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Friday October 31, 2008
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Are you ready for Intenet in your car? I'm not talking about parking in a strange neighborhood and stealing borrowing someone's WiFi signal (not that I'd know from personal experience). I mean a real hot spot in your vehicle. It's snuck in quietly under my radar, but Chrysler is already making it happen with "uconnect," yet another proper noun product name that, unfortunately, begins with a lower case letter! Oh, the humanity.
"uconnect web lets you turn your vehicle into a WiFi hotspot, allowing you to connect your laptops, iPhones, PSPs and PDAs. With this authentic Chrysler accessory from Mopar® installed at your dealer, each passenger can simultaneously surf the Web, check their e-mail, instant message, download music / photos and play online games, so you'll never be out of the loop again."
I suppose this is great because I'm not already spooked enough by people texting while they drive. Why not just add some vehicular Twitter so I can stay in a tizzy as distracted drivers flutter down the road at me! I'm sure there is, or will be, a law to make me safe... which will be followed as much as those that says everyone on a cellphone must use a handsfree device.
The NY Times reports this 600Kbps-800Kbps (aka--slower-than-broadband) service will cost around $500 for dealer installation then $29 per month for 1 Gb of data per month. It's all done with 2.5G and 3G networks through Autonet, "the first Internet Service Provider designed exclusively for cars." An in car WiFi hotspot should cover a 100 foot radius.
I suppose this is a good thing, but it's not where I see the real strength of Internet to the car. The real potential is making your car a smart device with the ability to maneuver around traffic while monitoring engine, safety and structural components. Throw in Internet radio to replace terrestrial and satellite stations and you've got quite a service.
Oh--and get rid of the 1 Gb ceiling. I want to run BitTorrent from the car.
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