Crave

(Credit: Chip Chick)

Drivers may watch TV, browse the Web, or even make a sandwich while behind the wheel, but mobile phones have firmly retained their status as king of the road where distractions are concerned. Acknowledging that reality, the wireless "Bluetouch" system at least tries to lessen the dangers of dialing behind the wheel with a large touch screen that seems much easier (and therefore safer) to use than a handset keypad that requires you to avert your eyes.

And if the touch screen is still too difficult, according to Chip Chick, there's also a voice-recognition feature that controls not only your calls but also directions for your MP3 player or other Bluetooth devices. It costs $399, but that's still cheaper than buying a new car that comes with the technology--not to mention the hospital bills from an accident caused by making a call the old-fashioned way.

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(Credit: CNET Networks)

In-car voice recognition still has some way to go before it replaces buttons, dials, and good old fashioned manual programming. However, a few automakers are taking the lead in creating in-car interfaces that are easy to use. Among our favorites are Acura and Honda, Infiniti, Mercedes, and now--thanks to the launch of the Microsoft Sync system--Ford. Check out our roundup of cars you can talk to with a good chance of being understood.

Microsoft and Ford bought a lot of advertisements on NFL football broadcasts over the four-day Thanksgiving weekend. The companies are pushing Sync, which is the latest outgrowth of Microsoft's decade-long effort to provide software for use in automobiles.

(Credit: Ford)

In this case, Microsoft might actually succeed. Simplicity is the key: unlike past scenarios floated for the Windows Automotive platform, Sync isn't intended to help control your car (leading to the inevitable blue screen jokes) or connect to the Internet or serve as the back-end for an in-car control panel. Instead, it gives you voice command over Bluetooth-enabled phones and portable music players--a scenario that any driver who's ever tried to manipulate an iPod on the road can appreciate. It also speaks--for example, it will read aloud text messages as they come into your Bluetooth-enabled phone.

Sync could also be helped by the fact that Ford's pushing it as part of its relatively inexpensive Focus line, where it'll come as part of the high-end Focus SES (which lists for under $17,000) or be available as a $395 option for other models. Many past Windows Automotive applications were available only on luxury vehicles.

The technology in Sync isn't all that new--Microsoft and Fiat launched a very similar system, Blue&Me, in 2006, and the underlying voice-recognition features were first seen in Microsoft's Voice Command software for the Pocket PC platform. I tried a demo version of Voice Command, and it seems to work well as long as you stick with fairly simple commands, like "Play the Beatles." A recent AutoWeek review of Sync gave kudos for the voice recognition features, although it criticized Sync for its robotic reading voice.

One interesting note: the Sync ads also served as Zune ads, as Microsoft's portable player appeared in every car. But yes, Sync does work with most iPods (not the Shuffle).

One of the more obvious features lacking from the iPhone has been voice recognition, especially since the iPhone is sans an actual keypad. Well the folks over at VoiceSignal have apparently developed a couple of "proof-of-concept" voice command applications and managed to transfer them over to the iPhone. VSearch lets you search for certain keywords, and VTunes lets you bring up your favorite band/artist on the music player just by saying the name. Thankfully, VoiceSignal has recorded a couple of YouTube videos demonstrating the applications, as seen here. We're curious to see if this takes off in any way, and we cross our fingers that Apple may introduce this natively into the next generation of iPhones. [Source: Engadget Mobile ]

(Credit: Chip Chick)

We're saddened to say that there appears to be an infinite supply of date-repellant products on the market. As if we needed more proof, another example has surfaced in the form of a gadget that pays homage to--what a surprise--Star Trek.

VOS Systems has created a talking light dimmer that Chip Chick says features "the voice of Majel Roddenberry (AKA the computer)." The dimmer is equipped with voice-recognition software so you can do your best William Shatner impersonation on it too.

You'll have plenty of time to practice on Saturday nights. Come to think of it, there probably won't be much reason to dim the lights after all.

This looks kind of like the slide projector that we used in my third-grade social studies class back in...whenever I was in third grade. But it's not: it's actually a digital tool to enhance the experience of bird-watching, called the Song Sleuth Digital Bird Detector. Turn it on, and it can decipher 160,000 different bird calls in real time, thanks to audio data from Cornell University's Lab of Ornithology. It can also record sound so that you can put it on your computer later, for whatever reason.

(Credit: Gearlog)

I might be wrong about this, as bird-watching has never been a hobby of mine, but I thought that part of the mystique of bird-watchers was their ability to recognize any kind of bird call and immediately be able to name the species, gender, age, and what-have-you. So, my first impression of the Song Sleuth was that it was just plain cheating, kind of like Boy Scouts learning to orienteer with GPS devices instead of compasses. ("Hey, Bobby, screw this woodlands thing. My Garmin navigator says there's a KFC nearby.") But, apparently, this thing's legit. Fellow Craver Harry Fuller is a hardcore birder, and I heard through the grapevine that he found this gadget pretty impressive.

If you know somebody who likes birds, and have a little bit of spare cash on your hands--it's $300, according to Gearlog--he or she would probably sing like a canary if this gadget were under the Christmas tree. Sorry, I know that's really lame, but I kind of had to say it.

(Credit: CNET Networks)

We just got back from a spin in the 2007 Infiniti M35, and we have to admit that on first impressions, we like it. After playing around with the M35's 8-inch rear-seat entertainment system, programming the in-dash GPS navigation unit, and goading the 275-horsepower V-6 in short bursts of urban driving exuberance, we were faced with the final car tech challenge: operating the voice-recognition interface. Regular readers of CNET Car Tech will know that we are hard to please when it comes to in-car voice-command interfaces. (For detailed examples, feel free to check out our reviews of the 2007 Toyota Camry, the 2006 Range Rover Sport, the 2007 Lexus GS 450h, the 2006 Lexus IS 350, the 2007 Yukon Denali, and the 2006 BMW 550i, for starters.) In fact, until today, Honda (and its upscale subsidiary, Acura) had been the only manufacturer to float our boat when it came to orally bossing a car around. But it looks like Infiniti has now closed the gap.

(Credit: CNET Networks)

Having pushed the Talk button on the M35's steering wheel, we were presented with a menu of possible voice inputs on the in-dash LCD screen. This might not sound all that revolutionary, but it is the first example of this straightforward approach that we have seen, and it beats the hell out of trying to guess the correct format for voice entry. Our usual attempts to communicate with a car's built-in voice-recognition system usually go something like this:

Us: "Navigation"
Car: "Sorry?"
Us: "Enter destination"
Car: "Sorry?"
Us: "Input destination"
Car: "Sorry?"
Us: "You useless piece of crap"
Car: "Now showing split-screen map"

With the Infiniti system, not only were we able to make the car understand that we wanted to use the navigation function, we could also input the city, the street name, and the exact address we were trying to get to. Not once did it misinterpret or fail to understand our commands. We look forward to many more meaningful conversations with the M35 over the next week as we research our full review, coming to CNET Car Tech next week.

Machine won out over man in a text messaging competition at a mobile-communications industry event this week in Orlando, Fla.

The John Henry of the event was Ben Cook of Utah, the Guinness World Record holder for texting, who lost to Nuance's Mobile Dictation software that converts human speech into text on a mobile phone. The losing round used the same text message that Cook typed to win his record title: "The razor toothed piranhas of the genera Serrasalmus and Pygocentrus are the most ferocious freshwater fish in the world. In reality they seldom attack a human."

Cook took 43.22 seconds, while the Nuance software did it 16.32. No contest.

Not that it would have mattered much based on the point spread, but maybe Cook should have been given a true texting equivalent like: "rzr 2thd piranas of genera Srraslms & Pygocntrs R mst frocious H20 fsh in wrld. IRL sldom attck U." And doesn't speaking sort of defeat the purpose of the privacy that text messaging offers?

The Nuance mobile speech software works on any Windows Mobile or Symbian OS device, and can be ported to other applications, according to Nuance. Users may like to know that they can dictate with Nuance automatically whenever the blinking cursor appears on their mobile text screen.

The application is probably also handy for quickly texting those not up on their texting lingo, IMHO.