Brightest Student to Deliver ‘The Cloud’
Ford is funding a project for University of Michigan students working to deliver in-car connectivity by integrating cloud computing and social networking with the already successful Microsoft SYNC system.
“Already with Sync we have proven that we can access information in the cloud,” said Venkatesh Prasad, head of the company’s infotronics team in Research & Advanced Engineering. “This research gives us the opportunity to harness the power of student innovation to explore beyond those capabilities and develop what’s next. We want the students to get creative and develop ways to responsibly connect the car to communicate and share with the outside world.”
Social Networking and Connectivity
Microsoft conducted a survey earlier this year and found 77% of respondents use social networking site, 50% use multiple site, and 64% visit those sites on a daily basis. Ford have been hugely successful this year utilizing the social networking sites such as Facebook, Twitter, and Flickr with the ‘Fiesta Movement’, and the new commercials aimed at the 20-something generation.
They realize harnessing the creativity of minds from students of the very generation they are vying for will give them the advantage of knowing exactly what they need to deliver, and how it needs to work. Ultimately bringing these sites to your dash.
We are doing a complete shakedown of the development platform,” said Dr. Brian Noble, associate professor of electrical engineering and computer science at UM. “It’s frustrating because the features and functions don’t work the way we think they’re supposed to, and it’s awesome because we are working on the bleeding edge.”
Via: Autopia@Wired
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Actually, the American Journey 2.0 project uses a different in-car platform — it’s not SYNC, but a custom research platform based on Windows 7, Robotics Studio, and Windows Azure.