car

Nokia isn't just about mobile phones today at Mobile World Congress. The company is also showing off a new wireless charger for vehicles. Should you use your Lumia 920 (or other Windows Phone) in the car for navigation, etc. you may well be interested in a wireless charging unit that will provide juice to your device without cables.

Microsoft has kicked off "Project Detroit", a concept car using various connected technologies including Windows Phone to give developers ideas for next generation automobiles.

Currently, Microsoft has embraced the SYNC/OVO system which curiously has little Windows Phone support at all. However, they are looking to change that with Project Detroit which extends Microsoft's vision for an all-connected future. The project is built off of Ford SYNC but it incorporates just about everything Microsoft has control over including Kinect for Xbox 360, Xbox 360, Windows 8, Windows Phone, Windows Azure, and Bing.

The demo car should also raise some eyebrows for fellow car enthusiasts:

"To create Project Detroit, a 2012 Ford Mustang with a 1967 fastback body, Microsoft teamed up with Ryan Friedlinghaus, an award-winning automotive designer based in Corona, Calif., and star of the Discovery Channel's Velocity network reality TV series "Inside West Coast Customs."

Just as exciting is the Windows Phone app that was created to control everything in the car,

"Using a Windows Phone, remotely watch and listen to the live video stream and audio from the Kinects embedded in Project Detroit. From this same application, your Windows Phone becomes like a microphone for the car’s external audio PA system."

More impressive is the ability to control other added functionality to the car including the accent lighting, the horn sound “ringtone”, activating the “projector screen” and sending a message to the rear windshield all using the Windows Phone app.

While such a car-system is merely for demonstration purposes, it really sets the imagination on fire thinking of all the different things one could do with a car (and some money). We don't imagine Ford or other car companies will be throwing all of these technologies in the car in the near future, but safe to say system like Microsoft Kinect as they become miniaturized will be inserted into more and more everyday applications. Likewise, with Windows 8 running on ARM processors, the ability to transplant these various systems should be easier as time goes on.

To see "Project Detroit" in action, tune into Inside West Coast Customs Sunday, March 25 at 6 p.m. PDT (9 p.m. EDT).  We'll try to bring you the video when it goes up.

Source: Microsoft; Thanks, Amir, for the tip!

In a press release today, Directed Electronics announced that it has been working with Microsoft to bring its Viper SmartStart automotive app, which allows users to lock/unlock, and of course, start their vehicle via smartphone, to the Windows Phone platform "later in the year."  In conjunction with the announcement, Microsoft representatives demonstrated a beta version for those in attendance at the BUILD conference in Anaheim, CA. 

"We're very excited about partnering with Microsoft to extend Viper SmartStart products to the Windows Phone 7 platform," said Mike Simmons, Executive VP of Directed Electronics. "Our developers were able to quickly bring the app to Windows Phone 7 because they are so familiar with the Microsoft environment."

SmartStart, created by the same Viper brand of car alarms and other accessories, has a wide range of other smartphone-based apps for the car and home, though it's not clear from the press release if all of them are equally as close to arriving for WP7.  You can see a demo of the various functions on their website.

Aside from the clear convenience of what this app brings to users, what is even more interesting is what else Simmons had to say: "We look forward to collaborating with Microsoft in other areas, including jointly developing advanced solutions for the cloud connected car."  We have seen how Microsoft has been expanding and integrating SkyDrive into Mango, so could this mean such things as cloud-based music playback for the car?  This could take the Windows brand beyond just the PC\Phone\Gaming unification that we already know is coming.

Source: PRNewsWire