Written by: James Burke
Friday, December 21, 2007

Microsoft Sync is now available in North America on selected Ford, Lincoln and Mercury vehicles and playing all over the TV channels in the US, Microsoft also has a microsite for Sync called synchmyride

Sync is essentially an in car dashboard device that you connect your MP3 player (via USB) and phone (via bluetooth) to. Using voice commands you can play music, make and receive phone calls and send and receive text messages with all notification displayed on the dashboard screen.

Most MP3 players (including the full Apple iPod range) work with Sync and most mainstream smartphones work with Sync.

I think that this is a really good start towards in car telematics by integrating portable devices to the console whilst on the move, bluetooth certainly makes sense for the phones and the USB probably provides the universal interface for the MP3 players but wouldn't WiFi (such as the Zune) be a better option rather than relying on plugging in the unit?

Personally I would be interested in sync if the text messaging functionality were extended to include emails from my smartphone that could be displayed on the console as well as written and sent via voice commands - however, lack of standards on how phones certainly would make this a challenge.

Microsoft has hit the market first with this new genre of product (although the BMW iDrive system that is based on Linux was probably the first serious car operating system and Sync is certainly not as fully featured as this) and there are rumours abound that Apple has been working with Volkswagen with an "iCar" product (latest rumour is that this is on hold).

A video clip from Microsoft on Sync is available below, a funny, but predicable alternative video is available at TechCrunch.

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