Want YouTube in your car? The team at Mercedes Benz look to have found a way to make the car a little more web friendly…
Things that I never want to do would include waterskiing in shark-infested waters while dripping in blood, giving my refrigerator aritificial intelligence and brains to stop me from having a midnight snack,
One thing I’m very unsure about wanting is a web-connected car. The concept just fills me with visions of SkyNet and ideas of a web-connected car timing out at the wrong minute and having a 404 error end my life like that.
But the engineers at Mercedes Benz look like they’ve come up with a unique concept prized to take on BMW’s iDrive system.
The myCOMAND system (their spelling, not ours) is a new car control system that includes some very interesting ideas. We’d expect nothing less from the company that produces the famed S-class, a series of cars that, while expensive, always show the rest of the world just how technology should be used about 5-10 years before anyone else thinks an idea might be good.
Included in myCOMAND are features like “Off-Board Navigation,” a similar idea to “on-board navigation” whereby the system uses maps, traffic information, and what might be an easier instruction input system to create a better user-controlled Global Positioning System.
An internet radio has been added turning your Benz into a sort-of SqueezeBox so to speak (and to be honest, this just fills me with joy knowing that I’ll be able to listen to my favourite Californian station while driving to Melbourne).
Also included are things like Skype’s use of Voice-over IP, a web browser, and even YouTube… you know, for when you’re stuck in traffic and you for some reason want to watch that. I mean, there’ll probably be some law about accessing YouTube while driving in a few years and I expect to see a whole bunch of dinged up Mercedes in the near future… but it’s there… if you need it.
In case you think all of this is a load of something else, we’ve included a nifty little video of it in action below.
Source: Mercedes Benz
