Tuesday, June 1, 2010

What's Next? When Will Technology Actually Start Driving The Car?

Blogger 'Ventura' left a comment on the 'They're Not Joking When They Say Hands Free' thread about how the Ford 'SYNC' system will actually read your text messages to you, along with doing about a hundred other things we used to not think necessary. Having been apparently living in a cave for the past two years (SYNC came out in 2008), I hadn't heard of it so looked it up. Here's a portion of what Wikipedia says about SYNC:

"Ford SYNC allows various portable devices (e.g., the iPod, Zune, and most other USB mass storage devices) and Bluetooth-enabled mobile phones to be operated with simple voice commands. SYNC can even receive text messages and read them aloud using a digitized female voice "Samantha". SYNC can interpret a hundred or so shorthand messages such as LOL for "laughing out loud" and will read swear words; it will not however, decipher obscene acronyms.

Obscene acronyms?? Not familiar with those. I must not be getting texts from the right people. While I try to figure out what an obscene acronym would be, here's a link to the official SYNC site, in case you want to invest in a Ford.

2 comments:

Rachel said...

I dunno, I guess people will just have to start typing WTF/WTH out all the way...

Personally, I use WTF all the time when speaking, pronounced as the three letters, as a polite-company substitute, like "what the heck."
I guess, in that regard, it's fitting that Samantha won't read it out.

SRTC Staff said...

It would be kind of funny if she did read it though, with her British accent and all.


About SRTC

SRTC is the federally designated Metropolitan Planning Organization (MPO) for Spokane County. Urbanized areas with populations exceeding 50,000 people are required to have an MPO. SRTC was formed to address the county's transportation planning needs. It provides coordination in planning between the public, cities, small towns, the county, the state, transit providers, and tribes.

SRTC offers services including transportation monitoring, transportation modeling, census information analysis, travel demand forecasting, historical traffic count analysis, geographic information systems, and trip generation rates.