Microsoft, Siemens to develop in-car infotainment
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Microsoft  and Siemens   will join forces to develop in-car entertainment and  navigation products that should make it easier for consumers to  connect devices such mobile phones and music players.
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Software maker heads to LA to show off a host of gadgets that use one or another Microsoft technology to access movies, music and video.
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NEW ORLEANS -- General Motors Corp. plans to put two safety features -- OnStar in-vehicle communications service and electronic stability control -- in all of its vehicles by the end of 2010, the company said yesterday. GM believes it would be the first automaker to make both features standard, a spokesman said.
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Ford Motor Co on Wednesday said it  would offer high-definition digital radio on nearly all 2008  model year Ford, Lincoln and Mercury vehicles as a  dealer-installed option.
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In July, German auto parts maker, Continental, clinched a major deal to acquire Siemens VDO. Now the company must integrate a company nearly its own size.
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Sirius Satellite Radio Inc. said on  Wednesday it is planning a children's video service for cars in  2006, a year later than it had expected, using software from  Microsoft Corp.
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(InfoWorld) - Flying bikes, cell phone robots, smart walking sticks, and audio speakers that defy logic are inventions all on display Tuesday at Microsoft's Redmond, Washington, headquarters. On the second day of the Microsoft Research Faculty Summit, Microsoft researchers and their academic partners showed off some of their projects. They ranged from the wacky to the relatively staid. The Flying Bike is a project that would let users ride a stationary bike that is integrated into a video game. In the demonstration, the game was Flight Simulator X and players have to pedal fast enough to stay airborne in the game. But Yolanda Rankin, a computer science researcher at Northwestern University and one of the developers of the project, envisions lots of other games that users could play using the bike, such as racing games and shooter games where players must flee or chase opponents. InkSeine is an application that tightly integrates search with pen computing. Users can write a word on the screen with a special pen. Holding down a button on the pen and drawing a circle around the word pops up a menu that allows users to search for the term online or on the hard drive. InkSeine has other unique user interface features: Making a circular motion with the pen on the screen will scroll a Web page down. Itâs an easier movement than trying to touch the small box in the narrow column on the right side of the screen with the pen and then pull it down. One of the more amazing inventions on display is Personal Audio Space. In the demo, 16 small speakers in a vertical line simultaneously play two songs: a rock song and a piece of classical music. Up close, they let off a cacophony of sound. But standing on one X marked on the floor around five feet from the speakers, a listener only hears the rock song. Standing on another X about two feet away next to the first, a listener hears only the classical music. The technology could be used in a variety of applications, said Ivan Tashev, one of the Microsoft researchers working on the project. In a shared office, two workers could listen to music or their phones without bothering the other. Two people could sit on their front porch at home, each listening to their own favorite music. A baby sitter could watch TV with a baby asleep in the next room, because the speakers could be used simply to direct sound to one place. The system works by distorting the audio so that it cancels out in some areas and steers the sound into others. Ultimately, the system could use cameras and microphones to detect where a person is and then point the sound to that person on the fly, Tashev said. Oscar Almeida, another Microsoft researcher, showed off a prototype of a walking stick that uses a gyro sensor to detect stability. When it detects instability, it could send a message warning a caretaker that the user might have fallen. The technology is a better idea, he said, than those that might simply detect when a walking stick is horizontal, which could lead to lots of false negatives and positives. Another fun project on display was the result of Microsoft researcher Brian Cross' idea for how to use mobile phones that are discarded when users upgrade. His Wimobot is a small robot that uses the phone as its "brain," he said. In his demonstration, he sends a text message that is a small program from a phone to the phone in the robot. The program instructs the robot to lower a pen onto the white board it sits on and draw a square. Andy Wilson, also a company researcher, is developing a device that could serve as a less expensive form of the surface computer that Microsoft recently unveiled. That computer will cost thousands of dollars. Wilson's invention uses a projector to display an application onto any surface, like a table top. Two infrared lasers pointed at the surface would allow users to grab and drag items with their hands. The company developers who showed off the projects work in Microsoft Research, a group of around 800 researchers developing about 60 projects. In his opening remarks on Tuesday at the summit, Rico Malvar, managing director of Microsoft Research, said that the mission of the group is to expand the state of the art in areas it does research, rapidly turn innovative technologies into Microsoft products, and ensure that Microsoft products have a future. Without getting more precise, he said the group uses a small portion of Microsoft's $7 billion research and development budget.
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Two pairs of companies are developing in-car video systems geared at making it easy for consumers &#151; and perhaps more importantly, their kids &#151; to access and view television programming on the go.
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A software tools maker is staking its future on helping developers prepare for streamlined coding for Web services (define) as well as Avalon, the graphics display component in the works for Longhorn, Microsoft&#39;s next version of Windows.
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By JOE McDONALD  BEIJING - Microsoft Corp. and a major Chinese TV set maker announced Monday they will jointly develop entertainment products linking television and the Internet, joining a race to profit from the Web's growing status as a channel to distribute movies and other programs.
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Microsoft Corp.  is developing  a music and video device to compete with Apple&#039;s iPod and  creating its own music service to rival Apple&#039;s iTunes, sources  familiar with the plans said on Friday.
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Toyota Motor Corp. and Nissan Motor Co.  will join hands in a bid to save costs and create an  international standard for the software that operates a car's  electronic systems.
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U.S. software giant Microsoft  is  aiming to get its audio and video software into mobile phones  before it is beaten to the 650-million-handsets-a-year market  by rivals like Apple.
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The ViaMichelin X-930 is an in-car navigation device with Michelin-approved information about points of interest along the way.
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New 'Send to Car' icon lets Mercedes owners send customized Google, Yahoo directions, maps and points of interest from computer or cell phone to car.
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DaimlerChrysler's new system, Xentry, will replace multiple applications with a single Web-based system that gives mechanics a real-time integrated view of parts, service diagnostic and corporate information.
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In-car navigation systems in rental cars have made navigating unfamiliar cities much easier for business travelers who drive rather than fly.