The multimedia project I work on at QNX is now available on foundry27. Foundry27 is QNX’s development portal where you can find software projects actively being developed.
Audis new navigation system includes 3D textured buildings.
(Credit: Audi)
Audi’s new Q5 sports navigation graphics empowered by chip maker Nvidia, along with a radically updated dashboard interface, which Audi calls the Multimedia Interface, or MMI. Integrated into the new navigation system is an automotive grade Nvidia …
There are lots of other advanced features that it shows as well such as voice integration, hands free support for bluetooth phones. I hope a few of you have a chance to see it.
The article also has some interesting stats on hard drives and bluetooth integration in cars. The head units in cars these days are as powerful as many desktop computers and have even more peripherals.
Now unfortunately, the one thing the article has completely wrong is that “Microsoft Automotive Platform … offers the most universal integration”. If I were to compare MS Auto to QNX Car, I’d like to point out:
CD’s are not dead. MS Auto currently doesn’t do CDs, or CD Changers. QNX is shipping in many cars today with that feature. We also support MP3-CD’s
Ripping CDs, or USB Sticks. QNX’s MME manages all this for you so that when you ask to rip a CD or list of USB tracks to your hard drive it will do that as fast as possible without interrupting your playback. And if you power off your car, it’ll continue where it left off.
Embedded hard drive support: without ripping, do you support a hard drive?
Internet Radio integration.. how connected are you without the internet?
QNX Car also has the same “most universal integration” features that MS has: USB Mass Storage, iPod, PlaysForSure, Zune, Bluetooth.
QNX Car is shipping in many other makes than Ford. In fact the last stat I heard is that it is in over 40% of the 2009 models! I should talk to marketing to get a completely accurate number.
As usual, Microsoft has lots of dollars to spend on advertising, but the real question is how good is their product? QNX has always been quality driven, and therefore is chosen to run space equipment, nuclear power plants, and the fancy features in your car.
Last.fm lets you choose an artist or tag and play music in a streamed fashion just like a radio station would only you have a large choice of what to play from since you can start with any artist or tag you like.
Today they announced that from the website you can play full-length tracks of your choosing a few times and after that you can pay for a subscription. Another subscription service but this one also offers independent artists a chance to share their music and get paid for it also. Here is the last.fm blog post.
As usual with legal agreements with the big labels, this hasn’t rolled out in most of the world yet.. And if it’s anything like the Apple iTunes movie sales I won’t be expecting it in Canada sometime soon.
