Tales from the Techside

I start my commute nearly everyday asking myself the same question… why can’t I talk to my car and more importantly why can’t it talk to the internet for me?

Voice recognition has made huge strides. Cellular technology as well. And the internet is just there waiting. Yet the best I can hope for at the current moment is to slap a third party device on my dash that will at least give me directions, perhaps allow me to voice a desired location to which it will react. If I happen to own a mercedes benz Yahoo will be happy to send my travel directions to my car. Yahoo.

With a tiny investment of capital, and a little more hardware engineering knowledge than I possess, I believe I could rather quickly create a device that will have access to the internet from my commute, accept voice browsing and navigation commands, as well as develop a minimal new language for voice browser interaction (I haven’t done the research on browser accessibility add-ons, but strongly suspect that the basis for this already exists as a product).

So why would I want to? Well, I spend a great deal of time driving around. During this time I am essentially in ROM mode. I cannot randomly access what I want. If it isn’t on the radio, or I haven’t loaded up my ipod with that content, I am pretty much stuck. Why can’t I use that time to access news and information online? Why can’t a dashboard mounted device respond when I ask it to read the radio version of Yahoo or INMAN, or whomever. During that recitation if I hear something I am interested in, why cannot I open a new virtual ‘tab’ in my audio internet experience, and search for information on those things? When I find something I am interested in looking more closely at, why cannot I give a verbal instruction for this information to be sent to my email so that it is waiting for me when I get to work?

How many times have you heard an advertisement for a service while driving, and actually been interested but unable to remember the url or even the fact that you were interested by the time that you get to a computer? Think how nice it would be if, when you heard an address rattled off, you could simply say ‘follow that url.’

Granted, there is existing technology that can do some of these things, but where is the integrated device? I was excited to hear a preview of Microsoft’s Synch service, thinking that they might be on to what I am hoping to see as a consumer, but was rather predictably disapointed. Synchronizing information is not what we are looking for here. My life, most peoples lives I suspect, is not predictable enough to hope that synchronized information will serve. I need to be able to randomly access information. I believe that people in our culture should start spending less time in vehicles, but unfortunately the trend seems quite the reverse.

So I am forced to ask if a safer, much more valuable way to be productive during that time is not to put down my cell phone, and start talking to my car. I know that sounds a bit paradoxical, but I suspect it is true.

What does the have to do with real estate? A lot. Many REALTORS® spend significant amounts of time in their vehicles, often with clients. Randomly accessing information without missing a beat is an important part of succeeding in this area. The ability to get information through voice interaction without having to hunker down over your treo or other device would seem invaluable. Add integrated GPS and of course you should only be able to get lost if you want to. But that is only a fraction of the potential. Making informative use of this time is inevitable. I personally prefer to telecommute, but if I have to drive, I will continue to try to imagine ways that I can research information and create content.

Thanks for reading my rant. I suspect that someone out there is close to solving this issue, but then Apple let me down. Microsoft then followed suit. Mark has himself posted on some ancillary capabilities like blog on the go voice services, but the complete package has yet to appear. So I continue to wait for someone to accept my $50/month to hook my car up to the internet and let me teach it to surf for me.

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