Knight Rider time
While tablets have stolen most of the mobile device headlines over the past year, using your smartphone to communicate with your car is rapidly becoming a mainstream concept.
NXP's smart car was one of the hits of Mobile World Congress last month and now embedded car technology looks set to hijack another tech show. The CEO of car giant Ford - Alan Mulally - is scheduled to announce that its SYNC technology will debut in the European Ford Focus next year.
We first covered SYNC almost a year ago, when it was rolling out in the US. Ford positions it as a ‘voice-controlled connectivity and infotainment system', and it's built on Microsoft's Windows Embedded Automotive platform. At its core, SYNC is an evolution of the hands-free car kit. As well as being able to use your mobile phone to have conversations, you can now integrate it with the car's own systems in a far more fundamental way.
"We are pleased to announce that SYNC will soon be available to customers around the world," said Mulally in a Microsoft press release. "It is a smarter, safer and simpler way to connect drivers with in-car technologies and their digital lives." Among the clever things you can do via this system is stream media from your phone to the car's infotainment system and voice-controlled text messaging.
Incidentally, we were first alerted to this story by Microsoft's Steve Clayton, who is well known to HEXUS. Clayton's a Brit who recently relocated to Seattle, where he has continued his role as the evangelist for new technologies within Microsoft.
He remains a committed blogger and, as well as this story, recent posts brought the two video clips below to our attention. They demonstrate Kinect being used to generate 3D portraits, and how WP7 phones are being positioned a bit further down the food chain in the US.
