The humble car is about to be catapulted into the 21st century offering drivers and passengers a multimedia experience akin to enjoying an in-flight entertainment service sat on an aeroplane.

Although only at a "proof of concept" stage at the moment, Alcatel-Lucent has shown off in New York what it believes we will be experiencing in the next couple of years.

Based around a Toyota Prius, the "Connected Car" features a LTE wireless connection, four independently operated touchscreens streaming live content from the Internet and cloud computing resources, such as connected music catalogues. ?

Each individual touchscreen in the Connected Car can operate simultaneously and features six categories of applications and content: Navigation, Communication, Internet, Vehicle Control, Games, and Entertainment. ?
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Because of the LTE connection, users will be able do things like rent a movie on the road, access home services and play multi-player games against passengers in the car, in other cars or remotely.

Alcatel-Lucent said the technology would also allow users to create a Wi-Fi hotspot in the car allowing your phone to connect to the Internet.

Tags: Car And GPS Cars Car Stereos Alcatel-Lucent Concepts Toyota

"Connected Car" brings in-flight entertainment to your car originally appeared on Pocket-lint on Tue, 03 Nov 2009 22:00:00 +0000

Google might have its camera-van recording everything it sees as it drives around cities across the world, but it's got nothing on this van.

Covered in over 2700 cameras (yes you read that right), the van has been created to promote a new film called Automorphosis, a film about people that do car art.

The film is being shown at the Royal Flush Festival in New York on 17 and 18 October.

Other van's and cars in the film include a van covered with 15,000 dollar coins and brass objects, a homage to the Dutch painter Mondrian, and an interactive Mariachi inspired music car.

Related links:

• Link - automorphosis.com

Tags: Car And GPS Cars Google Cameras Digital cameras Compact cameras

What the Google Street View car could have looked like originally appeared on Pocket-lint on Wed, 14 Oct 2009 17:32:45 +0100