Oscar Wilde once said, "It is a very sad thing that nowadays there is so little useless information."

Now, he might not have said that had he lived in modern times and seen how much useless information is on the internet, but even so we can't help disagreeing a little. Information can be quite useful sometimes, no more so than when driving.

To that end, Toyota Touch Life is right up our street. Taking the best information available through your smartphone and putting it onto your car's central, larger touchscreen puts more information at your fingertips than ever before.

It also makes in-car infotainment pretty much future-proof as your car's display mirrors that of your smartphone, be it a Nokia using industry standard MirrorLink or an Apple iPhone running the "Application Launcher" app.

Initially available in Europe on the Toyota iQ minicar--soon to arrive in the U.S. as the 2012 Scion iQ--it'll also appear in the Prius hybrid as Toyota Touch Pro. This could add a useful extra dimension to your driving, allowing you to use fuel economy-based apps to get the best from your efficient driving.

Should it appear in the 2012 Toyota Prius plug-in hybrid it could also be used to coordinate charging and energy use--perhaps with the Prius' typical energy display taking the form of an app, rather than a function built into the car.

Useful information aside, we're sure Oscar Wilde would be happy to know that searching for useless information could be made even easier, too...

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