Ford's social vehicels with Twitter and Apps

Ford Motor Co. plans to bring social networking to most of it's cars by 2015. They are going to unveil the My Ford Touch System at the CES show in las Vegas. Which will feature thumb-wheel controls on the steering wheel, an 8 inch touchscreen on the dashboard for audio, navigation and climate-control functions. It sync in-car function will have a Twitter application. Ford wants to bring the internet into the car. Wow talk about added distractions. Maybe worth the fun though. Pandora and Stitched are also available

Sync is a system that was co-created with Microsoft and what it does is let's drives operate their Bluetooth-enabled Smartphones and music players with voice commands and also reads text messages to them apart from an array of other functions. Since it's unveiling 3 years ago Form has sold 1 million vehicles with it.

The System will also encourage outside developers to create Apps that can be downloaded free or a small fee. The goal being to get in on the Apps revolution

Ford's first plays:

•OpenBeak. Bringing in Twitter, which lets users send short messages to the masses, seemed a natural. OpenBeak, formerly called TwitterBerry, is an app that makes it easy to use Twitter's most popular functions from mobile devices.

•Pandora. This Internet radio service boasts 40 million users worldwide. It lets users custom-tailor music in song lists that can be paused or skipped through.

•Stitcher. A personalized, on-demand radio system. Users can pick radio programs they want to hear, and listen on their own schedules.

Ford shared the Sync API with students at the University of Michigan, among other institutions, to see what applications they might come up. One such app is a "breadcrumbing" tool for a convoy of cars following one lead driver who knows the way. As the leader drops virtual breadcrumbs along the route, directions to that point are generated and shared with following cars.
Meanwhile, more mobile app developers are knocking on Ford's door: "We're getting a lot of requests. It's hard to keep up," Marchwicki said.

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Sociolatte