document updated 24 years ago, on May 9, 2002
In order of importance:
- MP3 browser / player. Besides the obvious, it also allows for:
- audio books, recorded at 56kbps. These are impractical to put on CDs because it takes an enormous amount of CDs
- daily updated content, such as recorded radio programs, Tivo-style. (home computer would record during the day)
- Voice notes. Useful for things like grocery lists, todo lists, just-heard-song-on-radio-make-sure-to-download-mp3 lists, etc...
- simple GPS. Home-grown perl scripts
- Input destination longitude & latitude, and it tells you which direction your target is, and how far away it is.
- a history of where/when the car has been today (effectively producing a time log of what I've done)
- A real-time readout of how I'm doing today vs. other days. eg. how much traffic is slowing me down, etc...
- A total history of all roads I've travelled, the top speed during that time, the traffic over all of history, all the labeled destinations that I've been to, etc... Effectively creating a very accurate database of local roads that would otherwise only be avialable commercially.
- Voice synthesis reading of long texts. eg. news items, self-help, e-books, etc....
- real GPS. Commercial GPS software via WINE, VMware/plex86...
- Via accelerometer: real-time 0-60 announcements, 60-0 times, max speed while cornering, speeding alert (eg. I tell it the current speed limit is 55, it alerts me if speed goes over 62mph), etc...
- Video entertainment: DVD's, television, XBox. For use by the passenger only, of course.
- A general platform for exploring wearable hardware and software (without needing to focus on low-power or low-weight issues)
- reality enhancement
- infrared display
- camera with pan/tilt and zoom, to display far-off cars, eg. for things like police car recognition
- image recognition of where the road ahead is curving, allowing for automatic turn-signals
- image recognition of speed-limit signs (being a standard shape and font, it shoudln't be difficult)
- voice control
- UI designed to be used while the user's attention is primarily on something else