If you've watched any TV lately you will notice an odd pairing of product brands. Intermingled in car ads recently has been the mention of Microsoft Sync. I thought hmm... that might be a pretty cool feature.
When looked into Sync a little closer I had the feeling, I've seen this trick before. Like, connect your cell phone to your car via Blue Tooth to make calls etc. But there is more. Like the ability to read and send text messages verbally. Coincidently I saw on Fox News last night how kids are being wiped off the planet and injuring and killing others because they are texting and driving at the same time. So now I think this isn't only cool, it is a life saver.
With all of that said, there are a couple of additional features coming like getting a health report from your car's on board computer. But the ultimate convenience for me would be to allow my Windows mobile device (or even Blackberry) to connect to my car via Sync. And each time the two paired have Sync identify that there are appointments on my schedule or pending messages in my in-box and allow me to interact further with my calender or e-mail verbally. A pleasant voice saying ("Good afternoon Chaz. You have 3 pending appointments and 22 unread e-mails in your in-box.") after you get in your car would be cool. Then at my leisure to say "review appointments". Yeah that would be something!
I think we have entered the Jetson's age with this innovation. I'm looking forward to the continued enhancements of this product line for safety and convenience. And come on man, it is just cool to text hands free. And for old timers like me (36) it should reduce the length of time it takes me to text 5 words from 15 minutes to just a couple of seconds. I may never get out of my car again ;)
Here's a link to the Microsoft Sync site.
--chaz
I will be presenting on the interaction of ASP.Net, ASP.Net AJAX, and Silverlight 1.0 this Saturday at Microsoft in NYC. I'll also be showing off a small bit of Expression Blend 2 December Preview.
It is amazing how easy it is to pull all of these technologies together. Some of what I will be showing this Satruday is just a bridge until Silverlight 2.0 is released. But it is all relatively simple and once you've done the work once it is very re-usable.
Hope I'll be seeing you there.
--chaz