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Pioneer App Radio officially unveiled

Pioneer has officially unveiled the App Radio that AutoWeek told you about earlier this month. Now that it's willing to talk, Pioneer claims that the radio and audio system is "the first in-vehicle product designed to utilize the processing power, storage capacity, network connectivity and apps of the iPhone and iPod Touch as the primary source for its information and entertainment capabilities." That does sound a lot like what Mini Connected and, in a more platform-agnostic sense, Ford Sync are doing. Pioneer said it couldn't speak to the similarity of those systems, but Ted Cardenas, director of marketing for Pioneer's car-electronics division, briefed us on installation of the device and what Pioneer is doing to minimize driver distraction.

RTT Student Awards contest launched

Students from around the world have been invited to enter the annual RTT Student Award, sponsored by NVIDIA and Wacom. RTT has called for submissions of visionary ideas and concepts to enter in the categories of ‘Emerging Technology' and ‘Funky Visualization,' with an expert judging panel deciding on the highest caliber submissions. Winning students will present their project at Excite 2012, RTT's showcase for cutting-edge innovation and technology in the world of 3D real-time visualization.

CES: It's a digital experience

The night before the Consumer Electronics Show opens its portals to the world’s technogeeks, there is a sort of preshow called the Digital Experience! (They added that exclamation mark to the name, not us.) Still, the relatively small, ancillary consumer-technology show does set the stage for the massive CES juggernaut the next day. This year, as always, we wandered the aisles of Digital Experience looking for car-related tech.