I don't think i've actually made an official announcement on mp3car yet, so here it is:

In order to extend what we know of as In Car Entertainment, and to create a standard set of tools and apps where upon one can build a car entertainment system, a system must exist to facilitate those functions. That system is OpenICE.

It's goal is to create a standard on what a Car Entertainment/Infotainment system should be. This includes rules on Graphical User Interface, Components that make up a ICE system, and other best practices and rules that should apply industry wide.

Its secondary goal is to provide a platform and set of tools for one to build a custom car entertainment system from the ground up. One should be able to take a Linux based operating system, install the libraries, tools, and apps developed by the OpenICE community, and create a complete ICE/IVI system.

OpenICE is the new home for the technologies develped by the nGhost project. It's demonstration distribution, what will become a window of an implementation of the Standard and Platform is LinuxICE.

In the future, OpenICE.org will offer free/open source information services for developers to use in their apps (yes even windows developers will be able to take advantage of these services). For this, we will be looking for ASP.NET and C# developers to help with those services. If you are interested, shoot me a line. (if you want to know what services that are under development, ask away ).

Best of all, OpenICE is a free service to everyone. So feel free to use it as a resource, use it's tools, or better yet, develop for it.

You can find the site with more information at http://openice.org