Ford Finally Launches Tweets, Pandora in Car

share on:

Ford is starting to deliver on its promise of letting car owners listen to Tweets and Pandora while they drive, all with voice control.

Ford Lets you Receive Tweets in Car with AppLink--Starts with 2011 FiestaThe feature is now permitted for owners of the 2011 Ford Fiesta—all 14,000 of them—but Ford will extend it to other car models in the future.

So while driving, you can ask your radio to read back your Twitter feed by stating, “Read timeline.” Or you can ask your radio to play a certain Pandora station or to “Bookmark song,” or you can state “Thumbs up” or “Thumbs down.”

It works like this: You can link your BlackBerry, Android phone or iPhone to the car radio. You download the new Sync AppLink from www.syncmyride.com. Transfer it to the radio via USB drive. Then your radio will permit voice control over certain apps on your phone.

The first apps to work with the system are Pandora, Open Beak (a Twitter feed) and Stitcher (a news service) but other apps will be enabled in the future.

Ford first announced the capability in January, but is just now delivering the app to make it all work. Ford also previously announced it would work with BlackBerry or Android phones, but it has now added iPhone capability.

The iPhone connects to Ford radios via USB while Android and BlackBerry smartphones are paired to the radio via Bluetooth.

Ford said 46 percent of smartphone owners have apps on their phones and 36 percent of those use those apps while commuting. The AppLink software is designed to make app use safe in the car.

Ford’s Doug VanDagens said, “Ford has worked hard to be a step ahead or at least in step with the speed of the consumer electronics market, and to leverage the technologies, features and services we know our customers want to be connected to while driving.”

Here’s the schedule of availability for the Ford Sync-ready apps on different phones:

Pandora
Apple iPhone: Coming early 2011
Android: Available now (V1.5.3 or higher)
BlackBerry: Available now (Version 1.1.6 or higher)

Stitcher
Apple iPhone: Coming early 2011
Android: Coming early 2011
BlackBerry: Coming late 2011

OpenBeak
BlackBerry: Available now from http://m.openbeak.com and soon in Blackberry App World (Version 1.4 or higher)

Source: Ford

Want to receive industry news? Sign up here
share on: