About four years ago I had this idea while I was at a drive-through window at Taco Bell. I couldn't understand a word the person inside the store was saying, thanks to a comabination of a rather thick accent and a rather broken PA speker in the order kiosk. I reasoned that with the growth of wireless networking (back then 802.11b was becoming affordable, especially thanks to Apple and the AirPort base station) coupled with the proliferation of LCD and similar flat display technologies (I had been working at Philips before this time, on LCD stuff), there could be some interesting stuff made possible if cars were wireless-networking-enabled.

I figured that there would be two great applications right off the bat. One would be new forms of commerce at drive-through locations. At that time, I think it was Burger King that was giving away an N'Sync CD with a purchase... imagine being able to download promotional movie and music content at the drive-through window! Certainly the headrest-mounted LCD screens showing movies and Sponge Bob Square Pants videos to the kids in the back would benefit from this sort of thing, as would the parents enjoying the resulting peace and quiet. Ordering at that Taco Bell could become a matter of touching my in-car touchscreen on the multimedia menu, presented in front of me in my language. That would be cool, wouldn't it?

The other application, which was a bit more vague, was the possibility of car-to-car networking, for anything from real-time safety (an active turn signal, perhaps?) to up-the-line condition notifications (get off at an exit, there's a major wreck 5 miles up the freeway!), to car-car chats and messaging, to the formation of spurious networks from one car to the next, to the next, and so on to a wired accesspoint somewhere down the road (literally), which would enable real networking instead of or in addition to satellite and cellular.

To make a long story short, the keys were the constructio of roaming wireless networks (now called Mesh Networks, by a company of a similar name), the creation of a car commerce infrastructure to provide that value-add at drive-throughs and other similar locations, and the inclusiong of a wireless core capability in cars. Only very recently have car makers become interested in this, with the pricepoint coming down on the necessary electronics, coupled with the popularity explosion that wireless networking has experienced.

So I was a bit early. I had no funding. I couldn't adequitely answer the really critical question, How will we make money doing this? Well, the answer to the last one was undoubtedly patents and licensing fees, though I actually don't care for that business route. A prime example of biting off more than I could chew.

So today, I am pursuing at least one project with my long-time friend and colleague, Jim Krupocki, which I hope will be rolling out some time in January (uh oh, I've attached a date reference. But no year, luckily) to test out, and I'm pursuing at least one idea that occured to me just last week. I actually have a few other ideas, but I also need sleep sometimes, and I need to find Oum a job in Arizona somewhere while I avoid running out of money, so a certain degree of focus is in order.

Watch this space for more updates. I hope the stories I have to tell over the next couple of weeks are more interesting than that of CarComms above, and I hope there are happier endings in all cases (or, rather , no endings, but happy middles perhaps). I should point out that the ideas I'm working on are web-related... but isn't everything nowadays anyway?