@wishlish The iPhone can only mark your car if you have bluetooth in the car, so this would be useful for someone with an old car that doesn’t have bluetooth. Otherwise, there’s not really any point.
@erinr you can save your location in the default apple maps app
Save a location
On the map, go to the location you want to save.
Click the location’s pin, then click the Info button .
If the location doesn’t have a pin, choose Edit > Drop Pin.
Click Add to Favorites.
You may have to scroll to the bottom of the window to see this option.
@jmcrosa No this device is dumb. It connects to your phone and when you shut the car off (assuming your outlet isn’t always on) it tells your phone to drop a pin in its app. That’s literally all it does. If your outlet is always on, in sure it will oblige and give you that extra awesome feature, a dead battery!
@mike808 Love my 950. Never any complaints about size, just sayin’. Hey, are you a Nokia 808 fan, hence your handle? Great phone with a great camera I’ve heard.
@stinks Yeah. If it weren’t for the 640xl, I’d still be using that as my daily. No Android phone at even twice their prices come close in camera quality.
@mike808 I wouldn’t go that far. Everyone’s needs/desires/usage habits are different.
Are serial buses used by serial killers to get away? I mean, can you see a bus with John Wayne Gacy, Ted Bundy, Jeffrey Dahmer on it? And does Dexter know about this?
@mcanavino If I had a pile of extra cash, next month you’d see a short bus painted like outer space selling breakfast because the Universal Cereal Bus is just too damn good a name not to run with.
@djslack If memory serves (I guess I could check mine), MessagePads only had IR as far as wireless communication is concerned. That would be so wonderfully awkward…
@earlyre, @djslack Couldn’t easily lay hands on my Newton MessagePad 100 or 120, but I found my MP 130.
MP 130, power cable, charging cradle, stylus, 4MB flash cards, installation disks, manuals. Not pictured: 2400bps modem card (in the card slot) and serial cable…
Still works! Check it out ladies! The ORIGINAL mobile apps!
@brhfl Communication options include RS-422 serial, IR, and modem card.
Dang! Playing with this thing and I just recalled the handwriting recognition function integrated into the Newton OS. Works relatively well considering… well, 1996!
@ruouttaurmind Wow, I did not realize it was RS-422, that’s a little strange. But yeah, IR-only as far as wireless is concerned. I still have mine also, a 2000. I also have two of the TI-994As and one of the Sinclairs @narfcake mentioned. I don’t have a GRID, but I think I still have a Dauphin DTR-1. Pen support on Windows 3.1… things sure have changed…
@brhfl Apple stuff was almost exclusively RS-422. Early Macs had 2 RS-422 serial connectors, and the Apple ImageWriter printers were 422 devices. IIRC, the first LaserWriters were also 422 (or AppleTalk via 422). Later versions I think also had a SCSI-1 interface?
@ruouttaurmind Oh, right, duh. I never really interfaced with that outside of Apple stuff, so I kind of forget it was a standard… My mind immediately went to RS-485, which is a bit beyond consumer equipment for the most part compared to RS-232.
After a concert last summer the drunks in the parking lot were laughing at me as I spent a half hour looking for my car. Never again, drunken country music fans- I have one of these doohickeys.
@sammydog01 Now they can laugh at you because you have one of these doohickeys and it drained your battery during the concert so you can’t start your car.
@huja I’d have sworn under, but as much Google-fu as I dare to apply leads me to believe it’s not even that old. That makes this a sadder little gadget in my mind.
@Kerig3 I frequently forget where I park when I am in a humongous Downtown L.A. parking structure or at Universal Studios or Disneyland. Luckily the iPhone already does this for you, but I always take a pic of where I park just in case.
@conandlibrarian Does your iPhone automatically do it or do have to remember to pin it? Because if I could remember to pin it I would also remember where my car was.
@conandlibrarian The thing I found says it marks your location when you turn off Apple CarPlay or car Bluetooth. I don’t use either of those. I guess I could use Bluetooth though. One more tech thing to figure out.
Hmmm in your description you claim we are losing money looking for our car. I would like to request that if we buy this you also pay us for our time at the rate suggested on that page so that we can earn money if this does not work. My reasoning is about as sound as yours thus this is my condition for buying this. What do you say meh?
@rearly My ex took a cab to my dorm one night when we were both still in college because she lost her car somewhere in Baltimore. People really have a way of losing track of their wheelmobiles.
I am pushing fifty but so far in the couple instances I had trouble finding my car, I was one lane over. And that includes areas where the “lanes” are rows in the dirt created by some guys with flashlights. So, maybe in another decade or two. Of course, our cars will likely know where to pick us up by then.
This product’s name reminded me of an old arcade game I loved called Pengo. A brilliant premise: a penguin wandering around squashing enemies with ice blocks. I dropped countless quarters into that machine at my local Showbiz Pizza in 1985.
@brogers I used to have some old PC game on a floppy disk that played just like that but had different graphics. Can’t remember what it was called though…
We were at Tyson’s Corner Mall in Northern Virginia, New Year’s Eve a couple of years ago. At the end of the night, just before the mall closed, we went to leave and realized my wife didn’t have her keys to the van. She normally kept them on a lanyard around her neck, but had taken it off and set it down for some reason and, long story short, we were pretty sure it had gone into the garbage in the food court.
But I had my keys, so we were still fine, right? Wrong! We realized we had been there so long that we had no idea where in the multilevel garage that spanned one entire side of the mall we had parked. So off I went to find the van while my wife tried to keep our two kids (then 6.5 and 4 years old) entertained while hanging out in the foyer of an anchor store that was closing up for the night.
I think it took me a good hour at least. The signal from the key fob wouldn’t go through the garage floors, so I had to be on the right level and close enough. Finally I hit on the idea of going to the center, where there was a gap that (I figured, and apparently I was right) would let the signal hit the next level down from where I was. Keeping this short again, I did eventually find the van, but the whole time I was looking for it, I couldn’t call them to let them know what was going on because my phone was at 1% and I didn’t want it to die (which it ultimately did anyway) before I found it, just in case they needed to call me (like if they were getting kicked out of the store).
Ultimately we got home at midnight, after an hour and a half drive home from a mall that closed at 9 PM.
What a horrorshow that was. Since that day I always note down in my phone where I am in any multilevel garage or large parking lot.
It drops a pin? So won’t I have to find a pin in a parking lot? How is that not like finding a needle in a haystack? And whose job is it to clean up all those pins? This sounds very anti-environmental.
There are plenty of apps in the Google Play store that will use your phone’s GPS to record where you parked and give you directions back/let you send the location to contacts, so don’t feel left out, Android users.
And there are probably similar apps on iTunes. So between the two platforms, 94% of smartphone users can save themselves $10. (The other 6℅ should absolutely buy this to serve as a daily reminder of how they need to move on from their Windows/Blackberry/Symbian phones. Change is hard. Phone-shaming is easy.)
@kungfuqua I can’t shame its concept, but if you read the review in full, it’s so buggy, spec limited, and underpowered that it fails every task. Including keeping time.
Simple solution… take a picture of the aisle marker closest to where you parked. And, as an Android user, I get really irked (no offense Irk) when a product or app comes out for iPhone users only. If you can’t figure out how to make it compatible for both, don’t bother making it at all. Because when and if said product is available for Android, I’m not buying it. Just because. When do you ever see anything that is for Android only. Never! OK, maybe there are a few products I’m not aware of, but still.
@bloondie2 This is not in defense of iPhone, as I am an Android user, but when developing apps for iPhone, devs don’t have to ensure it runs to a hundred different standards. Apple is the only company thay makes iOS products. Whereas it takes much longer to ensure an app will run on the vast majority of Android devices.
Sold! We park on the street all the time and have a 1994 Toyota Camry.
My mother, who is in her 90s, had a college professor friend who used to solve this problem in large parking lots by sticking a large toilet plunger (which he used to carry in his trunk) on the top of his otherwise unremarkable car. Worked flawlessly, and it was never stolen.
Came here expecting someone to call out the $7.12 instead of $7.20 typo. Was disappointed…unless my search just happened to fail me, in which case, never mind, nothing to see here folks.
Specs
What’s in the Box?
1x PinGo Car Locator
Pictures
Side view
USB plug hole
Plugged in
Penguin
Price Comparison
$32.99 at Amazon
Warranty
90 Day Mediocre
Estimated Delivery
Monday, July 13th - Thursday, July 16th
Charge !! Helps you find your car but can’t onstar do this too ? Seriously for ten dollars meh be worth it
@AttyVette I think onstar is a subscription service though.
@AttyVette
Holy slow loading Batman!
Doesn’t Android pretty much already do this natively?
@dunda yup
@osiris3mc So does iPhone, which is why I can’t figure out why I’d buy this.
@wishlish iPhones find your car?
@wishlish The iPhone can only mark your car if you have bluetooth in the car, so this would be useful for someone with an old car that doesn’t have bluetooth. Otherwise, there’s not really any point.
@erinr you can save your location in the default apple maps app
https://support.apple.com/kb/PH20139
@deemkooo feature implemented in Maps in iOS 9 or 10, as I recall.
@thismyusername
@wishlish
@thismyusername thanks
@thismyusername thank you
Would this work if someone steals my car?
@jmcrosa Answering my own question: No, it needs to be in bluetooth range of your phone. Therefore useless in a car theft situation.
Additionally, iOS already does this for you, no app required.
@jmcrosa No this device is dumb. It connects to your phone and when you shut the car off (assuming your outlet isn’t always on) it tells your phone to drop a pin in its app. That’s literally all it does. If your outlet is always on, in sure it will oblige and give you that extra awesome feature, a dead battery!
@jmcrosa Yes… The pin will be dropped right where you car was when they stole it. You are on your own as to where they took it though…
App hasn’t been updated in 2 years. Meh.
@mjc94ma That shows it was written correctly the first time. Why fix it if it isn’t broken?
@cengland0 Everything is always broken.
What is an iPhone?
Wow, extra Meh
Does it have a Windows Mobile App?
@Stumpy91 if it doesnt exist on andorid… it def wont exist on windows
@Stumpy91 you made me spit out my drink laughing
@Stumpy91 Oh sure, steal my usual “Windows compatible?” joke that few here get!
(640 XL on W10M here.)
@narfcake The 640 is a surprisingly nice phone…
@narfcake Yeah, nobody would ever need more than a 640? Amirite?
@mike808 Love my 950. Never any complaints about size, just sayin’. Hey, are you a Nokia 808 fan, hence your handle? Great phone with a great camera I’ve heard.
@Stumpy91 Roland. Kickin’ it old school.
808 State gets bonus points.
@stinks Yeah. If it weren’t for the 640xl, I’d still be using that as my daily. No Android phone at even twice their prices come close in camera quality.
@mike808 I wouldn’t go that far. Everyone’s needs/desires/usage habits are different.
@Stumpy91 Nice!
@narfcake woosh. The 640 reference was an homage to the old 640kb joke. /rimshot.
@mike808 Thanks for cranking up the wayback machine.
I need to dig out my 808 State again. It has been too long since I listened to them.
@yakkoTDI
http://8tracks.com/mundos-relativos/trip-inside-this-house-88-92
Or how about some Orb and hanging out in the Blue Room.
@mike808 YES!
I have seen them both in concert. I really miss the '90s.
@yakkoTDI
Strangely appropriate these days…
no andorid app… lame! i dont even think anyone owns an apple product anymore (after that whole headphone jack removal thing) righhht?!
@brainfog1 actually. I bought an iPhone 7 the day after Christmas. Won’t buy this thing though…
@brainfog1 You know it was an Android phone that first ditched it, right? Look up the G1.
@narfcake That is an apples to oranges comparison. Android is an OS that anyone can put on their phone, not hardware.
@narfcake
Have the G1 in my desk drawer. Got it as a gift.
Just need a battery for it.
It’s technically bluetooth…
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
@thismyusername Reminds me of one of my dogs.
"I wanna go out, no, I wanna come back in, no, I wanna go out, Hey! Let me in!
How does this charge my car?
@awk There’s a tiny little Tesla free energy generator in there…
“if you’re into serial buses…”
Are serial buses used by serial killers to get away? I mean, can you see a bus with John Wayne Gacy, Ted Bundy, Jeffrey Dahmer on it? And does Dexter know about this?
@eeterrific No, it’s like a taco truck, but they just serve cereal.
@mcanavino If I had a pile of extra cash, next month you’d see a short bus painted like outer space selling breakfast because the Universal Cereal Bus is just too damn good a name not to run with.
@djslack Dooo Eeet!
@djslack Capital idea! More stars! ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
No Newton support? Fuck this garbage!
@djslack No love for my Sharp Zaurus either.
@djslack If memory serves (I guess I could check mine), MessagePads only had IR as far as wireless communication is concerned. That would be so wonderfully awkward…
@brhfl pffft… just use a bluetooth to IR adapter dongle.
@brhfl Still have my MessagePad 120 around here in a drawer somewhere.
@djslack No support for my Handspring Treo either.
@djslack Newton? Damn you kids and your new technogloy! My Grid Pad running Microsoft Pen wasn’t even considered for support.
@djslack No love for the Moto OG.
@djslack q: how many newtons does it take to change a lightbulb?
a: farm
@djslack Timex Sinclair 1000.
It has audio jacks! … although that was really so you could save your programs. Audio support with 3.25 MHz Z80 and 2k ram?
@narfcake That was one of my earliest computers… my dad had that and TRS-80s galore in my childhood. Brings back memories!
@djslack I have one of these things too. I don’t know why.
@djslack I had to look up wtf a newton even was…
@djslack How about a Magic Cap version for my Sony MagicLink?
@earlyre, @djslack Couldn’t easily lay hands on my Newton MessagePad 100 or 120, but I found my MP 130.
MP 130, power cable, charging cradle, stylus, 4MB flash cards, installation disks, manuals. Not pictured: 2400bps modem card (in the card slot) and serial cable…
Still works! Check it out ladies! The ORIGINAL mobile apps!
@brhfl Communication options include RS-422 serial, IR, and modem card.
Dang! Playing with this thing and I just recalled the handwriting recognition function integrated into the Newton OS. Works relatively well considering… well, 1996!
@ruouttaurmind Wow, I did not realize it was RS-422, that’s a little strange. But yeah, IR-only as far as wireless is concerned. I still have mine also, a 2000. I also have two of the TI-994As and one of the Sinclairs @narfcake mentioned. I don’t have a GRID, but I think I still have a Dauphin DTR-1. Pen support on Windows 3.1… things sure have changed…
@brhfl I still have my TRS-80, TI994a, and Palm Pilot. Oh, and my first ever cell phone, a Motorola DynaTAC (brick).
@brhfl Apple stuff was almost exclusively RS-422. Early Macs had 2 RS-422 serial connectors, and the Apple ImageWriter printers were 422 devices. IIRC, the first LaserWriters were also 422 (or AppleTalk via 422). Later versions I think also had a SCSI-1 interface?
@ruouttaurmind Oh, right, duh. I never really interfaced with that outside of Apple stuff, so I kind of forget it was a standard… My mind immediately went to RS-485, which is a bit beyond consumer equipment for the most part compared to RS-232.
After a concert last summer the drunks in the parking lot were laughing at me as I spent a half hour looking for my car. Never again, drunken country music fans- I have one of these doohickeys.
@sammydog01 Now they can laugh at you because you have one of these doohickeys and it drained your battery during the concert so you can’t start your car.
@KwadGuy Wait, that’s a thing? Doesn’t it just power off? Why would it keep draining the battery if it just sends a signal when the car shuts off?
Over-under on the manufacture year of this gadget . . . 2013.
@huja I’d have sworn under, but as much Google-fu as I dare to apply leads me to believe it’s not even that old. That makes this a sadder little gadget in my mind.
If you regularly cannot remember where you parked your car, then you may have a larger problem than what this gadget can fix.
@Kerig3 I frequently forget where I park when I am in a humongous Downtown L.A. parking structure or at Universal Studios or Disneyland. Luckily the iPhone already does this for you, but I always take a pic of where I park just in case.
@conandlibrarian Does your iPhone automatically do it or do have to remember to pin it? Because if I could remember to pin it I would also remember where my car was.
@sammydog01 phone automatically does it.
@conandlibrarian OK I just cancelled my order and am off the search the interwebs.
@conandlibrarian how do you set that up? ( getting my first cell phone–iphone7–next week)
@conandlibrarian The thing I found says it marks your location when you turn off Apple CarPlay or car Bluetooth. I don’t use either of those. I guess I could use Bluetooth though. One more tech thing to figure out.
@deemkooo looks like @sammydog01 figured it out in the comment above. I was about to post I do not have the slightest idea, but glad it works!
Hmmm in your description you claim we are losing money looking for our car. I would like to request that if we buy this you also pay us for our time at the rate suggested on that page so that we can earn money if this does not work. My reasoning is about as sound as yours thus this is my condition for buying this. What do you say meh?
nswf - audio mature language
@thismyusername I totally watched at work. I’m a rebel
Cool, meh sells yet another product rated at 2.5 stars on Amazon
@alexpope also cool, today meh makes more money than us selling yet another 2.5 star product to people who want it. The model works.
I once walked a crying lady around a parking garage until she found her car.
@rearly that could’ve been me
@rearly
@deemkooo Been there too.
@rearly My ex took a cab to my dorm one night when we were both still in college because she lost her car somewhere in Baltimore. People really have a way of losing track of their wheelmobiles.
I am pushing fifty but so far in the couple instances I had trouble finding my car, I was one lane over. And that includes areas where the “lanes” are rows in the dirt created by some guys with flashlights. So, maybe in another decade or two. Of course, our cars will likely know where to pick us up by then.
Is this 1a or 2a?
@gallogj 1.2 A.
Cortisol kills.
And makes you fat.
Mehbe that’s enough to get you $45.
Should have called it “Breadcrumbs”
This product’s name reminded me of an old arcade game I loved called Pengo. A brilliant premise: a penguin wandering around squashing enemies with ice blocks. I dropped countless quarters into that machine at my local Showbiz Pizza in 1985.
@brogers https://archive.org/details/arcade_pengo
@brogers Showbiz Pizza. I’m scarred for life thanks to those creepy-ass animatronic band members. Jesus Christ!
@jbrookebarrow There’s always Chuck E Cheese to get your animatronic groove on!
@brogers PENGO! I also dumped a lot of quarters into this game.
https://www.arcade-museum.com/game_detail.php?game_id=8989
@brogers I used to have some old PC game on a floppy disk that played just like that but had different graphics. Can’t remember what it was called though…
@brogers
I’m working on a joke to make fun of this. I’ll return within the next 48 business hours with one.
@brogers That was a great game, I think Crabtowne USA still has one, for any nostalgic MD folks…
@mike808 no thanks!
http://fox59.com/2017/01/08/bmw-found-six-months-after-driver-lost-it-in-parking-garage/
TBH, Cyclops Mehface is kinda freakin me out a little
@ruouttaurmind It’s a USB port and the power LED. Get a brain, Mehran.
@mike808 Buzzkill.
@all The community seems to be a little hostile today. What gives?
So my wife’s car speaker does this for her. It is magical.
Do not need…
Worst time ever:
We were at Tyson’s Corner Mall in Northern Virginia, New Year’s Eve a couple of years ago. At the end of the night, just before the mall closed, we went to leave and realized my wife didn’t have her keys to the van. She normally kept them on a lanyard around her neck, but had taken it off and set it down for some reason and, long story short, we were pretty sure it had gone into the garbage in the food court.
But I had my keys, so we were still fine, right? Wrong! We realized we had been there so long that we had no idea where in the multilevel garage that spanned one entire side of the mall we had parked. So off I went to find the van while my wife tried to keep our two kids (then 6.5 and 4 years old) entertained while hanging out in the foyer of an anchor store that was closing up for the night.
I think it took me a good hour at least. The signal from the key fob wouldn’t go through the garage floors, so I had to be on the right level and close enough. Finally I hit on the idea of going to the center, where there was a gap that (I figured, and apparently I was right) would let the signal hit the next level down from where I was. Keeping this short again, I did eventually find the van, but the whole time I was looking for it, I couldn’t call them to let them know what was going on because my phone was at 1% and I didn’t want it to die (which it ultimately did anyway) before I found it, just in case they needed to call me (like if they were getting kicked out of the store).
Ultimately we got home at midnight, after an hour and a half drive home from a mall that closed at 9 PM.
What a horrorshow that was. Since that day I always note down in my phone where I am in any multilevel garage or large parking lot.
@kensey That totally sucks.
It drops a pin? So won’t I have to find a pin in a parking lot? How is that not like finding a needle in a haystack? And whose job is it to clean up all those pins? This sounds very anti-environmental.
There are plenty of apps in the Google Play store that will use your phone’s GPS to record where you parked and give you directions back/let you send the location to contacts, so don’t feel left out, Android users.
And there are probably similar apps on iTunes. So between the two platforms, 94% of smartphone users can save themselves $10. (The other 6℅ should absolutely buy this to serve as a daily reminder of how they need to move on from their Windows/Blackberry/Symbian phones. Change is hard. Phone-shaming is easy.)
@kungfuqua But what about my ZTE Open with FireFox OS?
@yakkoTDI Maybe you should have a seat. There’s been an accident.
http://www.zdnet.com/article/firefox-os-is-dead-mozilla-kills-off-open-source-iot-project-with-50-layoffs/
@yakkoTDI Intex Cloud FX!
https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2014/10/testing-a-35-firefox-os-phone-how-bad-could-it-be/
@narfcake I will not shame that phone. That phone connects people who would not otherwise be online to the internet, and that is a beautiful thing.
@kungfuqua I can’t shame its concept, but if you read the review in full, it’s so buggy, spec limited, and underpowered that it fails every task. Including keeping time.
NO ANDROID !!
Oy Meh!
Some of the comments reminded of BlondeStar
I found this really cool app on my phone that helps with this - it is called ‘Camera’.
@cholula Does the app cost $10 and only work with iPhone? If not, it’s not the same…
@KwadGuy see next post
Simple solution… take a picture of the aisle marker closest to where you parked. And, as an Android user, I get really irked (no offense Irk) when a product or app comes out for iPhone users only. If you can’t figure out how to make it compatible for both, don’t bother making it at all. Because when and if said product is available for Android, I’m not buying it. Just because. When do you ever see anything that is for Android only. Never! OK, maybe there are a few products I’m not aware of, but still.
@bloondie2 This is not in defense of iPhone, as I am an Android user, but when developing apps for iPhone, devs don’t have to ensure it runs to a hundred different standards. Apple is the only company thay makes iOS products. Whereas it takes much longer to ensure an app will run on the vast majority of Android devices.
OK, so I got beat to the punch, but it’s nice to know I’m not the only one who thought of this.
Sold! We park on the street all the time and have a 1994 Toyota Camry.
My mother, who is in her 90s, had a college professor friend who used to solve this problem in large parking lots by sticking a large toilet plunger (which he used to carry in his trunk) on the top of his otherwise unremarkable car. Worked flawlessly, and it was never stolen.
Came here expecting someone to call out the $7.12 instead of $7.20 typo. Was disappointed…unless my search just happened to fail me, in which case, never mind, nothing to see here folks.
Looks like this is an item whose time has passed…OR, is it one whose time never arrived?..
@werekong No, I believe you are thinking of the Bluetooth light bulb + speaker.
@KwadGuy That, too…
@KwadGuy Nah I totally bought two of those
wut
The worst product I’ve bought on Meh.com. Just get a normal car charger.
@SeveralPeople So it’s in 9th place. I bought this and sold it at a yard sale before I even opened it, so I wouldn’t know.
@medz Yeah, so its in my top ten ever!
Anyone still have access to this app? It’s gone from the App Store.