths slightly.� I turned around and got back on the right track, when a black Prius crossed me, we traveled together for about a mile when they left me as they ran a red light they thought they'd make before it changed.� I found out that my company will be getting a fleet of Prius next year!� Round trip, I used half an indicated tank, and got an ok 51.5 MPG over more than 375 miles.� The reason for the poor mileage was mostly excessive speed, the set of interstates I used have steep hills and I let people push me well over the speed limit today, it had very little to do with the unfamiliar terrain, speeding hurts mileage but doing it into an unfavorable wind will destroy any progress made toward great fuel economy.

Now I need to get some rest, tomorrow I have to get to work early.� Thanks for reading I will see you tomorrow, good night.

Kacey Green

Why I've turned down the company car for tomorrow's business trip

Sun, 16 Sep 2007 22:42:54 +0100

Tomorrow I have a business trip scheduled, they offered me a company car and I declined for several reasons, the reasons that are relevant here were the environmental and resource conservation concerns.� First, my Prius is over two and a half times more fuel-efficient than the vehicle the company would loan me.� Second I would save time and distance travelled by leaving immediately from my house instead of going to work to pick up the vehicle and then going on my trip.� The time-savings and the reduced environmental impact of my trip by taking my car far outweigh the few miles of wear and tear I will add to the vehicle.��

Some other reasons worth discussing here against taking the company car follow.� First, I'm new to the area and the Prius knows its way better than I do, even with it having maps that are three years out of date. �I have not had them updated yet; old maps are better than no maps as long as one uses some common sense and does not blindly follow the computer's instructions. Fun fact some of the Prius geeks loaded their navigation DVDs on their computers and found the voice files are stored in a folder called Jill, so that is what we call the computer lady, Jill.� Another reason is my car can more readily play stuff I want to listen to through the sound system.� Next is my Prius is more comfortable than a Malibu, and lastly, I still have vivid memories of my little adventure.

Kacey Green
GRLT.com
"Tech with a twist of lime!"
Express yourself by posting a comment below.

My only day off in a week and I'm doing math?

Sat, 15 Sep 2007 22:49:48 +0100

I am enjoying my only day off in a week.� Let's talk about calculating your miles per gallon (MPG) over a tank of gas. The way the Prius calculates MPG is simple; the vehicle has four cylinders, it feeds the four cylinders the same amount of fuel, Prius multiply their consumption as measured in cylinder one by four to get total consumption.� 1*4=4 �4*amount of fuel used=total fuel consumed�� consumption/miles traveled= miles traveled for each unit of fuel consumed.� Now for the part that works on every car.� We don't usually have fuel flow meters that we can read, so we have to gauge how much fuel the car has used since last fill up.� Most people will not run their tanks dry to avoid stressing the car and to avoid being stranded in inconvenient situations.

If we cannot measure as the car consumes the fuel and we aren't able to measure a perfect tank how do we know how to gauge our progress without relying on what the car says?� We know something the car does not (usually) know, we know how much fuel we put in.� For example, if we put in 2 gallons of fuel to bring the car to full, then drove 50 miles and filled up again, this time the vehicle took 2.5 gallons to get to full, we used 2.5 gallons!� 50 miles/2.5 gallons= 20 miles per gallon.� There are only two minor inconveniences with this method of calculation.� You have to wait until you have used some fuel and refilled, and it is less accurate on single tanks for the Prius.� The reason for the loss of accuracy is, the North American Prius all have flexible fuel tanks and hold different amounts of fuel under different environmental variables.� Therefore, for the Prius this method only gives a rough estimate and the car gives a better and instant rough estimate.� However, this method combined over all the tank fills in question, will tell you the car's exact mileage for the series of fills in question.� If you pumped 80 gallons into the car and traveled 5000 miles for the tanks you are tracking, you achieved an average of 62.5 MPG!

Kacey Green
GRLT.com
"Tech with a twist of lime!"
Express yourself by posting a comment.
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