I just made my first stop in Limon, Colorado on my way to a Kauffman event in Kansas City. Despite having to reload the FJ computer yesterday, everything is going well. I listened to Internet Radio all the way from Boulder to Limon with no skips or drops. I can’t say the same for my voice calls. The webcam is on if you want to follow my progress. You can find the link to it on the left at www.terrygold.com.
I just made my first post to the Kauffman Foundation’s eVenturing blog. If you are interested in entrepreneurship, I hope you’ll subscribe to their feed. Ken Berlack does a daily post of interesting articles, blogs and news about entrepreneurship, and he just did a series of posts about his time last week at DEMOfall ’06.
I’ve made some more progress on the FJ Car Computer project. Streaming Internet radio (lookout XM!) and Virtual Earth satellite overlays on the navigation screen. More details later.
Last week I went three days straight without touching my keyboard, except to login first thing in the morning. The rest of the time I used the new speech recognition capabilities built into Microsoft Vista, the next version of Windows. I answered all of my emails, wrote a couple of documents, installed software and (get this) even edited my computer’s registry – all with my voice. I can still probably type faster, but it would be a close race.
Finally, this weekend I wrote some code for the first time in a long time. It was a lot of fun and it might even be useful. More on that in another post.
I made a lot of progress on the FJ Car Computer project over the weekend, and I learned something about a hot topic in my industry – Presence. Imagine you are reading this article (OK, I guess you really are), but imagine that you just really want to talk to me about this post. Presence would give you the ability (assuming I give you permission) to see if I am available to talk via the telephone, my cell phone, one of my IM clients or by some other means. It’s one of those things that may not seem important until you experience it first hand.
As I said, I made a lot of progress this weekend. The FJ now has full-time wireless Internet thanks to the Kyocera KR1 Broadband EVDO Router with WiFi. Actually it is thanks to Ron Brumfield from Intel who convinced me that it would be easy to install. He was right – I plugged it in, connected to it via Ethernet with my laptop, did a little admin and within 10 minutes I had wireless high-speed connectivity. I then plugged it into the FJ, turned on the car computer and it magically started providing Internet access. (If you see a Blue FJ Cruiser driving by, try plugging in an SSID of fjcruiser to your wireless device. I’m happy to share.)
Once you connect a computer to the world via the Internet, all things are possible. I installed Windows Live Messenger on the computer in the FJ, and then discovered that it would automatically login every time I started the FJ and the computer came on line. Then I discovered that I could have different photos associated with my laptop and the car computer. So now if you have me in your contacts list in Live Messenger, and you click on my name, you can tell if I’m in my office, in my car, or on line via my mobile phone.
Yesterday someone was about to call me to see if I was going to be back from lunch in time to attend a meeting, but just before they picked up the phone, they noticed that my picture in Live Messenger had just changed to the FJ, so they knew that I was on my way. Now if only it would report my exact location, or even connect to my calendar and figure out if I was going to make it back in time based on my current route and speed . . .
Now, I feel like I have to say this. I do not screw around with this stuff while I’m driving. If you see that I am in the car, and you IM me, I will not answer you or probably even notice. Part of this experiment is to improve safety on the road and I’m practicing safe car computing. Feel free to check up on me via the new sometimes-live FJ Webcam.
No, I’m not starting a new company, much less one that installs car computers. But as I was installing my new computer in the FJ this weekend I couldn’t help but think about how it was a lot like starting a new company. With this post, I’ll give an update on the FJ Car Computer project and hopefully shed some light on what it is like to be an entrepreneur in the early stages of an idea for a company.
It all begins with a vision. For the FJ project it was something like, it would be fun to install a computer in my car. There might even be benefits to my company because someday all cars are going to have computers, they will play a big role in how we communicate, and I need to understand how that all might play out.
For my company, it was something like, It would be fun to work at a company that doesn’t treat developers like cogs in a wheel – one that understands how important customers and new technologies are to the success of a company. There might be benefits like financial security, flexible hours and a freedom from bureaucracy.
In both cases it started with a dream, and then I began justifying acting on the dream by figuring out what the benefits would be if I could achieve the dream. I figured out if I could handle the worst case scenario.
Once the dream takes hold, the research and feedback phase begins. For the FJ project, I looked for sources of information from people who had done it before. There were a few books available on installing car computers and there are many hobbyists who share their knowledge publicly and offer help to the newbies.
It is easy to get information on starting a business, especially now that we have the web. There must be thousands of books written a year on the subject and entrepreneurs are generally helpful to newbie entrepreneurs, if approached correctly. And because entrepreneurship is seen as an economic driver (we create jobs), there are a lot of organizations such as the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation that provide support to anyone wanting to start a business.
The feedback phase is different. For the FJ project, the near universal reaction from people I talked to early on in the project was Cool, can’t wait to see it. The Person Who Prefers Not To Be Blogged About said Why would you want a computer in your car? And a few others just politely changed the subject, but generally I got a lot of support from people who thought it would be interesting to watch me hack a brand new car – that wasn’t their car – to see if something interesting would come of it.
The feedback phase for starting a new company though is much less supportive, in my experience, especially for first-time entrepreneurs. Family, friends and total strangers will tell you that 90% of all new companies fail. (Not true) They will tell you about their cousin on their ex-wife’s side of the family who started a company, lost everything and ended up killing himself. Occasionally you will hear a positive story about someone who got a company going and was happy in the end, but it is usually told with the same tone as you would tell a story about a person on the edge who wins the lottery and lives happily ever after. It happens, but it ain’t likely is what you hear in their voice.
As a first-time entrepreneur, you are probably not connected to the community of entrepreneurs who have been through the fire and can tell you that it can be done. Better yet, they can and will share their experiences. Most entrepreneurs that I know are good people who are happy to give a hand, so seek them out.
So . . . the big day comes. You order the car computer/quit your job. (I’m still trying to tie these stories together) It feels great! After months/years of planning and dreaming, you are on your way. That feeling lasts a couple of days and then the reality of what you’ve committed to sinks in. In the case of the car computer, the box arrived and I excitedly opened it. Whoa, no installation guide and no one available at the moment to tell me what to do next. What have I done, and what am I going to do to keep this from being a big mess? Send it back? No, the vision is still strong and besides I’ve told too many people that I’m going to do it.
It was the same when Jim and I started the company. Once we realized what we’d got ourselves into, we were too proud and stubborn to quit.
So you keep the vision in mind, do some more research and then charge ahead. And now back to the car computer project update. I snapped some photos during the install, mostly so I could figure out how to put it all back together again.
I can remove the dash in 2 minutes flat now. 
The Pioneer is going on eBay . . .
Now just unplug the old wires . . . 
Make a minor adjustment to the mounting bracket . . .
And then figure out where all these wires go.
Everything’s wired up, hopefully correctly. I had to guess on a couple of the wires.
Ready to test. Having a backup plan is always good.
Test early and often . . .
Button everything up, and then put the power to it one more time . . .
Success! The FJ is now running Vista! Like starting a company, this project will be a roller coaster. You’ve got to have the attitude that roller coasters are fun, and that ups almost always follow downs. I’ve got a lot more to do (at my company and with the FJ Car Computer Project) but I’m making progress and enjoying the roller coaster.
I couldn’t stand the thought of waiting a week and being without the FJ for a couple of days to have the new computer installed, so I screwed up my courage, grabbed some wrenches and wire cutters and went to work.
I’ll post details later, but there were no sparks or fires and everything was working great . . . and then I made a mistake. It’s my own fault really, and the story involves drivers (the software kind), backups (the kind I don’t have) and a tech support guy who has every right to say “I told you we didn’t support that!”
To be continued . . .
The computer for Phase Two of my FJ Project arrived this week. I was planning to build a computer that would probably live in the glove compartment connected to an LCD touch-screen in the dash, but a new product recently was released that changed my mind. I now have an Infill T3 from Korea that has been imported and set up for the U.S. market by mp3car.com and streetdeck.com. They are actually (I think) two arms of a single company with mp3car.com being the storefront for anything having to do with car computers and streetdeck.com being the software development group for the front-end software that is installed on the T3.
The box arrived a little beat up, but inside it was lined with Styrofoam and everything seemed OK.
Inside were two boxes and a lot of individually packed parts.
Hmm, I must have missed the installation manual, or any documentation for that matter. After going back through the boxes, I thought “Maybe there is an online manual”, and then found the note on the website, and I quote exactly as it is written, “Installation mannuals will be comming soon” Woody, I think I may need a hand with this . . . (To be continued . . .)
This is a longer post than usual – it’s about Microsoft’s latest speech recognition demo of Vista, Exchange 2007 Unified Messaging and my experience this week as a surprise guest in Microsoft’s keynote address at SpeechTEK 2006 in New York this week.
I’ve been using Vista, Microsoft’s next operating system to be released in 2007, for about four months. I immediately tried the built-in dictation software and was blown away by how well it worked. Out of the box, with NO training, it performed better than anything I’d ever experienced and the editing capabilities for the first time (for me at least) made voice control of the PC intuitive and workable.
So . . . I was surprised and disappointed for my industry when I saw the video that circulated last week of the demo crashing and burning right before the eyes of the financial community. If you haven’t seen it, I’ll spare you the pain by not linking to it, but it was clear that something was very wrong. My Vista builds were much older and I had experienced for myself recognition that was very different from what I saw in the video.
It turns out there was a bug in the audio subsystem that was introduced at the last minute, and killed just as quickly, but it did its damage by once again making people think that speech recognition is never going to work.
Now . . . what a difference a week makes! At SpeechTEK 2006 in New York this week and I witnessed for myself the very same demo, and it worked PERFECTLY! Microsoft even had the guts to joke about the previous failure, “taunting the demo gods” as one journalist put it, and still I expect they made a bunch of people (albeit industry people) believe that we have entered a new era for a technology that has been a long time coming.
I was not an uninterested bystander. Richard Bray, who gave the keynote address on behalf of Microsoft and who runs their Speech Server group, invited me to demo Exchange 2007 Unified Messaging for Microsoft during his keynote address. I’m pretty comfortable speaking to groups of people, but this was practically my entire industry and we were going to use live systems to do a live demo in real time. No recorded demos – no net, just a telephone and a chance to either make a good impression or look like an idiot if I screwed up. I knew the technology worked, because I’ve personally been live on Microsoft’s Exchange 2007 Unified Messaging product for about four months, but I also knew from experience that it would be easy to misspeak or have an AV problem that could hose up everything. I had also heard that others had not had the best experience in the same room earlier in the event.
The keynote started with Rich talking about Microsoft’s investment and long history in speech recognition. He then introduced Rob Chambers to do the Vista demo. I admire Rob – he looked really cool and confident as he walked up to the stage. The dictation recognition was perfect and it understood everything Rob said. He showed how easy it is to change and edit a document and then moved on to controlling the PC with just his voice. He received several rounds of applause, especially when he changed his wallpaper from the standard Vista wallpaper to a photo of his young son without ever touching the keyboard. (I’ll bet you’d have to think about how to do it even with the keyboard, which is what was cool about that part of the demo. He said something like “How do I change the wallpaper?” and Vista walked him through it, all with only his voice. You’ve got to see it to believe it. I hope when THIS video makes the rounds that it is half as popular.) When he finished his demo of Vista speech recognition, my first thought was to high-five him for doing such a great demo.
My second thought as Rob walked off the stage and Rich began to introduce me, was “Holly crap, I’m up and if I screw up, I’M going to be the guy in next week’s video making the rounds.” Rich put me at ease by surprising me by starting this part of the presentation with a photo of my FJ Cruiser project and asking if I really had installed an Xbox 360 in it. I said something like “I’m not sure which is more embarrassing, that I have installed an Xbox in the FJ or that I’ve had to admit that I’m from Boulder, Colorado and I own an SUV.”
I then jumped into the demo and showed how in addition to email; I can now access my voice mail and faxes via Outlook and Exchange Server 2007 with Unified Messaging. For the demo, I used Outlook Web Access which allows me to access email via a web browser. We listened to a voice mail from Clint Patterson (another jokester) who suggested that “I needed more cow bell” in the demo.
By the way, this was a demo, but it was my real inbox and our live Exchange Server 2007 back in Boulder. No one behind a curtain and nothing faked and it will be delivered as part of Exchange 2007. The idea of Unified Messaging has been around for years but it has typically been an integration of a legacy voicemail system, an email server and an add-on to an email client. With Microsoft’s approach, Exchange 2007 IS your voice mail and while pricing has not been publicly announced, the phrase “Radical Economics” has been tossed around by the analysts. It means that I now have only one place to go for my office voice mail, my cell phone voice mail, my email, my faxes (I do still get a few faxes and they are usually something I don’t want sitting out on a public fax machine) AND I have only one login. My IT people love it because they don’t have to manage separate systems and separate directories. I know some of our customers are justifying the upgrade to Exchange 12 with the savings in maintenance charges on their legacy voice mail systems.
Back to the demo – After listening to the voice mail, I walked across the stage to a plain old telephone and dialed my number at Gold Systems. I logged into Outlook Voice Access and was given the options of listening to my voicemail, listening to my email (and I can respond by voice to anyone but Brad, who hates voicemail), calling anyone at Gold Systems or (I really like this) anyone in my personal contacts. Finally, I can do some very interesting things with my calendar which is what I showed next.
I said “Calendar” into the receiver and the system replied with something like “You have a meeting in progress entitled SpeechTEK Keynote address with Richard Bray from 8:30 AM to 10:00 AM.” It offered some options but I interrupted and said “Next.” It said, “Your next meeting is entitled “Breakfast with Clint Patterson” and again I interrupted and said “Cancel the meeting.” I was asked to confirm that I really wanted to ditch Clint for breakfast, which I did, but I accepted the offer to send a voice message along with the cancellation notice.” I responded “Clint, I have no idea what More Cowbell means and I told you they wouldn’t get the joke. I’m going to have to skip breakfast as I’m still on stage here with Rich.” I pressed a button on the phone to indicate I was done talking (maybe I could have just stopped talking? I don’t know, I haven’t tried it) and I said “Send it with Priority”. The meeting was canceled, Clint was sent an email with my voice note and my calendar in Outlook was updated.
For the next meeting on my schedule, I interrupted the system again and said into the phone, “I’ll be 30 minutes late”. I know a LOT of people who could use this feature! (I’m fine with you being late occasionally but let me know, OK? Now you have no excuse if you are on Exchange 12 with UM) This time the system sent out meeting notifications saying that I was running 30 minutes late. I hung up the phone, showed everyone how my calendar had updated automatically, made a few last points and I was done. Whew! I was the only non-Microsoftee on stage and I was grateful for the chance to be a part of the keynote. The other demos went perfectly too and for the rest of the show I felt elated to have been a part of it all.
The big announcement at the keynote is that Microsoft is merging what has been known as Speech Server 2007 into what was formally known as Live Communications Server to create the Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007. I’ll write about THAT in another post, but it’s big news and is going to create a lot of opportunity in the industry.
I know I sound like I’m drunk on Microsoft Kool-Aid, and I am a little tipsy from it, but this really is big news and I think it will be good for the industry.
To everyone but my competitors, even most of Microsoft’s competitors, this is going to be good for business because it is going to extend speech recognition throughout the enterprise. The world of communications in general is going to grow and change in fundamental ways, and a lot of people will benefit from Microsoft’s massive investment in this world.
To Gold Systems competitors specifically: Pay no attention to this and keep doing what you are doing. No one is ever going to trust their voice mail, phone calls or important business to a PC. After all, when was the last time you rebooted your mainframe? Just keep repeating that and maybe this will all go away. But I doubt it.
I’ve had quite a few people ask for an update on the FJ Car Computer project. One of my goals with this project is to see where the state of the art is for aftermarket systems, and then push beyond that by installing a real computer with all the bells and whistles I can think of to install.
Phase One of the project was to install a Pioneer AVIC-Z1. Because I wanted the best speech recognition combined with navigation, audio and other features, this unit seemed like the perfect choice. After using it for a couple of months, I have mixed feelings about it and I find I can’t really recommend it which is too bad because it is close to being a great system.
The AVIC-Z1 is interesting because it has a 30gb hard drive in it. You press a button on the face of the unit and the LCD screen folds down automatically uncovering the slot for the CD or DVD. (Yes, it will play movies, but it has interlocks to prevent watching movies from the front seat while the vehicle is moving.) If you put in a new CD, it automatically rips the CD to the hard drive so you can leave your CD collection at home. The entire Gracenote database is installed on the hard drive, so for most CDs the system magically plugs in the artist, album name and track data. I was surprised that it even knew about CDs that were released after I bought the AVIC-Z1.
The hard drive, my iPod and the radio gives me all of the music I would ever want, so I didn’t get the optional XM Radio module.
The display is a touch-screen that is very nice and easy to read and there are a lot of display options. You can upload photos and associate them with locations in the GPS unit, you can change the wallpaper and do some other neat tricks.
I also went with the iPod interface, the backup camera and a Bluetooth adapter to allow handsfree phone control. I didn’t originally get the steering wheel remote, but soon realized that it was almost required to use the speech recognition. It looks a little cheesy I think, but you’ve almost got to have it.
I didn’t install the system myself – Woody at Extreme Autoworks did it for me, and he did a great job. None of the problems I’m having with the unit should reflect on Woody – I’ll be going back to him for help with phase two of the project.
Even now I’m torn about how to write about the shortcomings of the unit. It is a shame that Pioneer got so much right, but missed on some really important features.
My first problem was that the Bluetooth connection to my Palm Treo 700w kept dropping after a minute or two. The advertisements make it sound like the unit will work with any "Bluetooth compatible phones." I guess they parse that sentence differently than I did. When I emailed tech support, I received a terse reply of "If the phone is a PDA type it will not work properly." Wow – that’s a broad statement but when I tried it with an LG "PDA type phone" it would also drop the connection between the unit and the phone. I found it hard to believe because it seems to me that the sort of person who would rip their radio out of the dash and replace it with this unit, which costs as much as a good laptop, might also likely have a "PDA type phone" in their pocket.
The first email response wasn’t what I’d want my tech support team writing either. They could have thanked me for my purchase, told me they were sorry that there was an incompatibility problem and suggested some sort of alternative. I got to trial a Motorola Q phone for a couple of weeks when they came out, and it DID work with the unit. I sent another email to Pioneer, and copied their PR group to confirm the statement that had been made earlier and I got a much nicer email back, but the result was the same. The AVIC-Z1 won’t work with the Palm Treo 700w and apparently many other PDA type phones (whatever that means) and it isn’t Pioneer’s problem, according to Pioneer. When I asked them where I could find their list of compatible phones, I was told that they don’t publish it but that they would be happy to check the list for any phone I might be interested in. Seems like a silly way to do it to me, and I haven’t had the energy to play 20 questions to find a phone that might work.
Now for the speech recognition. I have no idea who makes the speech recognition engine. For some reason the aftermarket automotive companies don’t advertise who makes the speech engine or even the operating system. The speech engine works amazingly well, except for when it doesn’t, and then it is really, really bad. I can reel off a 10 digit phone number and it gets it every time. Other commands always work too, but I still haven’t figured out some of the basics. The system has a very large vocabulary, but if you don’t say exactly what it is expecting you’re likely to be routed to some far off city. It’s bad, and much of it is due to poor human factors design, in my opinion. For instance, it says "Please" before almost every prompt. After awhile you want to say "Please stop saying Please!" A simple tone would have been fine I think. Once again a nice cheat sheet would have been a great help. If a user can’t figure out the basics pretty quickly, they get frustrated and give up on the more advanced features. A cheat sheet helps to get them going so that they want to explore and learn more.
Without the steering wheel remote, you have to find the icon on the screen and press it to get prompted for a voice command. It sort of defeats the purpose to have to look down at the screen while you are driving, and to make it worse, the icon moves around depending on what screen is displayed. A button on the unit would have been better so at least you’d be able to find it by touch.
Last weekend I used a $400 Garmin GPS that I liked a lot better for navigation. They know how to design a user interface – I never looked at the manual and was able to use every feature of the unit within a very short time. It isn’t fair to compare the two units, but if I was just looking for a great GPS, I’d go with the Garmin.
There is a lot to like about the Pioneer AVIC-Z1, but I can’t recommend it. There is still hope because Pioneer could release a software update and fix most of the problems I’ve experienced, but I wouldn’t buy one until they do.
Phase Two will be to build a computer that will supplement, if not replace the AVIC-Z1. If you remember the early days of computing where you bought parts and built it yourself, or you wish you hadn’t missed that era, then you might consider building a car computer. It feels a lot like the early days, except we have the Internet to connect all the nuts in the world who think this sounds like a fun way to spend the weekend. I’ve been playing with Microsoft Vista for a couple of months, and it is definitely the operating system to use if I can build enough power into the system to run it properly. The speech recognition in Vista is amazing, but I’ll write more about that another time.
Gold Systems will be giving away an Xbox 360 at TechEd this month, so come by our booth and sign up for a chance to win it! (Toyota FJ Cruiser, NOT included!)
Disclaimer. The FJ was parked and there are safety interlocks to prevent playing while driving. Please Xbox responsibly. Xbox is a trademark of Microsoft and a really great game machine!
Phase One of my Car Computer Project is just about done. I want to thank Woody at Extreme Autoworks (303) 233-0033 for doing a great job on the installation of my Pioneer AVIC-Z1.
It looks like it came out of the factory.
Tonight I was thinking about where to mount the Phase Two computer and was poking around behind the glove compartment and found the power bus that Woody installed. Everything was neatly tied off and clearly labeled.
A great woodworker was once asked why he bothered to finish the backs of the drawers that he crafted. "After all, no one ever sees the backs of the drawers." The craftsman said, "I see them." Woody is a craftsman and he did it right. I’m looking forward to Phase Two where I will install a real computer running Microsoft Vista. Woody has some great ideas for mounting the monitor(s).
I’ll do a separate review of the Pioneer unit after I’ve lived with it a while longer.
This is the first Toyota that I’ve ever owned, but so far I’m very impressed. The service from Longmont Toyota has been great and Toyota has already surveyed me once to make sure everything is going well. I was surprised to get a postcard in the mail a few weeks after I bought the FJ, offering me a free 1/8th scale model of the vehicle if I registered on the website. I did and it arrived a few weeks later. One of these recently sold on eBay for $177.
The detail is amazing and the fact that Toyota did a little something extra is very much appreciated. While my company doesn’t sell to consumers, it has made me think about what we can do to show our customers that we really do appreciate their business. I know that in my business our profits come from long term relationships and I imagine Toyota is thinking the same thing.
I decided that at the beginning of the year that I would try to surround myself with Speech Recognition products. I heard Bill Joy speak years ago and he talked about trying to understand future technology by figuring out ways to live with it today. I’m not sure he said these words, but I think of it as "prototyping the future."
I’ve decided it is time to build a car computer. This is a personal project even though there might be some interesting business and technology lessons to be learned. (In other words, I’m paying for this out of my pocket and I don’t have to be limited by an ROI or a business case.)
Since I bought my last car ten years ago, I decided that a new car with a factory navigation system wasn’t going to give me everything I wanted and it would certainly be obsolete well before my ten year trade-in target. I’ve played with the navigation system in an Acura TL, and it’s pretty good, especially the speech recognition, but in a couple of years it is going to as obsolete as my first Palm Pilot.
I looked at a lot of cars and settled on the new Toyota FJ Cruiser.
I’ve owned three jeeps, but I always wanted one of the old Toyota Land Cruisers. Just this month Toyota released the FJ Cruiser and I was fortunate (with some help) to get the first one to arrive at Longmont Toyota. I’ll write about my experience with the dealership another time – it’s a good sales and service story and I was very happy with the experience.
This is not a fancy "leather and burled walnut" kind of vehicle. It is a lot more complicated than my old jeeps, but the dash is metal, plastic and vinyl, so installation of the car computer will (I hope) be a lot easier.
In phase one of my project, I’m installing an aftermarket system from Pioneer, the AVIC-Z1. It’s also brand new and I’m already experiencing the joy of trying to put a complicated audio/navigation system that no one has ever seen, into a vehicle that no one has ever seen. The Z1 is on order at Ultimate Electronics in Boulder who is going to do the installation for me, because while I’ve installed a few stereos before and I can solder fairly well, I don’t have the confidence to be cutting wires under the dash of my new FJ. (Yet – that will happen in Phase Two) Update – Ultimate couldn’t deliver so after waiting for weeks, I cancelled the order and now I’m scheduled to get it installed at Extreme Automotive.
The Z1 has speech recognition built in, gps navigation ("Go to Denver"), Bluetooth phone integration and a 30GB hard drive for ripping MP3s from CDs. When I get it installed I’ll do a full review, particularly about how well the speech recognition works.
Phase two of the project will be to add a real car computer. The after market car computer market is just getting started but it is an exciting place – it reminds me of the early days of home computers where hackers would get together and figure out out to build their own computers. If you want to follow along, there is a great community of developers at mp3car.com and I’ve found some good books that are (for the moment) very current. Car PC Hacks – Tips & Tools for Geeking Your Ride is my favorite. It’s an O’Reilly book written by Damien Stolarz with a lot of help from other enthusiasts. It has the most references to websites and sources for parts and I’ve already dog-eared many pages. I also bought Geek My Ride – Build the Ultimate Tech Rod which has a lot of good photos and finally Build Your Own Car PC, a book from the UK which also has a lot of photos and specifics about hardware.
As car computers start to go mainstream, plenty of people are going to say "why would I want a car computer?" Just remember, plenty of people said "why would I want a home computer" and "why would I want a cell phone" and those two markets have done just fine. I believe that speech recognition will play an important roll in making it happen, which is why I’m going to devote a few weekends to understanding where it is going.
