Activate your gadgets by Voice commands in your Car: Microsoft Sync

Talking to your car might seem like a stupid thing to do. But thanks to Microsoft Sync, now you can talk to your car and command it to do simple tasks for you.

Microsoft Sync is a voice activated In-Car Technology which can control a varied number of devices including you bluetooth enabled mobile phone, music players, navigation systems and also instruct your car to display it's health information upon request.

Sync’s main strengths are its sophisticated phone functions and a USB connection on the dashboard that can turn any portable music player into an in-car entertainment system.

The in-car phone uses Bluetooth to tap a connection from the user’s cellphone and also drags contacts and “previous call” lists from it. Voice commands are recognised allowing users to speak contacts’ names and order calls, plus incoming text messages will be converted and read out by the system.

Any music stored on the phone can also be streamed via Bluetooth and one Microsoft engineer successfully managed to stream a UK internet radio station through the browser on his smartphone.

Anything containing music that has a USB connection can be played over the system, including a simple memory stick. Sync reads the metadata on the music files and displays titles on the dashboard. It also allows the driver to speak commands such as “Play Album Back to Black”, “Play Playlist Dancemix” and even “Play Genre Jazz” or “Play Similar Music.” Say, "what's playing" and a synthesized voice tells you what you're listening to.

In the last quarter of 2007, Microsoft demonstrated their Sync system in 2 models of Ford (SUV and Ford Focus). Today, Microsoft has deployed Sync on more than 20 different models including Lincoln and Mercury. The list is vast and ever growing. Toyota Motor Co. (TM), in a direct attack on Ford Motor Co.'s (F) popular voice-activated Sync system, will begin offering its own in-car information product starting in August. Safety Connect, featuring automatic collision notification, stolen vehicle location and emergency assistance, will be introduced on some undisclosed Toyota brands.


You might think Microsofts' Sync is just a great hands-free voice-activated cellphone and iPod controller, but Microsoft has big plans for the software it wrote to make Sync work.

It wants to bring voice-activated network connectivity to your car. And use in-car advertising to pay for it. Microsoft is betting we'll have networked integrated entertainment and information systems within five years, and it wants Microsoft Auto to be the operating system they run on. The idea is to one-up OnStar and make telematics a voice-activated part of daily life by providing real-time traffic updates, custom-tailored point-of-interest directories and other helpful info. Want to know the fastest way home from work? Your car will chart the course. Get hungry for Thai along the way? Your car will tell you where to find it. Decide to see a movie after finishing your pad thai? Your car will tell you what's playing and when. And, of course, it'll tell you the fastest - or most scenic, or most fuel efficient - way to get there.

Looking 10 or 15 years down the road, Microsoft predicts cellular technology will let us download music and video directly to our cars, play online games and use vehicle-to-vehicle communications to avoid collisions. "This could be a revolutionary development for the automobile".

Microsoft isn't interested in making gadgets. It wants to provide the software that will link those gadgets to your car and your car to the network. But as OnStar showed, mobile connectivity can be expensive to provide and to use. Microsoft would take a cue from Google to make it affordable.

Instead of charging a monthly subscription fee like OnStar, which costs $18.95 a month and up, the navi screen in a Microsoft-based system would display advertisements targeted to your search parameters and exact location. Looking for an Italian restaurant? The list would be accompanied by ads for those nearby.

Fortunately for all of us, Microsoft is not going to be controlling critical internal and driving functions with this software; we’ll all sleep safer at nights knowing that the dreaded Blue Screen of Death won’t display on the dashboard when the windshield wipers were turned on. “WIPER.EXE has performed an illegal operation in module CARSYSTEM32.DLL”—can you imagine that?

Why Is It So Cheap?
Part of the reason for the popularity is price. Adding a Sync system to a Ford, Lincoln, or Mercury adds only $395 to the sticker price, while adding similar features for controlling music and cell phones to other cars can cost as much as $800. Its $395 Sync system has been a runaway hit - cars with Sync outsell those without it by two to one - and Bragman says we're going to see other automakers rushing to catch up.

Researchers at market research firm iSuppli probed under Sync's hood for a closer look at how Microsoft and Ford managed to keep the price so low. The makers use inexpensive chips, for one thing. A teardown analysis by iSuppli found that the six major chips used in the system cost a grand total of $25. Of those, the most expensive component is an $8 applications chip from Freescale Semiconductor, the privately held former chip unit of Motorola (MOT). A second Freescale microcontroller chip costs $5.

Add in $4.80 worth of memory chips from Micron Technology (MU), a $3.80 flash memory chip from Samsung, a $1.75 Bluetooth chip from Cambridge Silicon Radio, and a $1.65 audio chip from Cirrus Logic (CRUS) and you've got most of the hardware for the system, says iSuppli automotive analyst Richard Robinson. "The secret about this system is that there's no real secret to the hardware," he says.


Ford Sync Advertisement as shown on TV

Source:
http://www.syncmyride.com/
http://www.microsoft.com/auto/
http://www.fordvehicles.com/sync/
http://www.businessweek.com/technology/
http://blog.wired.com/cars/
http://blogs.ft.com/techblog/