Although I have integrated my Zune into my Mustang it’s not a very sophisticated solution – it’s still based around the original factory stereo and the only GPS is when I borrow it from the other car and try and balance it on the dashboard!

I had looked around to try and find a good entertainment, navigation and general auto optimized solution but while there are some solutions based around either entertainment or navigation or PC-centric car PCs with interfaces from companies like Centrafuse that require a fair amount of customization and don’t have good navigation solutions.

What I want though is something that combines the best of those worlds on a flexible enough platform. To do that I imagine it would need to be based on a Windows Embedded platform – companies such as PortalMedia supply fairly nice Windows machines that fit into a cars Dual DIN socket which gives the full flexibility of running XP (or presumably Win7) which would make development easier, but I wonder if a lighter-weight OS such as the specific Embedded version (Standard or Professional) or some other lightweight real-time OS might not be a more appropriate platform. At the end of the day as long as it’s reliable and performs well I should never have to see it.

So what do I think is the minimum that a system like this needs to provide to be worthwhile (and while I’d like to see it available as an affordable aftermarket install option there’s no reason it couldn’t be a standard offering as well)

Entertainment

• At the very least it should have hard drive storage and the ability to play back locally stored music with the ability to load content from a USB device (Flashdrive, iPod, Zune etc) or an inserted CD (though if supporting a CD makes the hardware more complex I can live without that)
• FM/AM radio and ideally HD radio and XM/Sirius support. Unlike some of the existing CarPC solutions this needs to be fully integrated into the front-end and treated no differently that other audio sources
• Over the air streaming of services such as Pandora or Last.FM (perhaps via something like the SqueezeNetwork) though the ability to pre-cache locally would be good (though possibly more difficult). Streaming music from a home server would also be a great feature as well as the ability to sync new music, playlists and listening data via something like Live Mesh would be a great capability
• Support for video playback should be restricted to rear screens only while in motion, if video or digital TV signals are displayed on the front screen it should only be when the vehicle is parked.
• Use of multiple screens, wireless headsets etc would offer the ability to entertain the kids with a movie in the back while the driver listens to music of their choice. Options like this would create scope for premium units or upgrade options.

Automotive Data

• Most modern vehicles support either ODB-II or CAN-Bus for logging anything the engine management controls and can be used to record fuel levels and consumption, braking or acceleration, what gear was selected, temperature of oil and water etc. The system should be able to integrate this data and display additional information and alert the driver to sub-optimal conditions.
• In addition to ODB-II and CAN-Bus many vehicles support Tire Pressure Monitoring Systems (TPMS). Sometimes the display can be a simple warning light on the dashboard if one of the tires is below pressure but more sophisticated systems can display pressure and temperature of each tire (as well as the spare) and alert the driver to low/high pressure or temperature warnings to help keep them safe.
• The system could be used to monitor service intervals as well as track when the vehicle is re-fueled (prompting the driver to enter cost etc to keep a log book). Similar to the way music is synchronized this data could be shared with your mechanic or a fuel price monitoring site to alert other motorists to good deals (coupled with the navigation system it could even track price trends for specific garages)

Navigation

• Similar to any other GPS device the built in navigation capabilities would be pre-loaded with basic maps and offer route selection at least on par with some of the best systems available (optimize for distance or time, show junctions in plenty of time to make sure you are in the right lane etc) but by being integrated into the vehicle the scope can be expanded.
• Places of Interest (POI) data and map updates, as well as current traffic conditions could be downloaded in real time – so traffic jams, road-works or even speed cops are made available instantly. Similar to how Dash works route and speed information could be shared with a centralized service to help optimize that real-time traffic data.
• Integration with the automotive data and live fuel costs would allow the navigation system to determine the optimum fuel stops for a journey and direct the driver accordingly.
• The integrated nature of the system would allow the navigation system to automatically mute/pause the entertainment when it needed to make an announcement.
• The navigation system can be used to alert the owner if the car is driven outside a pre-determined area (similar to LoJack or for ring-fencing someone who is borrowing the car) or simply to broadcast location for social networking purposes.
• Using wireless connectivity routes can be planned on a PC and sent to the car, or a trip can be recorded and sent back to an online account for later review or sharing.

Common Framework

• All user interface should have optional speech control for hands and eyes-free use.
• Bluetooth connection to users phone for data and hands-free operation.
• Ambient sound level detection allows system volume to be automatically adjusted.
• WiFi support for when in the range of a hotspot. Use something like DeviceScape to automate connection and log-in.
• Simple integration of back-up cameras, parking proximity sensors or blind-spot warning devices help make the driver and those around them safer.
• In-build amplifier and “plug and play” installation into existing car wiring loom

Enthusiast Platform

• Some owners demand more from their car and take them to race days or join road rallies. By extending the navigation and engine management logging and supporting synchronized recording of other data a complete experience using additional inputs (accelerometers, cameras, microphones, compass, high sensitivity GPS array etc) could be recorded and played back or shared.
• As the system is connected to the engine management it could be used (under carefully controlled situations) to re-flash the engine management system to cater for specific conditions (eg during the week I want a regular octane, economy tune but for a track day I want a high octane, high performance tune) or hardware changes (for instance if I change the gear ratios or add a different air induction system then the tune will probably need to be adjusted accordingly)

I guess it’s quite a lot to expect in a single unit, especially with a really simple user interface that it no more distracting than a more traditional GPS or car audio system when you’re travelling at highway speeds, but there’s no technical reason that a platform like this can’t exist today … if there’s anyone out there building one I have an 07 Mustang that I’m more than happy to try integrating it into :)

One of the many neat new features of Windows 7 are themes. If you’ve installed Win7 to try it out you should right click on the desktop and select “Personalize” and check out some of the options (if you’ve not got the Release Candidate to try out you should grab it from here).

I’ve been using the excellent theme pack from my old boss Mike Swanson and it gets quite a few comments from people who stop by my office or see me running it in coffee shops.

Today I was reading Hugh’s post on Cube Grenades and it got me thinking. I already have his art on my business cards and an original print that will be hung in my office as soon as I can get it there and it got me thinking…

I already have the gapingvoid widget on my blog and it provides an endless stream of conversation pieces so I wondered if I would be able to combine the idea of themes and social objects (and share it in the cube grenade spirit).

A quick search found Long Zheng’s post on RSS powered desktop slideshows and from there it was just a matter of finding the RSS feed for Hugh’s widget and so for you to enjoy I present my Gapingvoid Cube Grenade theme for Windows 7 – just download it, unzip and double-click on the theme file (the “clean one features less adult language) to install it. You should see your desktop background go black and after a few moments it’ll start downloading images for the slideshow (set to rotate randomly every 30 minutes). If you click on Personalize on the desktop you can adjust the timing and change it from “fill” to “tile” or other layout options.

Enjoy, and please share and create your own themes with your favorite content :)

(Update: the download now contains two theme options, the default and a “clean” one that only features cartoons with less adult language)

There’s a lot of hype at the moment about Splashtop, Hyperspace, Presto and other “instant on” Linux desktops that are supposed to give you access to everything you possibly need without having to wait for Windows to start.

As I was planning to reformat my laptop soon I thought I’d try them out and see if the dream was actually real for either me or my family. Sure, I work for Microsoft but before joining here I used OSX and various Linux client configurations so I’m open minded. I have also been using Win7 for quite a while so I set that as the bar.

Splashtop

First up was Splashtop. Sadly there’s no end user configuration for that. You have to have hardware with it installed on. If anyone wants to lend me a netbook with this on to have a play with I’d love to see how it stacks up, but I suspect it’ll face the same problems I encountered with the other two.

Hyperspace

Hyperspace was the first one I could actually install and play with. Installation is pretty simple for the end user considering that it re-partitions your hard drive and makes itself the default OS. I’d really have liked it to give me the choice what I wanted as default and you should be aware that re-partitioning on the fly can be pretty dangerous (and the uninstaller did not remove the redundant partition automatically which was a real pain)

The desktop in Hyperspace is heavily locked down. There is a fixed toolbar that includes some apps I would never use and links to sites I’d never visit. If the product was free and made money based off the click-thoughts I could accept it but as this actually expects me to part with money I don’t think that’s okay.

Installing other apps seemed to be pretty limited so if you want a different Instant Messenger client or browser you’re probably out of luck. There doesn’t seem to be a native mail client so if you’re not online and able to do everything in the cloud you’ve got a fast booting paperweight.

Oh, and USB mice are not supported so you’d better like your trackpad!

Ease of installation was great, but on the whole the downsides were too much given that startup wasn’t that much less than the fully functional Win7 build on the same machine.

The limitations are such that I didn’t even want to put this in front of the family as an option. While I’m sure Rhiannon would have been able to play games there’s no integrated iPod experience.

Presto

Xandros Presto was a lot more pleasant an experience overall. The installation was, like Hyperspace, pretty straight-forward though it has the advantage of not creating its own partition, it installs into the existing Windows NTFS file system. It doesn’t make itself the default OS so you have a few seconds after a reboot to choose it otherwise your normal Windows desktop starts up.

Uninstall was equally clean (though I have since re-installed it!)

Similar to Hyperspace again this isn’t free, though there is a trial period so you can kick the tires. Xandros have been in business for quite some time with a user friendly Linux distribution with an integrated applications catalog that makes it easy to find, try and buy applications. They’ve followed the same model here but it’s more flexible than the other options.

There is a default toolbar docked with some apps already loaded but their forums show you how to get to the underlying OS to change, reconfigure and generally do what you need to do – always assuming there isn’t a GUI app that you can download from the catalog to solve the problem.

The biggest issue I have with Presto is that the app catalog offers older versions of some of the apps I wanted to use. Evolution Mail and the Exchange Connector for instance were not current enough to connect to our Exchange server (though the IMAP/Gmail connector worked fine) and there’s no link to Chrome as an alternative browser. I was however able to install the Moonlight Linux port of Silverlight without any problems and the pre-installed Flash version was okay for casual games.

Because Presto runs from the same disk partition as Windows I was able to access files from the main operating system which was a bonus.

… but is it worth 30 seconds?

Both Presto and Hyperspace start up about 30 seconds quicker but seem to have significant functionality issues that mean unless what you want to do is web based, and you have a connection, there’s not much advantage.

The Linux desktops are getting better but still lag behind OSX and Windows in usability (especially the later Win7 builds) and while Presto does let the user under the covers to tweak you’re really heading down the rabbit hole into another world if you’re just looking for a simple solution.

Because they’re stripped back they are fast – performance was great, but as most real operations are going to be web bound that’s not really a huge selling point.

I didn’t notice significantly better battery life with either of the solutions. Maybe if they were installed on a Flash drive and the hard drive spun down totally we’d see some benefit. Hardware issues like the lack of a USB mouse, wired ethernet not working properly and lack of support for the full screen resolution on my laptop makes me think that they’re not quite there yet…

With Win7 having much better support for low end hardware I think the choice for an operating system for low end machines (or quick startup) is going to become much more hotly contested in the future than it is today where the competition is Vista.

Although I started my adventures in programming in Assembler (65c02, 68000) it was probably the discover of BASIC (I still remember it stands for "Beginners All-purpose Symbolic Instruction Code"!) that showed my that computers could be fun (nerd alert!)

I used various forms of BASIC on a wide range of machines - Atom, BBC B, MSX, Oric, RML, ZX81 etc - before PCs became a more regular feature in my life and QuickBASIC was often a quick and easy way to get things done in the days of DOS. With the rise of Windows Visual Basic became the de facto way that many developers were first introduced to programming.

Time passed and the development environment got more complex and VB "grew up", gained some object oriented type features and became a member of the .Net family of languages. It was no longer an easy starting point for new developers - and languages like C# and Java became more prominent.

Well, that simple, easy to get started concept is back. And in keeping with the aim the name says it all - Small Basic. It's not trying to be big and clever, but as a good way for kids to get started and see results quickly.

In it's default form there are only 15 keywords - but even so it's petty capable. The development environment features all the things you'd expect from a modern platform such as Intellisense and context sensitive help. The neat this though is that it's an extensible environment so other developers can add features and capabilities to the base product to help it grow.

Check it out at the MSDN DevLabs (the same folks who bring you PopFly), read more at their blog and don't forget to check out their "Hello World"!

I wonder how long it'll take me to re-write "snake" ;)

I run a variety of operating systems at home and at work. Windows XP, Vista and even OSX and Ubuntu all have their place in my life. The latter two are more curiosities - I get very little real value from either of them.

Although I use the latest and greatest at work (often dogfooding very early builds to help give feedback on problems so you don't have to!) I also have a couple of machines at home still running WinXP. One because the hardware wasn't up to Vista and  the other because, even with SP1, Vista offered no real benefit.

With Windows 7 though I think that's going to start to change.

At PDC today the audience got their first glimpse of Windows 7 in the keynote presentation, and they even got the bits to install and kick the tires as part of "the goods"

While there are a number of great reviews popping up so I won't just repeat the details but just add some personal observation.

It's quick. Startup and general usage is significantly better than Vista, and WinXP feels just plain clunky after using Windows 7 for a few days. I hope this trend improves as we get closer to release and it doesn't get bogged down with extra "stuff" we don't need.

It runs with a smaller system footprint. The performance increases are part of this, but it installs and runs just fine on my UMPC whereas to get anything working right with Vista I had to manually kill a bunch of services and turn off themes before it became responsive enough to be useful. The touch and gesture support just works!

I feel like I'm in control. With Vista I never felt like I was empowered to make decisions about my workspace. With Windows 7 I have control over little things like what order programs appear in the toolbar, what icons appear in the systray and even what the "shutdown" button does (I make it "sleep" instead).

Things just work. Bearing in mind this isn't even classified as a beta yet, but it's stable enough that I'm using it every day and things are just working. I have only found one application that I wanted to use that wouldn't run first time - but turning on compatibility mode for the application and seconds later I was up and running.

The great thing for developers is anything you build now for Vista should pretty much work when Windows 7 is released (for instance you get touch control pretty much for "free" with the updated mouse drivers).

For people wondering if they should switch from WinXP to Vista or wait... if you have capable hardware you should make the switch now and take advantage of the platform (especially with SP1 available and SP2 on the way) - don't listen to the naysayers who've not actually used it!

I remember the leap from Windows 2000 to Windows XP for the significant improvement in my user experience. I'd say we're in for the same sort of leap again. I don't want to go back to Vista or WinXP again.

I hate passwords. I love the security they bring but having to remember them, manage them and above all type them in on some of the devices I use drives me to distraction.

While it’s not a perfect solution I have found one tool that allows me to use my Windows Mobile phone as a secure physical token to control access to my PC.

The Rohos Logon Key is one of the best sorts of utilities. It’s almost invisible once you set it up!

It allows you to store a “key” that you can use to unlock your PC on a USB Flash key, a memory card, a YubiKey or best of all (if your PC has Bluetooth support) a bluetooth equipped Windows Mobile phone or other smartphone.

When you have installed the utility and defined a key simply making it available to the machine will log you in – so by plugging in a USB key and entering the PIN, or placing the Mobile Phone in proximity so the ID can be read.

No more typing, fumbling and cursing!

You still need to update your password on a regular basis (as it can still be used to log in without the device) but it means you can choose longer, more complex and hard to guess ones without having to learn to type them every time.

It doesn’t help with things like syncing the changed password to your phone (for instance if you need it to access your Exchange server for Outlook Mobile via ActiveSync) or if you need to type passwords into web or network logins… maybe one day.

Oh, and the USB support does also include provision of an encrypted partition for you to store files on so even if you lose the key your data is still protected.

WinXP had some power schemes, and Vista improved on the power management options for desktops and laptops. But they were all pretty geeky, you had to know what was going on and to do a good job of getting it set up right there are a bunch of places you needed to go to install things.

Steve Clayton has just reminding me that Microsoft, Climate Savers Computing Initiative and Verdiem have made available Edison as a free download.

Edison (an application we’ve been testing at home for the last 90 days) is a free installation to help you optimize power usage on your PC as we all strive for a greener computing experience.

Download it and give it a try – every little big helps :)

It's official... Vista SP1 is now available in the wild, and trust me - you'd be mad not to!

I've been using Vista SP1 through various earlier incarnations and I've noticed improvements in performance and stability in each incremental build.

I'm running it already on both my day-to-day Vaio laptop and my UMPC. Tonight I'll kick off an update on my daughters desktop machine.

Now the waiting starts for SP2 (and Windows 7)! But for those who never install v1 of anything.... it's time to give Vista a try

For the last few weeks I've had the occasional warning from my DIY Windows Home Server that one of the drive wasn't 100% stable. It would work fine then... just stop. SMART said it was fine when I'd restart but...

Then on Sunday it died and wouldn't restart, so a quick trip to Frys for a new drive, whip off the case, stick in the new drive (replacing the cables as well just to be sure).

Powered it all up. Let it balance storage and... good as new, no files lost (though it did have to delete some backups as there wasn't enough space on the single drive to store everything) but way better than a crash and burn.

Now I might get an extra PCI SATA card and add a couple more drives...

Windows Zero Configuration is a real boon to the world of WiFi connectivity. I let WinXP and Vista take care of connecting to the right router and managing all that "stuff" for me and I've never given it a thought.

However, I've started using a different VoIP solution at home and for various reasons it's not plugged into a wired machine but living off a WiFi connected box (if I can work out the audio driver issues on the server it's going back to there, but I might end up having to wire the machine it's on at the moment)

So... what's the problem?

It was a tricky one to find... Every minute or so on a call I'd get a moment of total silence. I couldn't hear anyone, and no-one could hear me. Weird huh? That's what I thought.

So I started investigating. Lots of diligent diagnostics and pleas to the internet search gods and eventually I got a pointer in the right direction.... every 60 seconds Windows ZeroConf checks the health of the connection... sadly that has an impact on the communications to the router:

Reply from 192.168.10.1: bytes=32 time=1ms TTL=64
Reply from 192.168.10.1: bytes=32 time=1ms TTL=64
Reply from 192.168.10.1: bytes=32 time=1ms TTL=64
Reply from 192.168.10.1: bytes=32 time=944ms TTL=64
Reply from 192.168.10.1: bytes=32 time=1ms TTL=64
Reply from 192.168.10.1: bytes=32 time=1ms TTL=64
Reply from 192.168.10.1: bytes=32 time=1ms TTL=64

So what's the answer?

Well... in WinXP you need to kill the ZeroConf service (hit "Start", then "run" and type "Services.msc" and hit enter. Search for "Windows Zero Configuration...." and hit the "stop service" button) - or if you have a driver/management program for your WiFi card use that instead.

In Vista it's a little tricker

• Open a command prompt using run as administrator.
• Make sure the WLAN service must be running first. If it isn't type net start wlansvc.
• Type in netsh wlan set autoconfig enabled=no interface="name of your wireless network here" (with the quotes)
• If you need to see the name of your wireless network first, type in netsh wlan show settings

or (and if you have a group policy set that won't let you run that command) you can try this WLANOptimizer utility.

However there is a downside of turning off ZeroConf.... in my case when the machine that's running as the VoIP host loses the WiFi connection for any reason you have to restart the service, let it reestablish the connection and then shut it down again!

Hopefully, as this impacts both VoIP users and gamers (who need good ping times) we'll see a hotfix for Vista or someone will write a cool utility that softphones can trigger when in a call to stop ZeroConf doing it's check (perhaps extend the refresh interval to an hour from start of call or only if the connection drops or some other rule)

Oh, the VoIP solution I'm using is MagicJack. It's early days yet, but the quality blows Skype out of the water. If you're thinking about getting one check out the unofficial forum for some really good advice.