While other systems require the driver to focus away from the road—either by selecting letters from endless menus or on a touchscreen keyboard—the new Audi MMI touch allows for blind typing: The driver just writes naturally with a finger on the touchpad. The pad is strategically located next to the steering wheel and in front of the gear shift, so the writing can be done in a comfortable position, without having to focus on any screen.

The MMI system—which recognizes Latin, Cyrillic, Chinese, Cantonese, Japanese, and Korean characters—also has a rotary pushbutton for old school people, as well as voice control, but only the touch system allows the driver to enter commands while talking on the cellphone or playing music. You gotta love those Audi smartypants. [Autospies and Jalopnik]

The team that created it wants to see if they can really push performance in such a challenging environment. The modded Audi TTS—which is already the fastest autonomous car in the world, running at 130mph—will have to face gravel and paved dirty roads, with 7% grades that will take it from 4,721 ft to 9,390 ft high.

I'm glad I won't be inside, testing. Although after a near-crash experience in a car this Sunday, I think this will actually be kind of fun. Not as fun as getting trapped into the space shuttle cargo bay without no safety straps, but fun nonetheless. [BotJunkie]

We don't know much about the feature, integrated into Audi's MMI navigation system, partly because the Google translation of the source comes up with hilarious gold like "The switch salad on the center console is passé." Is it ever!

The new models will be coming out in November, and it looks like the revamped MMI is focusing on a touchscreen interface to simplify the process of navigation. Hopefully that extends to the odd inclusion of handwriting recognition in a car. [German Car Blog]

You can see it at the Goodwood Festival of Speed in West Sussex, England. [Judah via Dezeen]

The Audi Design Team collaborated with piano maker Bosendorfer to construct this grand piano, which was commissioned to celebrate Audi's centennial.

Here is their philosophy:

Generous surface areas ensure formal clarity; there are no decorative applications, the edges and lines are sharply drawn, the joints logically positioned. All these are important aspects of the Audi design.

And coincidentally, none are important aspects of piano design. But that's not the point, I suppose. The piano—brushed aluminum pedals, hood-prop-esque stand, wraparound body and all—will be debuted at the July 16th Audi Forum in Ingolstadt, Germany, and is (probably symbolically) priced at around $140,000. $140,000. [Autoevolution via Newlaunches]

Hulu. Summary: Alec Baldwin is an alien; TV turns brains to mush and that's a good thing; significant audience reached by a company that streams TV over the internet. We're evil and proud of it. Ed. Note: Hulu can't seem to get their embed crap straight with this post right now, and the site isn't loading the video, either. Suffice to say, it was good for a chuckle, and good for Hulu, which is certainly not a household name in U.S. households right now.

Update: Hulu Alec Baldwin Huluwood video is now available at their blog. Also, note to Hulu: You have to watch ads before you get to watch the ADS?! WTF?!

Vizio. Notes: We're here. We're cheap. People are buying our TVs. Deal with it. Oh, and there's a contest.

Audi. Notes: Jason Statham. Bad ass. And because they're better than BMW. — J.L.

Pixar's Up. Summary: How do you follow up a gem like Wall-E?

And then there were the 3D ads, featuring appearances by NBC's Chuck, the Sobe lizards, and the Dreamworks Aliens vs. Monsters animated flick. Who had the glasses ready? How'd it look to you?

Lastly, I am but a man, with beer in my system and BBQ covering my fingers. What did I neglect to mention that caught your eye during the commercial breaks? [Hulu, YouTube]

Of course we all know efficient LEDs will eventually find their way into every automobile, but the Audi R8 V10 takes the prize for being the first commercial vehicle to sport LEDs in everything. Headlights, running lights, turn signals—you name it there's an LED shining bright inside.

And not just shining, but "smartly" shining and adapting to the driver's needs.

Audi developers are convinced that future generations of headlights will react to weather conditions, a vehicle’s speed, the distance between vehicles, and potentially dangerous objects. “We’re striving to create intelligent headlights and taillights which think and anticipate in the interest of enhancing a driver’s safety and comfort. For example, there are already high-beam headlights in pre-series development which will allow drivers to navigate roads at night without temporarily blinding oncoming drivers. This is made possible by a variable distribution of light: An electronic system continuously calculates the distance to any approaching vehicles to ensure that the road ahead is ideally illuminated at all times – without irritating oncoming drivers," said Dr. Wolfgang Huhn, Head of the Light and Visibility Department at Audi.

Sheesh. You know you're a luxury car manufacturer when you have a Light and Visibility Department. [Gizmag and Jalopnik]

There's no evidence to suggest it currently transmits a signal from car to the traffic light, one that could perhaps tell it to turn green when you approach. Audi did leave that open ended, though, saying in its press statement:

The experimental ‘Travolution’ system...will not only improve synchronisation and phasing of traffic light networks to reduce stopping times, but could also dramatically reduce the number of actual stops needed by creating a communications link between cars and the traffic light network.

It's still not clear what happens in unexpected traffic, and Travolution definitely doesn't tell you what to do when the grandma in front of you doesn't also happen to have a specially outfitted A5 or A6 Avant. If enough lights are rigged up, though, I'm sure a portable version could be designed so even jalopies could get a shot at winning the sequenced-light game. [Jalopnik]

Dashboard UIs have been getting a lot of geek attention lately, especially in the Gran Turismo-inspired Nissan GT-R. For now it's still just a concept, but it's reported that it, or something like it, will soon find its way into Audi SUVs. Can we call it KITT? [TG Daily via Crunch Gear]

Futuremark Announces Groundbreaking Automotive Demo for Audi at NVISION

San Jose, California – Aug. 25th, 2008 – Futuremark, creators of the industry standard benchmarking software for graphics performance for OpenGL ES and DirectX APIs, has created a demonstration for Audi’s In-Car Graphics System future concept to be shown for the first time at NVISION in San Jose. It delivers a fully rendered car dashboard and all instruments shown in a 3D view, including 3D navigation using stunning and realistic effects and viewsas well as a 3D car infotainment system with vehicle info and cool 3D environmental controls rendered in real-time for on-road Automotive usage.

“We are delighted to work with Audi due to their professional expertise in the car industry,” said Petri Talala, Vice President and General Manager of the Handheld and Embedded Group at Futuremark Oy., “Audi is a leader in this field with sophisticated, real-time rendered and high quality content available for future infotainment systems, and being able to have our graphics engine experts and artists contribute to this effort is very special for Futuremark.”

In-Car graphics systems are evolving rapidly with an increasing amount of digital instrumentation used inside of automotive designs. Khronos APIs such as OpenGL and OpenGL ES will be widely adopted for rendering backend of digital instrumentation. With this new automotive demo, Futuremark is showing the flexibility of both its OpenGL ES engines and its art pipelines that were used to deliver this project on an entirely new platform to Audi’s delight. The Engines and Pipeline Tools used to create the demo are all available for licensing directly from Futuremark. Also offered are custom demo services for Automotive companies who want to show off tomorrows User Interface and Digital 3D designs for Automobiles today. Futuremark’s has an upcoming automotive benchmark that is in development which will utilize real-world use cases such as car dashboard, info-system, and navigation workloads based on OpenGL ES 1.x and ES 2.0.

For more information on having Futuremark create your Automotive vision or for more information concerning Futuremark’s Mobile and Embedded products, in Europe and Asia, contact Petri Talala. In North America contact Oliver Baltuch at the contact information below.

About Futuremark Corporation Futuremark Corporation serves the mobile industry with professional application performance analysis tools and workloads. Our world renowned product portfolio includes 3DMark®Mobile for OpenGL ES 1.x and OpenGL ES 2.0, VGMark™ for OpenVG 1.x, and SPMark™ for Symbian, Windows Mobile, Linux and mobile Java. In addition, we license digital content creation tool chain middleware to 3D application developers, chip vendors and handset manufacturers. For more information, please visit www.futuremark.com

© 2008 Futuremark® Corporation. 3DMark®, PCMark®, SPMark™, VGMark™ and YouGamers™ trademarks and logos, Futuremark® character names and distinctive likenesses, are the exclusive property of Futuremark Corporation.

It is proposed the gadget will have both Wi-Fi and 3G (UMTS) connectivity, allowing for the appropriate connection in different situations. An onboard camera also allows for photography and theft prevention. At this point it's all up in concept heaven, but if it ever does come to fruition, I'll take one for my imaginary Audi R8, I have been getting rather lost on my imaginary drives around the cosmos; this will be handy. I wonder if it works in Haroon's imaginary land. Of course it does—they should add that to the feature list. [Blogo Wogo]

Made of more than 900 individual parts, it has dual disc brakes, seven gears and the body is made of aluminum. The interior is so rich, it uses the same leather the company puts in its Audi TT sports cars. It's going to be built in a limited run of 999 cars, so you'd better hurry up and get one for that brat kid of yours, either that or don't let him see it or he'll threaten to burn the house down if you don't buy it for him. [Classic Rallies, via The German Car Blog]

Our commute to work most days is the five inches we reach to get the laptop off of the bedside table and into bed, so we read stories about extreme commuting with great horror and begin to think things like the working WMF espresso machine Audi placed in the rear-seat console of its Roadjet concept car might be good ideas. The Roadjet is reportedly going into production for the European market (the US is expected to get the more SUV-like Q5), so it'll be interesting to see if the espresso machine makes it into the final model as an added feature or if the in-car coffee machine will remain just a dream for now.

Coffee machine for the car [Tech Digest]
Nespresso InCar Coffee Machine Concept [Gizmodo]

If you love Howard Stern, this news might make you happy; if you love having choices, this news will make you sad. Audi and Volkswagen recently announced they will be dropping XM satellite radio receivers as an option for their cars beginning with the 2007 models in favor of an exclusive deal with Sirius. Both Audi and Volkswagen will be offering Sirius satellite radio receivers with new cars through 2012. Terms of the agreement have not been disclosed, but Volkswagen will be offering three free months of Sirius radio to new buyers and expects to equip 80% of new vehicles with their receivers.

We're not saying that Sirius is inferior to XM, mind you, just disappointed that consumers are losing the option to choose the satellite radio that get bundled into their new cars. They can always get go buy a XM receiver later on if they really want to, of course, but having a choice effectively made for you sucks nonetheless because the whole point of having satellite radio has always been one of choice—of choosing to not have to listen to annoying ads, stupid promos, and the same lame songs at the top of the charts on almost every single radio station because of music industry payola.

Sirius Satellite in exclusive deals with Audi, VW [Reuters]

Audi's $11,000 Car Stereo [MoblieMag]

Anywho, apparently the rumors we mentioned a year or so ago about Audi and PalmOne partnering up for a promotion were true. Drivers of the 2006 Audi A6 and A8 can make and receive calls through their Bluetooth-enabled Treo 650 using the car's multimedia console, steering wheel controls, and voice-recognition (You can have fun with it and nickname your home "Mission Control" so that you could just yell "Call Mission Control"—I know I would). Audi will also sell a special Treo 650 cradle to attach to the car.

Related
Rumor: Audi and PalmOne Promotion

Audi to Integrate Treo 650 [Slashphone]