Kenwood has unveiled a future pen-shaped navigation system at the Tokyo Motor Show 2007. With this one, you point it at a place on a map with this special pen and all the information magically shows up on the navigation monitor.

Hitachi has developed a steering wheel with a tiny device that reads the driver’s finger veins. This lets the driver use his/her fingers as switches for the engine, car stereo, and navigation system.

"If I place my index finger on this reader, it recognises it’s me. If I put the finger again, it starts the engine," Masahide Hayashi of Hitachi’s sensor design department explained at the Tokyo Motor Show near the capital.

No word on when we might see this in cars, but Hitachi said it hopes to launch it within three or four years.

For $1600 you can have Pioneer’s latest in-dash navigation system. The AVIC-X3 comes with a motorized, flip-out seven-inch touchscreen, optional iPod / Bluetooth compatibility, CD or DVD playback, XM / XM NavTraffic-readiness, and a Tele Atlas database.

Need music? It’s got that too with MP3, WMA, AAC, and DivX. Or use the CD-BTB200 adapter to wirelessly stream form your mobile handset.

A warning not to blindly trust your GPS – and use some common sense!

A German trucker, apparently ignoring warning signs, followed his GPS navigation while looking for the factory in Switzerland where he was due to drop off his cargo, and ended up in this cherry tree.

"He obstinately followed the female voice of the navigation system and drove another 300 metres (yards) until the lane came to an end," they added.

I can hear the German jokes in Switzerland all the way over here!

The US and EU are entering into an agreement to allow their satellite navigation systems to work together to provide more accurate images and information. The satellites would send information on the same radio frequency, enabling receivers to get signals from both systems and combine the data.

The US already has 30 satellites orbiting the earth and the EU aims to have 30 satellites up in space by around 2010 with a fully operational Galileo system by 2012. The United States is in the process of updating its GPS system — procuring new satellites that would launched into space by 2013.