Well, it seems that while Apple seems to be be taking over the news (again) with the rumored AppleTV that we all knew about since the release of the Walter Isaccson biography of Steve Jobs, HP seems to have a possible ace of its sleeve with a newly “leaked” trailer type video for a new ultrabook. Apple right now, is the leader in this market with the MacBook Air. There are others out there by Acer and Lenovo, but those two companies are much smaller than HP or Apple, so I don’t think they have the market cornered just yet. It seems though as Apple is already building some steam for the month of January, it may be one of the companies of 2012 to keep an eye on. The rumor mill is also stirring with news of the iPad 3, a January media event and hackers running iPhone and iPad apps fullscreen on the AppleTV.

HP will have to step up its game in these “leaks” if they want anymore excitement in this news. I think as the weeks pass and we all begin to overlook some of HP’s blunders, we may see more information leading up to CES 2012. I think that the HP WebOS is a possible sell off or it may even be brought back by HP with the sale of the HP touchpad over and over and over again this last year. Even with all that craziness that was 2011 for HP, I don’t think a new CEO will solve all of their problems either. I mean, her last job was eBay, not really a hardware company at all. Does she have the intellect and determination to make HP a great company again? Only time will tell.

I can say though, HP is everywhere when it comes to laptops though. Bestbuy and Amazon has to be two of the biggest retailers that sell their laptops like it is going out of style. Everywhere I go these days, all I see is that little HP logo or the Apple logo. I really don’t see Dell, Toshiba, Acer or really any other manufacturer that much out there. As for myself, my last two personal laptops have been HP. So will this newly “leaked” HP ultrabook be the revival of the HP name? Or will the logo change be all that they need? With all of this going on, and 2012 just now getting started, I hope the best for HP, and can’t wait to the see the Spectre at CES!!

The first of two apps I saw on Engadget (who got it from PhoneArena, who got it from ReadWriteWeb, it’s funny to follow the trail) lets you plug into that diagnostic plug that all cars since 1996 have, and upload the information to the web. It’s called AutoBot by Mavizon Technologies. The idea is that this little device will plug into the port and allow you have GPS locating and diagnostics to keep you on top of when to change the oil. This little guy can also be setup to send someone a text message when the car is in a wreck (& the airbags deploy) and send you the location, so you can call 911 if the person is unavailable.

The app that comes with this will be able to track the car as well, in the event of a Decepticon stealing your car (bad joke, I know, stole it from the engadget story) and you can let police know its location. Even better when you forgot where you parked when you took the train into town and now can’t find your car! The hardware is not out yet, but hopefully looking for a 2011-2012 release, and they will be at CES 2011. If you want to try it out, you can apply to be a beta tester at their site, but no guarantees.

The second app makes me want to recycle my iPhone 3G along with my iPhone 4 just so I can have one running dedicated GPS directions and the other for this app! Ever seen those augmented reality apps, like Google goggles or Layar? The idea is to use the smartphone’s camera to see, and then add location information or whatever data you want on top of it, so you can see what’s in the world around you. You can see tweets, restaurants or your personal tour guide. So imaGinyze has created an app that tells you when you are approaching a car or change lanes!!

The camera will pickup vehicles in your near distance, and even when they get close, can give you distance information! This HUD that it has also tells you it’s current speed (via GPS math, I’m assuming). This is way too cool not to have a video demo (you can see more at the website):

www.youtube.com/watch?v=vAFjO6JGwKg

Now who thinks self driving cars aren’t coming soon??

UPDATE: It looks like this guy stole my title and wrote his own article… (good article actually)

AutoBot via [Engadget]

Augmented Driving via[ReadWriteWeb]