Japan's Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Corp and Honda said on Tuesday they have developed a car navigation system that allows drivers to send e-mail without taking their hands off the wheel.
The next-generation system, which lets drivers listen to their e-mail and encode voice messages into text, will be test launched next year, the two firms said.
Aside from map graphics, standard to all car navigation systems, the new system's voice function will also tell the driver about road conditions, said Mariko Yabe, spokeswoman for Honda, Japan's third-largest carmaker.
"The system will also weed out unnecessary e-mail when the road ahead looks too tough for the driver (to be distracted)," she said.
Yabe said it was too early to say how popular the new system would be.
News source: Reuters
View: Japanese Honda Press Release (I think... If anyone can translate?)
The next-generation system, which lets drivers listen to their e-mail and encode voice messages into text, will be test launched next year, the two firms said.
Aside from map graphics, standard to all car navigation systems, the new system's voice function will also tell the driver about road conditions, said Mariko Yabe, spokeswoman for Honda, Japan's third-largest carmaker.
"The system will also weed out unnecessary e-mail when the road ahead looks too tough for the driver (to be distracted)," she said.
Yabe said it was too early to say how popular the new system would be.
News source: Reuters View: Japanese Honda Press Release (I think... If anyone can translate?)
When a customer buys a prereleased CD, that person is sent an encrypted URL, which links to Speedera's streaming area, Smith said. The buyer can then listen to the music featured on the CD as often as desired. But once the CD is released to the public and presumably delivered to the customer, Speedera will block the Web address.
This also serves to protect the property of the music industry. After Napster, music companies grew hypersensitive to any offering that distributed copyrighted materials to a mass audience. They worried that the technology could be cracked and thereby allow the music to be copied, pirated and spread over the Web.
With Speedera's technology, listeners are kept from copying or recording the streamed music. Smith said there is a secret key embedded into the encryption that prevents anyone but the buyer to access the URL. He declined to offer specifics on how that is done.
"You can't record the music; nor can you e-mail to a friend. And it can't be accessed if someone posts it on a Web site," Smith said.
The technology is easily accessible for other kinds of media, such as video, and through different software, such as Microsoft's Windows Media and RealNetworks' RealMedia.
Sources close to Amazon said that if offering prereleased music over the Web proves successful, the e-tailer will likely extend the feature into other digital content.
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