New release of QNX OS closes UX gap between smartphones and embedded systems

Okay, this one is going to be short. I'd love to have you stay, but I'd like it even more if you jumped to the QNX website. Because if you do, you'll get the full skinny on a significant new OS release that QNX Software Systems announced this morning.

But before you go, the back story. Mobile devices (think smartphones) have transformed what people expect of embedded systems (think gas pumps, vending machines, heart monitors, or just about any other device with a user interface). Every time someone uses a smartphone or tablet, they become more conditioned to the user experience it delivers. And the more conditioned they become, they more they expect a similar experience in other systems they use. It's human nature, plain and simple.

People who create embedded devices get this. They know that, to succeed, they must up their UX game. The problem is, a gap has existed between the user experiences that embedded operating systems can support and the user experiences that people want. The latest generation of the QNX Neutrino OS, version 6.6, addresses that gap. And it does so by introducing a new and potent mix of graphics, security, multimedia, security, and power management capabilities.

And just what are those capabilities? You'll have to jump to the press release to find out. :-)


The QNX SDK for Apps & Media — one of many significant new features
in the latest release of the QNX OS.

Porsche 911 concept car makes debut at Mobile World Congress

Here's another opportunity to see the Porsche 911 Carrera concept car in action. This time, it's from the floor of Mobile World Congress, where Derek Kuhn, QNX's VP of marketing, takes us on a tour of the car's coolest features.

Highlights include one-touch phone pairing, BlackBerry PlayBook integration, distributed media playback, high-def handsfree calls, and a dynamically reconfigurable digital instrument cluster. Roll the tape...


 

The tablet PC, then and now

It was billed as the "portable web browsing device that could enable mass adoption of Internet access." So okay, they got that part wrong. In any case, the NatSemi WebPAD offered a tantalizing hint of things to come.

It was, first of all, a hand-holdable tablet, albeit a bulky one by today's standards. And sure enough, it let you surf wirelessly via a 2.4 GHz base station. But despite these capabilities, it was doomed to fail — not because it was deficient, but because it was ahead of its time.

You see, the WebPAD made its debut in 1998, long before Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube came on the scene. There was no social media, no Web 2.0, no eBay, no Wi-Fi hotspots, and few broadband connections. By today's standards, the web could be defined by what it lacked. So while something like a wireless tablet was extremely cool, it wasn't compelling as a consumer product. There was only so much you could do with it.

Fast-forward to 2011. The challenge of building a tablet has changed radically. In 1998, NatSemi built a tablet and hoped the web would catch up. Now, the web is rich beyond measure and needs an extremely powerful tablet to take full advantage of it. If you've seen videos of the BlackBerry PlayBook's web fidelity, wicked-fast multitasking, or HD video, you know what I'm talking about.

More to the point, the web really has caught up. As a result, the tablet concept, which was simply cool in 1998, has become simply huge in 2011. So, hats off to the folks who pioneered the concept so many years ago. And kudos to my many colleagues at QNX and RIM who are transforming that concept into a thing of beauty. Consider me blown away.
 

First pix of Toyota Entune Multimedia System

From what I can tell, the goal of the new Toyota Entune multimedia system is pretty straightforward: allow drivers to interact with mobile content and applications in a non-distracting, handsfree fashion. For instance, if you're searching for a nearby restaurant, you simply talk to the system in a conversational fashion — no need to memorize specific commands.

To get Entune up and running, you download an app onto your smartphone; this app then allows Entune to access a variety of offboard services, including Bing (navigation), OpenTable (restaurant reservations), MovieTickets.com, Pandora, and iheartradio.

Enough blather. I promised pictures, so let's check them out. First up is the main menu, which lets you choose from the various services that Entune supports:

Next up is voice search powered by the Voice Box speech recognition engine:

Here's a screen capture of Pandora Internet radio:

And here's one of iheartradio:

The Toyota Entune system is based on the QNX CAR Application Platform; for information on the platform, click here.

For more images of Toyota Entune, click here.
 

BlackBerry 6: Another sneak peek

On Monday, RIM posted a new sneak peek of its BlackBerry 6 OS. The video highlights several features, including a new browser, universal search, and the ability to post to multiple social networking sites simultaneously. (That last feature makes my social-media me very happy.)

Enough blather. Let's watch the video:

iPod nano gets FM radio

I'm going to have to eat my words.

A few weeks ago, I opined that Apple would never market an iPod that supports FM, for the simple reason that users would end up listening to the radio when they could be browsing the iTunes store instead.

Boy, was I wrong. The new iPod nano not only supports FM, but also lets you pause FM broadcasts and pick up where you left off. You can even rewind and fastforward through broadcasts. Think of it as the TiVo for FM radio.

But this is where it gets really interesting: You can also tag songs you hear on the radio for subsequent purchase on the iTunes store. In other words, Apple has just turned FM radio into a huge sales funnel for iTunes. Brilliant.

<commercial break>
The QNX Aviage Multimedia Suite also supports a lot of this functionality, btw.
</commercial break>

I'm ticked that Apple still isn't bringing FM to the iPod touch, especially since my second-gen touch contains a chip that supports FM reception. And you would think that Apple would want iPod touch users to also tag FM songs for subsequent purchase. But on the other hand, I now want a nano as well as a touch. So, marketing-wise, maybe the folks at Apple are one giant step ahead of me.

It wouldn't the first time. Or, no doubt, the last.

Mercedes chooses QNX-based infotainment system for new S-Class and C-Class models

Earlier this morning, Harman International announced that it will provide the next-generation COMAND infotainment system for the new Mercedes-Benz S- and C-Class models.

The system, based on the QNX Neutrino RTOS, offers "3-D navigation, brilliant graphics, Internet access, and wired or wireless connectivity." It also has a hard drive that will provide "rich navigation data and accommodate the user's personal entertainment files for increased flexibility and comfort."

That last part is just a fancy way of saying you can upload your favorite tunes to the hard drive and listen to them while cruisin'. Which is pretty cool. I assume the system will also let you plug in your iPod, create playlists, and generally control what music you want to listen to, and when. Which will be even cooler.

I don't see any photos on the Harman website, but I'll bug their PR folks to see if they have a snap or two. If they give me any, I'll post them here posthaste.

To read the press release, click here.

QNX supports video on TI OMAP 3530 Beagle board

A couple of weeks ago, QNX announced that its operating system and multimedia middleware now run on the OMAP35x EVM and on the 3530 BeagleBoard from Texas Instruments.

Well, I'm not sure who, but one of my QNX colleagues has dropped the other shoe and posted a video to demonstrate QNX's video support for the BeagleBoard:



If you posted the video and you're reading this, feel free to share what exactly is going on beneath the multimedia covers. :-) [POSTSCRIPT: See the comment that my colleague Kroy has posted.]

iPod touch users get Bluetooth, finally

Last October, a teardown report revealed that the iPod touch contains a chip that supports both Bluetooth audio and FM reception. At the time, it was up in the air as to whether future firmware updates would switch on either feature.

Well, no word on FM yet, but as for Bluetooth, the news is good: The new iPhone 3.0 software update allows iPod touch users to listen to music on Bluetooth stereo headphones.

Mind you, the news isn't all good: If you use a first-gen touch, you're out of luck. The Bluetooth support applies to second-gen models only.

Any guesses that the FM reception will never be switched on? After all, if I were Apple, I wouldn't want my customers to be listening to local FM broadcasts when they could be downloading songs from iTunes instead...

QNX-based media server takes home another award

I must admit, I don't do the iTunes thing. In fact, I've yet to download a single song from any music site. If that makes me a cultural Neanderthal, then so be it. Just keep your paws off my LPs, or I'll whack you with my trusty Mastodon rib.

Kidding aside, I do have a formidable CD collection. And the problem with a large CD collection is that it is, well, large. In my case, I have to store the CDs in multiple cases: one in the living room, another in the family room, etc. Tracking down an individual CD is an exercise in frustration and luck; in fact, it actually involves exercise.

Enter the Harman Kardon DMC 1000, a QNX-based media server that automatically copies CDs to a hard drive as the CDs are playing. Which means that, eventually, a good chunk of your CD collection ends up in a single, relatively small location. Better yet, you can listen to that collection from almost any room in your house, using the DMC's multi-zone feature. I could get used to that.

I first wrote about this device a few months ago, when it won a European Imaging and Sound Association (EISA) Best Product award. Well, I just found out that the editors of the German magazine HiFi Test also gave the DMC 1000 the thumbs up, voting it best product of the year. From what I've read, the editors rarely agree on a best product of the year, so they must have been some impressed.

And get this: The DMC 1000 also received a GOOD DESIGN award from "The Chicago Athenaeum: Museum of Architecture and Design." The GOOD DESIGN award honors the "pursuit of excellence in form, function and aesthetics..." I could be wrong, but I believe this means that the GOOD Design folks think the DMC 1000 looks really cool.

Naturally, all this coolness comes at a price, so being the skinflint that I am, I haven't bought one.

Yet. :-)

Wanted: A flashy multimedia OS for my digital photo frame

I must admit, I got the digital photo frame market all wrong. I thought digital frames were simply glorified JPEG viewers, but after buying one for my wife, I've come to realize that the companies building these devices have far greater ambitions.

Already, many digital photo frames serve as multimedia centers that play music and video from a variety of storage media. Some even access photos over the Internet. They don't necessarily do a great job of performing these functions — yet. But clearly, they have the potential to become a major access point for a variety of online services and content.

For instance, many wireless operators see 3G-enabled digital frames as a tool for breaking into the home market — a market that, until now, has eluded them.

The digital frame I bought my wife does a fantastic job of displaying JPEGs. The images are clean and sharp, with good color balance. But now that I’ve used the frame for a while, I’m beginning to wish that it had a more robust operating system and application stack. For instance, I would like really like:

• Wi-Fi support — Some frames support this, and I can see why. It lets you view your latest photos without having to use the Sneakernet. 
  


• A Flickr widget — Lots of people store and share their photos on social media sites like Flickr. A Flickr widget would let me view my online photos, as well as any photos that friends and colleagues have posted. 
  


• A YouTube widget — Because what good is a digital frame if it doesn’t let you watch silly animal clips? 
  


• Custom slideshows — Lots of photo programs, including PhotoShop Elements, let you tag photos with arbitrary terms like "birthday" or "vacation" or "trip to Italy". A digital frame that supports tags would let me create custom slideshows on the fly. 
  


• Custom MP3 playlists — My wife's digital frame lets me play songs stored in a specific folder, but it doesn’t let me generate playlists on the fly. For instance, if I'm watching a slideshow on my wedding, I might want to select a romantic song and ask the digital frame to "play more music like this." 
  


• Integration with iPods and other music players — My wife's digital frame can play MP3 files stored on USB sticks and other flash media, but it doesn't seem to work with iPods and other similar devices. How many people store their music collection on a USB stick? 
  


• Better screen fonts — My wife's digital frame doesn't truncate long file names (thank goodness), but in many cases, you can't still can't see the full file name of an image because the text font is too large and too wide. 
  


• Adobe Flash user interface — The graphical menus on my wife's digital frame are okay, but they'd look a lot slicker implemented in Flash. Also, by supporting Flash, the frame could play Flash movies downloaded from the Internet. 
  

The interesting thing is, companies making infotainment systems for cars are already using QNX middleware to achieve many of these goals. So what’s to stop digital frame manufacturers from also using QNX? Not much, I think.

QNX-based media server takes home EISA award

I know that it may come as a shock, but often, judges hand out industry awards without laying their hands on a single product. They simply review the written award submissions and dole out prizes based on what they’ve read.

The European Imaging and Sound Association (EISA) takes a different approach. It insists that the products submitted for its annual awards are made available for detailed, hands-on evaluation. And this year, the evaluation process resulted in an EISA Best Product award for the QNX-based Harman Kardon DMC 1000 media server.

Equipped with a 250GB internal hard drive, the DMC 1000 can digitize and catalogue more than 60,000 songs. It comes with USB jacks and memory-card slots, so you can quickly stock up the hard drive with music, movies, and photos from all your personal devices: iPods, cell phones, digital cameras, camcorders, thumb drives, etc. Other features include a 1080p upscaling DVD player and the ability to distribute 4 audio streams throughout your home.

I’m in the process of digitizing analog tapes that I recorded almost 30 years ago. If someone told me in 1980 that I would eventually digitize this material and play it on a home media server or handheld MP3 player, I’d have stared at them as if they had 3 heads. (A tape deck with 3 heads, on the other hand, I would have gladly welcomed.) Things have changed since then, and thank goodness for that: I'll take a single, sleek DMC 1000 over a wall of cassettes any day.

For more info on the DMC 1000, check out the Design News article, "New Media Center Stops Blue Screen of Death."