road

The long, great history of zeppelins

FRIEDRICHSHAFEN, Germany--It's one of the most famous photographs ever--the Hindenburg exploding on its mast, lives instantly lost, the romance of a modern way of travel forever tainted.

That is probably true nowhere more than this modest city on the northern shore of Lake Constance, a place where zeppelins were invented and the Hindenburg called home.

Of course, that disaster took place in 1937, but here in Friedrichshafen, the memory of that famous airship, and its many German cousins, lives on every day at the Zeppelin Museum, an homage to an age long before jumbo jets, when flying across the Atlantic meant three days, but three luxurious days for sure.

The Zeppelin Museum is part history lesson, part cheerleader. Visitors--about 250,000 a year these days--are treated both to an education in the origins of the zeppelin as an aircraft, and to a bit of a love affair with the Hindenburg and its famous predecessor, the Graf Zeppelin.… Read more

RageGage redirects your road rage

Road ragers have traditionally had several options. They can flip off the other driver, drive aggressively in return, or grit their teeth and bear it. Now they can add smashing the living daylights out of a gadget to the list.

The $19.99 RageGage smash pad looks like a mutant hockey puck with a squishy center. Turn up the volume on the device and wail away with your fist until you feel better. Think of it as a high-tech version of a stress ball.

The RageGage isn't a comforting companion. It will hurl insults at you if you fail to pound it hard enough. It might call you a wuss or question your manhood. I'm not sure how that's supposed to help you calm down, but it does encourage you to let it all out.

Why stop at having a RageGage in your vehicle? Carry it with you in your laptop bag. Put it on your desk for post-business meeting relief. Stash in it your pocket for your visit with the in-laws.

The RageGage plugs into a computer via USB and can be used as a game controller for games that require smashing things. Games matching that description are downloadable from the RageGage site.

New sounds and celebrity impersonator voices are available to customize your RageGage and you can share your anger with your buddies on Facebook.

The next time someone cuts you off in traffic, put away your middle finger. Keep your foot off the accelerator. Don't roll down your window and scream. Just take it all out on the RageGage.… Read more

Porsche Museum showcases company's great history

STUTTGART-ZUFFENHAUSEN, Germany--If you don't think a car museum can be a stunning work of art, you need to get yourself here and check out the Porsche Museum.

Being Porsche, I expected it to be interesting and full of beautiful cars, but I wasn't prepared for the scale and scope of the building itself, a giant architectural masterpiece by Vienna's Delugan Meissl Associated Architects that also happens to be artfully full of some of the most interesting and important cars in the company's storied history.

If you were in Stuttgart before 2009 and visited the Porsche Museum, … Read more

Magellan RoadMate for iPhone updates with Yelp, Google search

Magellan's RoadMate app for iPhone updates today to version 2.0 with a refreshed UI. However, the biggest change is the new POI search, because joining Magellan's standard list of searchable points of interest are new options for Yelp and Google Local.

With Yelp search you can browse all of Yelp's categories and subcategories. Search results include Yelp's star rating for quickly identifying, for example, the best Ethiopian restaurant in your area. Once you've found your destination, the app can call the venue or initiate turn-by-turn directions. Additionally, every search result is a clickable link … Read more

Deep inside the world's longest tunnel

SEDRUN, Switzerland--I'm a kilometer inside one of the Alps and nearly 800 meters below the surface, and it's pitch black. And I'm falling at 14 meters a second.

But this isn't a story of fire and brimstone. It's a story of the construction of the world's longest tunnel, a new 57 kilometer all-flat rail line deep under the Swiss Alps that is planned to open in 2017 and which is hoped to double the capacity of cargo along the crucial Zurich to Milan line. It's also Switzerland's largest-ever ecological project.

This is … Read more

CNET Road Trip Europe: Planes, trains, and automobiles

When I was in my twenties, the idea of a summer in Europe meant a big backpack, a Eurail Pass, a small budget, and a lot of freedom.

I'm not in my twenties anymore, but I've just flown across the pond to begin Road Trip 2011, my sixth annual tour of a specific area of the global map in search of stories, photos, and videos about some of the best geek-oriented destinations I can find.

And this summer, after previous journeys around five regions of the United States, my travels have taken me to Europe. But despite countless … Read more

iOnRoad app keeps an eye on the road for accidents

Collision detection systems usually use some sort of front-facing radar or laser array to monitor the distance between a moving vehicle and the car ahead of it. A new app call iOnRoad takes a different tack by using little more than a smartphone to provide collision detection with an augmented-reality view.

Once a smartphone running the app is mounted on a car's windshield or dashboard, iOnRoad combines the visual information collected by the smartphone's camera with GPS and accelerometer data to provide information about the road ahead on the smartphone's display. The vehicle in the lane ahead … Read more

Mitsubishi's 360-degree video of Bolivia's Death Road

Traversing Bolivia's Death Road is on a lot of people's bucket lists, but if hastening your end isn't one of your life's goals, Mitsubishi lets you experience the white-knuckle drive vicariously.

To prove the ruggedness and driving capabilities of the Mitsubishi Outlander and the Outlander Sport, the manufacturer recorded the 38 mile trip down Yungas Road using a 360 degree video camera. Mitsubishi's Web site contains photo slideshows and short videos that piece together an abridged version of the dangerous journey on the winding, narrow road that starts in the Bolivian city of La Paz … Read more

Help Road Trip conquer Paris

In just three weeks, I'll be starting Road Trip 2011, and this year it's all about Europe.

This will be my sixth-annual journey in search of some of the best destinations around for technology, military, architecture, science, nature, and so on.

In past years, Road Trip has been all over the U.S. I've had the opportunity to visit the Pacific Northwest, the Southwest, the Southeast, the Rocky Mountain region, and the Northeast.

But this year, for the first time, Road Trip is heading across the pond to Europe.

Already, I've already got a long list … Read more