A few years back Chris Dunphy and Cherie Ve Ard flipped the bird to their desk jobs, packed their belongings in a custom 17-foot solar-powered fiberglass camper, and hit the road to live "at the intersection of Epic and Awesome." A couple months ago, while staying with friends, they noticed that Amazon was luring RVers to Coffeyville, Kansas, the site of the retail giant's original and largest fulfillment center.

"We were located in San Diego at the time," explained Cherie. "We're part of a community of younger full-time RVers on Nurvers.com, a group of non-retired-age folks who are living the mobile lifestyle and kind of going outside the norms of 'Wait for retirement to travel.'" They noticed other RVers were flocking to Kansas to work for Amazon. The pay wasn't great—just above $10-an-hour, typically—but Chris and Cherie were planning on being in St. Louis for the holidays. Why not kill a month in Kansas working for Amazon?

Fast forward a couple of weeks, and the self-styled "technomads" were putting down stakes at a state park about 20 miles from the four enormous but dull warehouses that comprise the Coffeyville hub.

Their first day inside, Chris was awed. "Walking inside reminded me of the scene from Indiana Jones when they abandon the Ark in that giant warehouse. It's three stories high. It feels like an industrial library. Shelves going up and up and up." Hundreds of employees scurried, some "orange-badges" or "green-badges" hired by two temporary employment services mixed with the sought-after blue-badges of full-time Amazon employees, guided to their next destination by computers that flashed lights when bins were full or guided workers through the maze with handheld computers. "Pickers are basically playing a human Pac-Man game. They've got a computer scanner that they carry around that tells them where to go. They find their little shelf. One slot might be a book. The next shelf over might be a toaster. Or an iPod. The next slot after that might be a pair of jeans."

Fiberglass City

Amazon didn't always lure in "workcampers" from the RV community.

"From what the agency people had told us, Amazon had a bad experience busing in people from Tulsa," says Chris. "There was a lot of theft and a lot of people who weren't really serious about the job."

Workers from Tulsa were adding a 4-hour round-trip commute to an already grueling 10-to-12 hour shift, Cherie is quick to add. "They'd get there exhausted."

Enter the workcampers, people making a go at living in their RVs full time—many of whom might be otherwise overqualified. "I think Amazon was skeptical at first," says Cherie. "But after the first trial year they were very, very impressed. Workcampers came in enthusiastic about working, since most are professionals. We've owned businesses or been managers." White collar workers, trying their hand at the gypsy life. Even better, the workcampers were able to stay locally.

Not all of the camps provided for the workcampers were exactly inviting.

Chris and Cherie pulled into the one just before Thanksgiving, but could tell it wouldn't make for a pleasant stay. "The closest one was a city park called Walter Johnson. RVs were very close together. Half the campsites had full hookups, which meant they had water, electricity, and sewer dump on-site. Half the sites just had electricity and water and they had what they call a 'Honey Wagon' that comes around and pumps your sewage out a few times a week." Some RVers had been in Coffeyville since August.

Worse, it was cramped and muddy. "Coffeyville also had a flood three years ago, so it was very, very wet and muddy because the area had been washed out, then rained on recently." They eventually moved on to a state park, which was lovely, but also four times farther away. They rarely had time to enjoy the scenery.

"We were on the night shift," says Chris, "Our day would start when we would wake up at three in the afternoon. Work started at five."

"Every shift starts with what they call a 'Stand Up.' You gather in one area with your usual department—ours was called 'Sortable Singles,' which sounds like it should be the name of a dating site—and they'd count off how many people they needed in each department. Run through a few announcements. Give you a few safety tips. And then they lead you through five minutes of group stretches."

Cherie was mainly a packer, putting items in the box and scanning them. Chris, on the other hand, was a "water spider." He explains, "A water spider is responsible for keeping all the packers supplied, so ideally they'd never need to stand up and leave their station to get any other supplies like all the different sizes of boxes, plus making sure their tape machines and paper-spitter machines are operating."

"I never quite exactly figured out why they call it a water spider. My guess is back in the history of assembly line jobs, the water spider would be the person who would bring people on the line water to drink. Nobody seemed to know!"

The Mocha Factory

Work was monotonous and—for a couple who had been living a relative life of leisure—full of endless hours of standing on one's feet.

"24-Hour Fitness, Amazon-style," laughs Chris. Cherie liked to think of it as having "a personal trainer for 60 hours a week."

Inside the warehouses, machines and man alike were controlled by Amazon's computerized assembly line.

In one part of the factory, Chris watched two giant elliptical carousels, each one the size of a football field, carry wooden trays around at 15mph. "All the items are coming in the totes on one side of this giant machine. There are people who take each individual item, scan them and put them on the trays as they go by. The trays get to a chute where their order is being assembled, tilt, and the product flies down into that space. When all the items for a particular order are assembled in one place an orange light comes on and somebody comes by." Above, another carousel brought an endless procession of empty boxes to be filled with the orders.

It wasn't exactly what Cherie had envisioned. "When we told people were going to do this, someone said 'Whenever I click the order button on Amazon, I always imagine a chorus of happy, singing Oompa-Loompas riding around on Segways and shipping my stuff.' Well...no. It's not exactly like that."

"The computer has to prioritize how it's going to send out all the pickers in this giant facility. So someone could order a book and a sweater and an iPod, and those could be in completely different corners of the whole facility. But somehow they all arrive within about 30 minutes of each other." It's efficiency even Willy Wonka could love.

Chris and Cherie wouldn't work another season at Coffeyville, but not because they were miserable. "Everybody treated each other really nicely!" says Chris. It's just that the two are "experience junkies, craving the new," even if working for Amazon certainly gave them a fresh perspective on American culture.

"You'd have a tote come down the line, and you'd have adult toys right next to kid toys in the same bin," laughs Cherie. "The Obama Chia Pet was an oddity. And the Bill Clinton corkscrew. And I did have a tote one afternoon that was full of mooning gnomes."

Chris geeked on it pretty hard. (Before he became an migrant worker, Chris was a founding editor for boot magazine—later known as Maximum PC. He also worked for Palm.) "Just getting to experience that type of work, to literally see consumer culture flow beneath your fingertips, was absolutely fascinating. You feel the pulse of the market."

Besides their paychecks, all they're left with are memories—cameras weren't allowed inside.

"One of the rules at Amazon is that you're not allowed to bring anything into the facility that they sell." Chris went through a bit of withdrawal. "One of the hardest things about the job was going without my iPhone for a month. It was a great way to break the addiction of wanting to Twitter about things. You'd be like, 'Oh my God, I just saw this Bill Clinton corkscrew and you won't believe where the corkscrew comes out.' But oh crap, I can't tweet."

[CarScoop via BornRich]

Like any good stalker, Heagy was pretty organized about the entire affair. He made a sign to keep in his car so that he was ready to go the instant any of the individuals he'd recruited to watch out for the Street View van called him. In the end though, it was Heagy himself who spotted the Fame-mobile as he was nibbling on his lunch and he quickly hopped into his car, sped after the van, and figured out where it should turn next so that he could set up his sign at the right corner.

Nutty or not, I guess Heagy's plan worked since I couldn't resist extending his 15 minutes of Internet fame after seeing that Google Street View snapshot of his. Hell, the whole ploy worked so well that I'm even throwing up his band's music video:

[Fear Salesman via Neowin]

I am not going to tell you this is the best turn-by-turn road navigation app in the world. The designers made some funny UI choices, there's no multi-destination or point-on-map routing, it doesn't have text-to-speech, and it only runs in portrait mode, taking up awkward space on my dashboard. Still, there's almost no reason not to get it.

I still think Navigon is the slickest, and ALK's CoPilot is impressively full featured for costing just $35. But the commitment required for MotionX GPS Drive beats them all: It's $3 to download, and you get a month of turn-by-turn directions included in that. Then, if you want, you pay either $25 for a year of full turn-by-turn, or $3 for a month—and the charges are non-recurring. You can pay the $3 only when you actually need it.

Compared to What?

Because it's a connected product, its closest comparisons are AT&T Navigator by TeleNav ($10/month) and Gokivo by Networks In Motion (recently reduced to $5/month). It doesn't come with 1.5GB in onboard maps like TomTom, Navigon, ALK and Sygic—instead it downloads them over the air—so you have to be in a service area when you are setting out on your destination. Still, if your phone has less memory to spare, it could be better.

Connected Services

Not only does it download Navteq maps on the fly, but it uses online search instead of stored points of interest. In theory this is better, because it means fewer wrong addresses of business who closed or moved. That's not always the case, but I did find MotionX to have a decent online search—the first in this class that I've seen powered by Microsoft's Bing.

Again, because it's online, it has access to traffic data. At the moment, though, the app only uses traffic information in its routing, says the developers. There's no way to check a traffic report like on other apps. However, the developers appear to be toying with a Dash-like concept too: A future version of the app may be used to gather and share its own live traffic data. There's nothing like that now, and Fullpower won't share details, but it sounds like fun. I also asked about live gas prices, which others offer: None now, but that will change.

Some Superficial Complaints

I did have a few cosmetic issues with the app. For starters, it doesn't have a landscape mode, so the phone is always upright. I want landscape mode because it fits way better when it's horizontal in the dashboard mount (which, like with all other GPS apps, will run you an extra $10-$100). That's a fact, though Fullpower goes out of their way to say they didn't add landscape because nobody's asked for it yet. Until now.

Oddly enough, Fullpower is proud of their in-app compass, which I find extraneous on two levels. For one, if I'm looking at a map, no matter whether north is up or the heading is up, I know which direction I'm pointing. Additionally, that compass only works with 3GS (I believe), and the 3GS already has a compass. When do you ever pull over to the side of the road and say "if I only knew where north was!"? Maybe in the days before GPS that was an issue, but now it doesn't matter so much. (Until the sky falls, at least.)

I would also love to customize the things I see on the main screen. At the moment, next to the upcoming turn information, it flips through assorted trip data: ETA, compass heading, distance remaining and time remaining. I really only care about ETA, so I'd like to freeze that up top, and may be get a speed indicator with speed limit warnings as well.

My final issue is more of a quirk than anything else: To view the list of upcoming turns, you have to tap the iPod button at the bottom of the screen. It's nice to have rich iPod access in the app (all apps have a rudimentary iPod access—as long as a song is already playing, you double-tap the home button—but this does more). Still it's weird for that all-important list of turns to be hidden under a button called "iPod."

How Is The Price So Low?

A guy like me could bitch about this app more, trust me, but the fact is, I've driven with it for almost a week, and it gets you where you want to go, quickly and simply. But it's going to sell like mad because the price of entry is the lowest around, and its two-year cost of ownership—$53 if you use it regularly—is competitive, especially when you consider that's the initial download plus two completely optional $25 increments. By allowing you so many options to walk away, MotionX actually has you by the balls.

I have asked Fullpower and its competitors how pricing could get this crazy, with $100 apps competing with $3 apps. Fullpower's best answer is that they're not in any other GPS turn-by-turn business, so they don't have to protect the price of earlier products the way TeleNav or TomTom might have to. ("If they offer a better value on the iPhone than to their existing customers, they may have challenges.") When I asked TeleNav, makers of the $10/month AT&T Navigator and Sprint Navigator, they said, "Honestly, at a $3-per-month price point, it is unclear how a company could possibly innovate, build out features and work on the quality of the app without losing money."

What they didn't say, but what you're already thinking, is that for $3 a month, it doesn't hurt to find out. [iTunes Link]

Amazing price, and lowest possible barrier to entry

Fully functional spoken turn-by-turn navigation app

Connected to Navteq maps and Bing live local search

No landscape view (which some, like me, prefer)

Navigation screen could show more relevant data, or be more customizable

No multi-destination routing or routing to point on map, as found in other apps

For more on iPhone GPS app, check out our iPhone Navigation Battlemodo Part 1 and Part 2.

The RFID-equipped member card is still needed for the ignition system, and to unlock the car at the start of a session. That's a bit of a let down, but I guess it does make sense. Once that first step is out of the way, that's when you can use the iPhone to lock/unlock the car remotely.

Zipcar says it's working to add a visual snapshot of car availability (like you get on the Website), greater flexibility in reservation changes, and more detailed instructions to your parking spot.

If you have an iPhone (or iPod touch) and use Zipcar, this should probably be a no-brainer to test out. If you do, let us know how you go. [Zipcar (iTunes Link) | Zipcar]

Yes, these people are insane. Here's the rundown of my favorites:

- A Toyota Celsior UCF20 with gullwings, scissor doors and a split hood, which took 12 years to build and cost 10 million yen ($110,000). The interior includes 24 monitors, including several mounted in the headrests behind the passengers' heads (you can watch them with the eyes in the back of your head, according to the priest).

- Batman van, a rolling tribute to the superhero that cost 25 million yen ($280,000), took 13 years to complete, and earned the owner a divorce.

- Rocket launcher van, a 1981 Daihatsu Hijet outfitted with a cheap launcher for an 8-meter (26-ft) water rocket (the owner is an eggplant farmer).

Yes, the video is all in Japanese. Yes, it's still very worth watching. [PinkTentacle]

That $99.99 one-off price isn't cheap considering dedicated GPS units can cost less, and here you're only paying for the software. Worse still, rival iPhone app CoPilot Live only costs $34.99, and it too provides 3D views, and spoken turn-by-turn instructions. Thankfully, neither make you pay an AT&T TeleNav-style monthly subscription.

Update: We now know the TomTom car adapter kit will work with the iPod Touch, but haven't confirmed its U.S. availability and pricing.

[TomTom Website | TomTom iTunes Link]

Application Description
For iPhone 3G and iPhone 3GS

Tap and go: Using iPhones innovative technology, the TomTom app lets you tap your way from A to B – putting you in touch with all the best routes. Scroll through the menu, or pinch to zoom in and out on a map using the iPhone's multi-touch display.

Go your own way: Why follow the rest See your route, your way. Simply rotate from portrait to landscape to get an easier view of the road ahead.
Meet up with friend: Find an entry in your iPhone contacts list, and the TomTom app will find the way there. It's that simple.

Find a place to eat: Thinking of stopping for lunch on the way? Choose a restaurant, call to reserve your table, then find your way there-the TomTom app does it all.

The smartest routes: Is the shortest route really the fastest? TomTom IQ Routes will always calculate the smartest, most efficient route-saving you time, fuel and money. Only IQ Routes uses the driving experiences of millions of drivers to work out your route based on actual road speed date.

The world at your fingertips: Always be prepared for what's around the corner. The TomTom app comes with an up-to-date, detailed map-and you can add worldwide locations to suit you.
You can also make the most of your navigation experience with the TomTom car kit for iPhone. Check it on iphone.tomtom.com.

Map coverage statistics:
Detailed map seamlessely covers in the US and Canada with IQ Routes data for faster routing.

Countries fully covered (99.9%): the US (all states including Hawaii and Alaska) and Canada (all provinces) and Puerto Rico.

Languages: English, Danish, Dutch, Finnish, French, German, Italian, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese, Spanish, Swedish, Turkish.

Requirements: Compatible with iPhone. Requires iPhone OS 3.0 or later.

It'sa snowblower. Or better said, a snow melter. The ones above use Klimov VK-1 engines from Mig-15 planes. The one from Tuesday could have been the engine from a Mig-17. They also use these to melt ice on other planes engines—while waiting on the cold Russian airport runways—and train tracks, as you can see in the gallery (in that case, they used half the plane).

Crazy Ivans. You gotta love those guys. Except when they send their Akula-class nuclear subs to patrol around New York. [Dark Roasted Blend]

The $36 Porta-Pizza Oven is a toaster oven/pizza cooker that plugs into your car's 12V cigarette lighter. Despite top and bottom cooking elements providing high and low heat settings, we can't help but maintain a little skepticism. Even in their promo shot, the pizza is spilling out of the oven (presumably onto your car's leather seats...oh...you didn't get the upgrade? That's OK, we're sure your car is very nice. No really, we all know those luxury packages are a rip. And there's a recession on. Right, you're right—tell the valet that when he snickers at your interior. But if it makes you feel any better, he's probably laughing at the fact that you just downed a large Tombstone that you cooked on the way to the restaurant. Yeah, most people consider that a weird habit.). [Stupididiotic via technabob]

The iPod touch is only a 16GB model, presumably because the convertible's name is the 16M and not because a bump to the 32GB would have broken the bank. But if you want to listen to a digital Ferrari engine in your real Ferrari on a Ferrari-branded iPod, you better jump on it quick: Only 499 are being made, and each is likely to cost $325,000. [Thanks, Noah!]

Extra note: Al & Ed's have been doing these custom installations for a few years now, and note that it's strange that Ferrari doesn't support an iPhone instead. That way you can have a GPS actually in your dash. They also claim that the price is $325k, not $225k.

Update: Our friend Todd at TechFlash just posted a longer piece from the same event, in case you want to hear Ballmer and Mulally mulling over the future of cars and tech. (Hint: They will coexist profitably.)

The girl was walking across the street on Tuesday when she dropped her iPod. She went back to grab it in moving traffic and was, unsurprisingly, hit by the approaching pickup truck. She suffered a broken leg, but hey, her iPod is OK! Totally worth it. [WESH via The Daily What]

That's not the truck in the accident, in case you were wondering.

Just don't take the little guy and his mom anywhere questionable, which has been known to happen with Streeview from time to time.

And because it was so epic, check out this completely off topic video from SNL that aired last night in observance of Mother's Day. [Google Maps, SNL Digital Short - Thanks, Chase]

Yes, the CoolCop is a hose that runs the output of an AC vent right into the top of your shirt. For some reason, it's being marketed to cops and cops alone, because they're the only ones who get hot in cars.

On a hot day there's nothing more uncomfortable than having to wear a T-shirt soaked with sweat. Add a bulletproof vest over it and no amount of air conditioning coming from your car vent is going to keep you cool and dry.

The CoolCop dash attachment attaches easily to the air conditioning vent. The soft vinyl vest attachment fits comfortably between your vest and undershirt. Cool air is then delivered under your vest to keep you cool, dry and comfortable.

Next time I'm cruising the steamy streets of Atlanta wearing a bulletproof vest, I'm totally going to jury rig one of these things out of a vacuum hose. That's a promise. [CoolCop via Book of Joe]

UPDATE: Video Sneak Peek HERE It's a three-part series from the MythBusters producers, airing May 11 at 9pm on the Discovery Channel. The formula resembles a lot of those DIY reality shows: Two teams of master builders compete against each other to build the sicker, more destructive remote-controlled killmobile. They don't just tear up muscle cars (a la Animal House); these bastards use innocent shuttle buses and, get this, ice cream vans, too.

Manly Testosterone-Powered Explosive Automotive Awesomeness Gallery:

Once built, there are two tiers of competition. First the weaponized cars have to blow up fuel depots or medieval fortresses, stuff that doesn't necessarily fight back, I suppose. In round two, the shit hits high gear, with "a gloves-off test" of combative capability and remote-control driver technique, until the smoke clears and there is only one vehicle left. My guess is, it'll be the one with the wedge. [Discovery]

Yep, 10 years ago he managed to buy a Lockheed F-104 Starfighter for $25,000, and he and his buddies have spent the years since turning it into the world's fastest hot rod.

The goal is to break the land speed record last year, shooing for 800MPH. He's got competition from more professional and better-funded groups, but come on. We've got to pull for the most extreme garage tinkerer in the country. Kick some ass, Ed! [NY Times

The NeoView Kolon is a prototype that uses a transparent OLED display, presumably layered over a reflective mirror. The result is a HUD of sorts...that could probably be extremely useful if it didn't expend so much light and distraction on looking cool.

For instance, a bumper mounted camera outfitted with the proper algorithms could track the speed of incoming vehicles. This data could label incoming fast cars on the OLED, alerting the driver to allow some extra breathing room in his lane.

Or, you know, you could fit a YouTube window up there, too. [OLED Info and OLED Televisions UK via Engadget]

Apparently, a year's worth of human excrement is equal to a measly 2.1 gallons of diesel, but when you collect an entire city's worth of crap, you get a decent amount of fuel. The poop of 250,000 people is enough to operate 80 busses for 62,000 miles each, which is no small thing. So in Norway, they're going to start collecting it and running public transportation on it. Because hey, why not? [Slate via Technabob]