How to pimp your ride, Computerworld style

12.01.2007
There has been a lot of hype lately about Internet in the car, but do-it-yourself pioneers like Bill Rigby have been enjoying on-the-go browsing for years. So far, no one has been hurt.

Rigby, who is director of online account services at Computerworld, has rigged up his 2001 Jeep Wrangler with a laptop and power supply in the back that feeds a touch-screen monitor mounted on his dash, augmented by a bunch of mobile gadgets.

After looking for packaged, turnkey solutions that didn't fit his needs, he chose the do-it-yourself route in the summer of 2005.

"I just find it irritating that I can't be online every moment of the day," said Rigby. "I'm taking steps to make that a reality. If I could just build a computer into my skull, that might be the solution I'm really after. Also, I like to have things that other people don't have. I wanted people to drive past me on the highway and see me operating a full-blown Web browser at 65 miles per hour. I just thought it might impress people. Five percent are impressed, and the other 95 percent think I should focus more on driving my car correctly."

Always seeking the cutting edge, Rigby has voice-activated functionality, speech-to-text, GPS, broadband or Wi-Fi Internet access, and automatic synchronization with his home network. And he's not done yet.

"This might sound crazy but I want to connect to the diagnostics computer in my Jeep," Rigby said. "I'd like to run an application that could monitor gas consumption, horsepower and give me error codes when my Jeep is breaking down so I can figure out what's really going on when the engine light comes on."