The future of car computing

optikalefx · 05-21-2009, 11:23 AM

Hi my name is Robert Wray from Mp3car. Throughout the summer we are going to dive deeper into the future of mobile computing, car computing and telematics with a series of video blogs exploring new technology and interviews with leaders in the space.

Based on our activity in the community, our work with automakers, aftermarket, communications and telematics companies, we believe consumers will demand a bunch of new features all seamlessly integrated into a replicable, flexible UI and accessible from many devices of varying power, age, screen size, and interfaces.

The feature list will include.
• Connected navigation (Internet POI, Real time traffic, regular map updates)
• Media & entertainment from the internet or internet connected devices
• Interfacing with other technology (engines or batteries, GPS and other location indicators, other sensor hardware)
• Extensible developer interfaces to allow rapid add ons and integrations with existing features
• Demand for skinable and user customizable interfaces
• Occasionally connected devices (wireless, USB, WIFI, sneaker net)
• Demand for flexible audio and visual prioritization
• Flexible Security & Personal privacy awareness & settings
• Task aware user interface, for example - user taking a bus, driving, walking, sitting down
• All of the above components, including the UI should be modular and replaceable at any time to make way for new innovations.

Through our video blogging and interviews we plan to find out what it is going to take to make these features a reality and follow the activity of our community members as these bleeding edge features get implemented.

Tidder · 05-21-2009, 06:23 PM

Why is this post coming from optikalefx?

optikalefx · 05-21-2009, 11:11 PM

Fibre didn't have time to post it and I can't post from his account

hanyboraie · 05-25-2009, 12:11 AM

Hi my name is Hany from Egypt. dive deeper into the future of mobile computing, car computing and telematics , sound very interesting with me i want to be part of that ,

i completely share with you the same vision and exception about the future of mobile computing, car computing,

would love to participate with mp3car team in all activity

would like to thank mp3car Team for the great effort and the very rich valuable content they publish to develop car computing field.

Hany,

kev000 · 05-26-2009, 11:43 AM

I totally agree with many of the points Robert mentioned in the audio clip. I really think the idea of a monolithic frontend will eventually die. As I understand it, Flux is developing a "mobile framework/toolkit" for CF3. This goes in line to what we in the OpenICE team have done with nGhost2, and what we plan on doing even better and more awesome in nGhost3. No more embedding windows in other windows in other windows. Build the app from a common "mobile framework", establish a method of communcation between apps, and you have your self a mobile desktop and NOT a frontend. Let the OS do it's job managing windows, threads and processes and it'll make your life as a developer and user easier.

I disagree somewhat on the value most of us place on a customizable interface. I agree with Robert in the value of separating the code from the interface. WPF with XAML and Flex with MXML are two examples of this idea in the marketplace. However, if I understand correctly, you define the look and feel in the XAML/MXML but you define the functionality in code. This is different than most of us expect. We wrongly (IMHO) expect a skin to not only define look/feel but also functionality. This is a great feature for enthusiasts and tweakers/hackers. But the vast majority of users will never care. It's a huge development effort for really little benefit.

If you only ever want to target enthusiasts, implement skinning to the level they want. If you want to make something everyone else will be happy with, don't make skinning a major feature. Instead, make an better/easier user interface for "mom and dad", create a system that makes installing/loading plugins or new apps easy. Sure, the hacker can dig into the config files/xml if he wants, but the other users will never have to care about those config files.

And that, IMHO, is how it should be.

HiJackZX1 · 06-06-2009, 03:29 PM

Quote: Originally Posted by Tidder

Why is this post coming from optikalefx?

OH, I thought optikalefx and Fiberoptic where one in the same.

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