QNX-powered systems clean up at Telematics Awards!

When you're in the business of building an embedded OS, there is but one criterion by which you are judged: The success of your customers.

Ultimately, it doesn't matter how cool or how popular you are. At the end of the day, only one question matters: Are you enabling your customers' success? Are you helping them stand out from the crowd? Are you helping them achieve things that even they never thought possible? (Okay, that's three questions, but work with me here, I'm on a roll!)

Seriously, if any one event tells me that QNX has become a superachiever at customer enablement, it's the International Telematics Awards. Every year, companies that build products based on QNX technology drive away with top honors — and this year is no exception.

So, without further ado, here are the winning QNX-based entries:

OnStar — Best telematics safety technology

Toyota Entune — Best cloud-based in-car application (joint winner)

Hyundai Blue Link — Best cloud-based in-car application (joint winner)

Hyundai Blue Link — Newcomer award (joint winner)

Audi Connect — Global OEM infotainment solution award (joint winner)

BMW ConnectedDrive — Global OEM infotainment solution award (joint winner)
 

Reskinning the Corvette: The final chapter!

Can the development of automotive HMIs be compressed from years to months... or even weeks? My QNX colleagues wanted to prove it could be done, so they challenged Lixar, a mobile UI developer, to reskin a QNX-powered head unit in 30 days.

I've already covered parts 1 and 2 of this video series (see here and here). Here's the third and final installment:



Or, actually, you can see all three parts in this one convenient clip:


 

QNX... you are... safe!

Yup, I fully expect that my colleagues will hear those words tonight, at the International Telematics Awards ceremony. (QNX is shortlisted in the global infotainment category.)

Oh, did I mention? Ryan Seacrest will open up the ceremony. Seriously.

Don't believe me? Check out this ad from the Telematics Update website:

 

Reskinning the Corvette: Which skin is in?

When I was a kid, my dad drove a Plymouth equipped with a push button transmission. You heard that right:  To change gears, you simply pressed a button on the dashboard. The feature was especially popular with female drivers, or so commercials of the time would have us believe. (In case you were wondering, the Plymouth design team placed the buttons on the left side of the steering wheel, well away from the push button radio. Wise decision, that.)

The push button transmission wasn't the first attempt to endow a dashboard with a unique user experience. For instance, in the late 1930s, Plymouth introduced a "safety speedometer" that glowed red when you exceeded 60 mph.

But you know what's amazing? It's been 80 years since the debut of the safety speedometer and 65 years since the debut of the push button transmission, yet car makers continue to use the dashboard as a platform for product branding and differentiation. For evidence, consider the many in-dash infotainment systems now available on everything from BMW roadsters to Ford F-150s.

A glimpse of original UI
for the Corvette's
QNX-powered head unit

Which brings us to the Corvette. A few months ago, we pimped out a stock Corvette with a multimedia head unit and digital instrument cluster based on the QNX CAR Application Platform. From the beginning, we've said that car makers could easily customize the platform to make their infotainment system stand out from everyone else's. But how easy is it customize, really?

To answer that question, we created the "30 day" UI challenge. In a nutshell, we gave Lixar, a mobile UI company with no QNX or automotive experience, a month to create completely new skins for the QNX-powered head unit on the Corvette.

So how's the project going? I thought you'd never ask:



Which skin is in?
The above video is the second of a series. Will we see the final skins in the next installment? Pretty sure. But in the meantime, here's a closer look at the draft skins shown in the clip. Clearly, the designers are looking to capture the spirit of the Corvette while offering a clean, easy-to-learn UI.

Personally, I find all of them attractive... still can't decide which I like best. Do you have a favorite?

 

Latest addiction: Creating wallpapers for my BlackBerry PlayBook

Update: I've started to post my wallpapers for download. Click here for details.

Just what I needed: another jones.

From day one, I realized that the PlayBook would be a great device for showing off my image portfolio. But then I started to play with creating new wallpapers. What started as casual doodling has now grown into a full-blown project. Here, for example, are some wallpapers I created this week:

Sunrise on the Bonnechere river:

Monarch butterfly, with my red car in the background:

A cat that's a lot friendlier than it looks:

A snap I took from a moving car (relax, my wife was driving):


 

TASS: Russian Deputy PM Viktor Zubkov visits RIM branch

This just in: The TASS news agency has issued a press release announcing that Viktor Zubkov, Russia's first deputy prime minister, visited a "branch" of Research In Motion yesterday, where he was given a demonstration of the QNX operating system.

Hm, I wonder which RIM branch they are referring to...

To read the press release, click here.
 

Reskinning the Corvette: 4 people, one month, no QNX experience

At QNX, we often claim that it's easy for automotive customers to customize our platform with their own look-and-feel. But how easy is it, really? Do customers simply need to be good UI/UX developers, or do they have to be QNX gurus as well?

It was time to put the claim to the test. So we called up Lixar, a local company with mobile UI experience, and asked them to reskin the multimedia head unit that QNX created for its Corvette concept car.

The folks at Lixar didn't have QNX experience. They didn't have any automotive experience, either. What they did have was 30 days — a fraction of the time typically allocated to creating an automotive UI...