Want to tweet with Ford's Sync? There's an app for that.

(Credit: CNET)

Editors' note: Ford has clarified that its open platform is still in the prealpha testing stages. The article has been updated to reflect this information.

When Ford and Microsoft opened up their joint Sync platform for its own applications and updates, we wondered when the day would come that third-party developers would be given a crack at the in-vehicle infomatics interface. Well, that day may be on the horizon. Ford announced that it is testing an open-source platform to could be used in the future to develop applications that make use of Sync to connect to social networks in the cloud.

Ford's representatives said the system is built on a Robotics Studio platform by Microsoft that has been layered with an open-source cloud-computing platform developed by Ford that will allow rich--and hopefully seamless--interactions with social networks such as Facebook and Twitter.

So what's the point? How can social network interactions be useful and safe in 2,000-plus pounds of steel moving at 70mph? Ford's Venkatesh Prasad, group and technical leader of vehicle design and infotainment, posed the following scenarios:

The Ford Fiesta will be the test vehicle used in the University of Michigan's Ford open platform competition.

(Credit: Ford)

Imagine you're on a cross-country road trip and you decide to stop in a new city for something to eat. Now, you don't know this new city very well, so you ask Sync to grab some dining and sightseeing suggestions. The application could then fire out a tweet, update your Facebook status, or query Yelp on your behalf and when the responses roll in, it could format them in an easy to understand way, for example as a custom points-of-interest menu.

Another possible application is a Green Car Challenge, where you compete with your friends to see who can average the highest fuel economy while suggesting the greenest driving routes to one another.

This all sounds pretty cool on paper; we'll have to wait a bit longer to know exactly how effective these apps will actually be. We expect that it will really depend on the size, make up, and responsiveness of your social network. I shudder to think of all of the Twitter-bots that currently follow me supplying any sort of advice.

The first test of Ford's open-application SDK will be in conjunction with a competition at the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor. Students will compete to develop the best Sync application that makes use of the cloud. The winning team will have their app installed in Ford's first test mule, a Ford Fiesta, and will take a road trip from Ann Arbor to San Francisco to participate in the 2010 San Mateo Maker's Faire.

Ford currently has no road map for when we can expect to see the Sync open platform in production vehicles, as it is still in the prealpha testing phases.

Today's Beck's Beer Audio Draft Pick is the Works Progress Administration (WPA)

(Credit: WPA)

Back in April of 2008 BJ (before Justin), motivational speaker James Arthur Ray guest-hosted The 404 Podcast and Jeff, Wilson, and Randall spoke to him about how to grow your own meat--no lie. Anyway, the show left a sour taste in The 404's collective mouth, and more than a year later it turns out that Mr. Ray is a big phony, not unlike Balloon Boy Sr.

Turns out that three people died in Arizona at a spiritual retreat "sweat lodge" organized by the self-appointed guru. It's a very sad story, and our hearts go out to the families of the victims. And James? Shame on you.

Oh, and surprise! The personal information you put up on the Internet is no longer private. According to this Wired Danger Room blog, a branch of the CIA has begun heavily investing in Visible Technologies, a software firm that monitors social media, including blog posts, Internet forums, online videos, radio reports, and so on. Luckily, Facebook is currently immune to such companies due to its closed architecture, but Twitter, Amazon, and YouTube are all fair game.

This report is definitely worth reading, but we're not surprised. Actually, we thought there was already a system set up to spy on our Web activities: it's called GOOGLE, and it's not doing such a great job at keeping our information private. The company is under suspicion of accidentally posting transcribed voice mails from its Google Voice service. Although this issue might actually concern me if my entire voice mail box weren't filled with concerned messages from my mother...

Today's Beck's Beer Draft Pick is Works Progress Administration (WPA).

(Credit: WPA)

We're doing three Beck's Beer Audio Drafts this week to make up for the one we skipped last Friday due to Wilson's absence, and Wilson's pick for today is Works Progress Administration, a country outfit comprised of some of the most recognizable names in country music, including Glen Phillips from Toad the Wet Sprocket, Sean Watkins from Nickel Creek, and Benmont Tench from Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers.

The songs of the day are called "Good as Ever" and "Always Have My Love," and although Jeff and I aren't huge fans of the country music genre, we can definitely appreciate the musical talent of this supergroup, and Wilson chimes in to explain the difference between country-pop, country-rock, and a million other sub-genres. The band is currently on a West Coast Tour, so be sure to check out the WPA Web site for more details.

On today's show, CNET reporter and 404 BFF Caroline McCarthy directs us in a live read-through of the actual script for the upcoming Facebook movie and also joins us in talking about 4Chan, Comic-Con, and this weekend's insane hailstorm.

CarMac!

(Credit: Caroline McCarthy/CNET)

We love it when Caroline McCarthy drops into The 404 studio because she always brings the juiciest news from the Internet. Last week she revealed to us the details of "The Social Network," a movie about Facebook's seedy origins...and today we read through a scene from the screenplay live on the air! The scene involves Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss, twin co-founders of former Facebook rival ConnectU, arguing with their third partner about how to end Mark Zuckerberg's life for stealing their genius idea. After reading a few pages, we quickly realize that none of us even have the slightest chance of having a career in the movie industry. Awful.

Caroline stays with us for the second half of the show for a knee-slappin' Calls From the Public, including one from our buddy Ryan that equates Wikipedia to...well...I'll just give you this hint. Thanks, Ryan!

More stories of the day include the idiots over at AT&T picking a fight with 4Chan, the most notorious group of pranksters on the Internet. Moot, the founder of the controversial forum site, reported on Sunday that AT&T had blocked broadband access to some of the more controversial message boards (including the most infamous /b/), claiming that a denial-of-service attack had "stemmed from IP addresses connected to img.4chan.org." Finally, after a fake overdose story involving AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson surfaced on CNN, AT&T deemed 4Chan "safe" for its customers to visit and cleared the block. Talk about getting close to the fire!

I'll try not to get too sniffly here, but this will be my last blog post for a week, since I'll be heading back to California for a week-long vacation. I'll be back next Wednesday, but Jeff and Wilson will have some truly awesome guests coming in to fill my very small feet! I'll never forget you guys. Goodbye!

We're proud to announce the debut of CNET LIVE, the new portal for all live shows, including The 404, on CNET. Don't worry, the transition won't be as difficult as DTV. We'll give you detailed instructions on how to tell all your friends about the show! Listen in for all the juicy details on our weekend staycation and why Wilson should never consume liquor again.

Atlantic City: What a dump!

(Credit: The404/CNET)

So now that the weekend is over, we can talk about our top secret trip...to Atlantic City! It's always good to get away for a little bit, even if it's just for a day, so we packed up our bags and took off to AC for a little gambling and good times. What was supposed to be a relaxing trip turned out to be 24 hours of "The Hangover"-esque partying. We all indulged in our own vices: Jeff hit the blackjack tables like a white bat out of hell, Justin explored the dark crevices of AC's back alleys, and Wilson Tang ate chicken. That's right, you read it correctly: Wilson Tang finally broke his "vegetarianism" and is now an official chicken chaser. Unfortunately, his bout with poultry at Friday's dinner left him with a mad stomach ache and he party pooped his way out of the trip. What a shrew!

Click here for a full set of pictures from The 404's trip to Atlantic City.

Lots of stories to talk about today, namely two big news items from over the weekend: the DTV official transition and the mad rush for Facebook Vanity URLs. Actually, the long-awaited DTV transition went off without a hitch, which makes sense, because it's been in the works forever now, although we're pretty sure someone in Florida tried to eat her converter box. Facebook Vanity also had little to no effect on real life, although there did seem to be a slight flux in traffic on Thursday night as people rushed to reserve their own Facebook URLs. In the spirit of American sportsmanship, some of the landgrabs were a little disingenuous; for example, check out the profile for our own Molly Wood. In fact, my own name got snaked by another Justin Yu, so feel free to add him and let him know how much you love The 404. In the meantime, check out the Facebook profiles for the Real Justin Yu, Wilson Tang, and Jeff Bakalar.

Hewlett-Packard, maker of printers and other stuff that sits in your office not being terribly interesting, is working on an intelligent social-network application for your mobile phone, called Friendlee.

Friendlee keeps track of who you interact with the most, and organizes your friends list in that order. Status updates show what those contacts are up to, as well as the local time and whether their phone is on, off, or set to silent. You'll even be able to see where your contacts are, similar to Google Latitude. You, like your contacts, will be able to control who can see your information. The idea puts us in mind of Xobni, an e-mail plug-in that shows all sorts of fascinating--i.e. useless--stats about your e-mail contacts.

A BlackBerry prototype of Friendlee was previewed at this year's Wireless Enterprise Symposium, and the app is currently being tested at HP's Palo Alto, Calif., social computing lab, according to the BBC. The research team, headed by Professor Bernardo Huberman, analyzed interaction via Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter, and came to the conclusion that your phone is more interested in direct, reciprocal contact than building a giant circle of friends. We could have told you that--can we have a research grant to mess about on Twitter as well, please?

Huberman and friends will present the app at the Mobile HCI conference in Bonn, Germany, in mid-September. Friendlee currently runs on Windows Mobile and Google Android. One of the most interesting-looking features is a recommendation engine that lets your close contacts recommend and give advice on businesses and people. Yes, people, "both socially and professionally." Now that sounds like fun.

(Source: Crave UK)

WARNING: This was my first attempt at working the sound board, using the software, and editing the podcast, so be forgiving. We tried...

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Episode 29

Virgin Mobile

(Credit: Virgin Mobile)

Helio's influence on Virgin Mobile continues to grow, as Virgin Mobile just announced the availability of the "Connect" social-networking dashboard and Opera Mini 4.2 to its prepaid customers. These features were previously available on post-paid devices only, like the Helio handsets. They will launch later this month on devices like the Shuttle, the Jax, and the X-tc. Do note that you'll have to sign up for a monthly or prepaid data pack plan. The price ranges from $5 for 5MB of data on prepaid plans, to $10 for 50MB on a monthly plan.

The "Connect" social-networking dashboard is essentially a one-stop hub for many social networking sites like Facebook, MySpace, Flickr, and YouTube. You log-in once and have access to all of these networks without needing to manage them separately. You can see things like status updates, new messages, new invitations, new photos and videos, and more. Virgin Mobile customers can also use Connect's integrated RSS reader to catch up on all their latest news feeds.

Opera Mini 4.2 might not be new to most of you, but it will be new for Virgin Mobile prepaid customers. It's a better browser than most standard proprietary ones, so we're glad to see this improvement. You can sync your bookmarks and view pages in landscape mode on certain devices.

"Single Ladies (Put a Ring on It)" by the lovely Beyonce turns out to be Justin's ringtone. Find out how we found out on The 404 today. It's in the same vein of how we discovered about his obsession with Disney music and Alvin and the Chipmunks.

(Credit: Gizmodo)

On today's show we talk about video games, and no, Justin doesn't tune out. EA is pushing the iPhone/iPod touch platform pretty hard with releases of Madden NFL and the venerable Wolfenstein. We hopes it's the updated version and not the sprite-based classic Wolfenstein 3D, though killing Nazis on the subway train does sound like a lot of fun. Also in gaming news, a company called OnLive has announced a new "streaming video game service." Cool, except we don't want to wait two seconds for Chun-li to land a punch on Baraka.

(Credit: Gamespot)

Jeff flips out when the NHL announced it will stream hockey games live with multiple camera angles. Only catch is that it will cost you 20 BUCKS A DAY. In reference to our phone book story yesterday, "boxed water" is now in. Anyone ever hear about tap water? And FOX News has announced it will launch a new social network dedicated to "fair play and fair speech".

Win a chance to win a copy of Wheelman for the Xbox 360, starring Vin Diesel, if you enter our caption contest for this photo of our beloved Justin Yu. Feel free to make fun of his glasses, face, the Lexmark printer behind him, or that lumberjack flannel shirt. Funniest caption will get a copy of the video game and major props on the show.

The world got its first look earlier this week at Nokia's XpressMusic phone, a music-focused handset with loads of media-sharing and social-networking features including Facebook. According to a Wall Street Journal story on Thursday, it appears that there may be a deeper partnership forming between the social network and the handset giant.

The two companies are reportedly just in talks, the Journal said, and there is not yet an indication as to which Nokia handsets would have the Facebook app. But it's possible that a compatible Nokia phone could link directly to Facebook profiles in its address book.

This is a big deal because Facebook, for all the hundreds of millions of profiles in its system, doesn't currently offer a great system for managing contacts. When blogger Robert Scoble attempted to use a script to export his Facebook friends' information to address book service Plaxo, Facebook promptly suspended his account. Facebook mobile applications for the iPhone and BlackBerry make it relatively easy to call or text a Facebook contact whose phone number is in the system, but you can't sync your contacts with a phone's main system.

The Journal article noted that Facebook also has been in talks with both Palm and Motorola regarding potential partnerships.