'Twitter' for cars

Ford Motor CEO Alan Mulally will announce on Thursday at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas that the automaker is incorporating a Twitter application into its next-generation Sync in-car communication system.

It is one of three free apps — the others are online entertainment services Pandora and Stitcher — in the first wave of what Ford hopes will become a portfolio of mobile-phone-like apps available for tech-minded motorists. "It's about bringing the Internet to the car," said Charles Golvin, principal analyst at Forrester Research. "What they're doing is making it really easy."

Sync, co-created with Microsoft, is a system that lets drivers operate their Bluetooth-enabled smartphones and music players with voice commands and have text messages read to them, among other functions. Since Sync was unveiled three years ago, Ford has sold more than 1 million vehicles with it.

Encouraging outside developers to create apps — useful and fun applications sold or offered free — for the system seemed a logical next step. The goal is to get in on the apps revolution that has helped make mobile devices such as Apple's iPhone and iPod Touch so popular.

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source: USA Today