Signature - Q4, 2007 - (Page 32)

[R]evolution | By Keith Ferrell | Illustration by Margaret Lee | Q4 ’07 Experience More The Tell-Tale Car Forget automatic transmission. Today’s coolest new vehicles have telematic transmission – and engine diagnostics, GPS receivers and more – keeping drivers informed on the state of their rolling freedom machines. Today this technology is driven by the Bluetooth wireless standard. It’s changing the way we drive and how we think about our wheels. On any given day, we might hop in the car to collect our mail, go to work, grab a bite to eat, drop off a package, get that noise in the engine ﬁxed, take a scenic drive and, sometimes, get lost – which leads us to a store for the occasional map so that we know where we are and how to get where we’re going. All the while, we’re chatting on cell phones (hands-free of course) and listening to tunes from our personal music library. Telematics – telecommunications and informatics combined – is changing all of that. And Bluetooth enabled automotive telematics is changing it fast. Automotive telematics – digital communications, global positioning, engine diagnostics and more – has changed the way we think about our cars and trucks, and it’s changing the way our vehicles “think” about the world around them. Want a glimpse of just how much things have changed? The ﬁrst car radios of any kind were introduced in 1930; the ﬁrst FM car radios didn’t show up until the 1950s. Add a tape player in the 1970s, a CD player a decade or two later, and you’ve pretty much covered automotive entertainment options. Communications? Take a look at a spy or detective movie from 20 years ago and check out the size and bulk of the “high-tech” gear the hero’s vehicle carries. Mobile phones – that’s what car phones were called in the pre-cellular age – were the size of shoeboxes and required a mobile operator to place a call. Global positioning? Until the late 1990s, you had to get a map (and forget about being able to re-fold it when you were done). Diagnostics? Find a good mechanic, trust him to know what he’s doing, and have faith that a problem on the road happened not too far from a mechanic just as skilled. Personal computers? Impossible until laptops hit the scene. Then, with a cigarette-lighter power adapter, you could plug in and work away. Today vehicles are increasingly coming off the assembly line Bluetooth enabled. With wireless GPS receivers, hands-free telecommunications, remote engine diagnostics and personal entertainment constantly accessible, your car becomes an extension of your home, your ofﬁce and your mechanic. The rapid development and exponential evolution of digital and cellular technologies have enabled our cars and trucks to become hubs for virtually all of our communications, information and entertainment needs – with Bluetooth technology serving as the hub of the hub. The result is a mobile environment that’s as much information as it is metal – that moves, sends and receives data from its systems to the outer world and back, even as it moves its passengers and cargo to their chosen destinations. As a consequence, our vehicles have become far more personalized – and personal – than ever. Whether traveling for work or pleasure, or just running everyday errands, we can conﬁgure our conveyances to suit our needs, purposes and moods, sometimes by simply telling them what to do. Car-talk indeed! It’s only going to get better. The car gave individuals mobility and freedom. Telematics gives us the ability to take our individual worlds of work and play with us wherever we go. Drive on! Keith Ferrell is former editor of OMNI magazine and has written extensively on business and technical topics. 32 | SIGnature | Bluetooth.org http://Bluetooth.org

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of Signature - Q4, 2007

Signature - Q4, 2007 Contents The Road Ahead Getting Noticed In the News Keeping the Edge Why Wibree? The Message Zone Do You Compute? Command Center Mountain Magic On the Fast Track Give or Get? Groundsurf’s Up! Get in the Game Get on the List Number, Please! User-Friendly The Tell-Tale Car

Signature - Q4, 2007

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