It's a CommuniPort Mobile Productivity Center. It's designed to integrate a Palm V and an Ericsson cell phone via hands free, voice recognition and text to speech."
And..says Delphi Automotive's Pete Moody... it works like this... . (sound) The service is called MobileAria... a joint venture between Delphi, the venture capital Mayfield Fund and Palm. Palm CEO Carl Yankowski puts it this way...
"This whole concept is about making information, data access easily usable and available to the masses in the cars both on a retro-fit basis and an OEM basis. And it's going to be bringing services to the automobile through the Palm and through a series of cell phones and through a special voice recognition system developed by Delphi Automotive so that it will be very safe, very unique and basically give you any time, any where access in your vehicle to all the information... email, Web based services that you want."
It should be available by the middle of next year... and while prices aren't being disclosed... multiple subscription fees could be a drawback. You could wind up paying for access to Palm.net... and a separate charge for MobileAria. You can find us on the Web, pull over first please... at Bloomberg.com/radio. Bootcamp, I'm Fred Fishkin... Bloomberg News.