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Great service from MP3Car.com!

As I reported earlier, the FJ Car Computer died last week - but - I'm excited to say that I just received a call from the CEO of MP3car.com and he's offered to help get me back in service, perhaps with an even more powerful computer.  I'm impressed that the CEO would call me this late on a Friday night, and I had a great time geeking out talking about car computers.  That's customer service!

My first published Yodio Card

Last year I was introduced to David Jennings, the founder of a new startup company.  David and I hit it off, and his company, Yodio, soon became a customer of Gold Systems.  So what's a Yodio?  Think of it as a photo gallery that you can call from your mobile phone and narrate your own descriptions of your trip, your party, your photograph - whatever you want.

I should say that David hasn't yet deployed the nice speech recognition system that we built for him to the public, so if you try Yodio out, you are getting the original prototype touch-tone system.  Sorry about that, but I can't wait to write about it.

Once you've recorded a Yodio, you can email it, post it to a blog or post it to their marketplace where someone might even pay you for it.

Here's my first published Yodio based on a photograph I took this winter.  Click on the "yo" button to view and "hear" my photograph.  (If you are reading this from an RSS reader, just go to my blog to see the photograpy and to play the Yodio Card.)

Car computer update

I'm taking a little vacation and so I'm on a road trip, though I'm staying connected.  Yesterday was a great day of driving.  Before leaving, I used my Zune Pass software on my car computer to download a couple of new albums and so I listened to music most of the way to my first stop.  I had wireless Internet almost continuously, so when I stopped at rest areas I was able to check email and IM people.  (I'll write more about that later.)

Unfortunately, the car computer died last night.  It's had a hardware problem for about a month but whatever was ailing it became terminal last night I think.  So . . . no more webcam updates for awhile.  I'm making this post the old-fashioned way - from a laptop at a Starbucks.  I'm hoping the company that I bought the computer from can help me out with my problem.  They've been great so far and this problem has not even made me think about going back to a dumb car radio.

Car computer as a photography platform

Today I needed to take a quick photograph outside for an email I was sending to a customer.

I used my 35mm digital camera and as soon as I was done, I popped the Compact Flash Micro Drive into the media reader in the FJ's glove compartment.  When I'm not using it as a media reader, it doubles as a glove box light with this nice blue glow radiating from it.

Using my wireless keyboard, I drug the photos into a folder on the FJ's computer that automatically syncs with my other computers at home and at work via the EVDO/WiFi connection.

(Note:  All of this was done while the FJ was safely parked!)

By the time I got back to my office, the photos were waiting for me on my laptop.  I did a quick resize of the photo to fit it in the email and a few minutes later, it was off to the customer.

Ben, thanks so much for letting me take a photo of "Big Daddy!"  You've done an AMAZING JOB restoring this beautiful Ford!  I won't reveal what's under the hood until you're ready.

Congratulations Gold Systems Runners!

Congratulations to the Gold Systems team that ran in this year's Bolder Boulder!  It was just announced that they came in second in the Corporate IV class with a time of 3:07:29.  Way to go!