Ford-Microsoft Sync... cooler than cool!

So I bought my third Ford Focus the other day, long before I read an article about Kelly Blue Book rating the new 2008 Focus one of the ten coolest cars you can get for under $18,000, which it most certainly is. I used the rebate to pay off my Liquid Gray 2003 Focus SE and am giving it to my eldest daughter for her college car. Heck, it has well under 60,000 miles on it, and still looks and drives great. She is thrilled, and thinks it’s a cool car. Now, with all modesty aside, I really didn’t think that a car could add much to MY coolness factor. I worked in rock and roll radio in New York for nearly two decades, roadied for Van Halen for part of the second album tour, watched Deep Purple rehearse in a friend’s basement when I was a kid, actually saw the Ramones at CBGB’s… you get the idea. Anyway, all things considered, how could a Ford Focus possibly make me any cooler? One word… Sync.

Just In case you are still living in the twentieth century and have missed all the commercials and press about the Microsoft and Ford creation which is Sync, it is a system available only in Ford. Lincoln, and Mercury vehicles, which seamlessly allows you to use voice commands to control your Bluetooth enabled phone, your MP3 player (I have the Microsoft 80g Zune), and has upgradeable software that will allow updates of the system, the first of which is due by early fall. All this means that you can tell Sync to call your home, and it will. You can also tell Sync you want to listen to the Ramones, and it will, or to play a certain genre of music, or album, or song, or songs that sound kind of the same… and it will!!! Now that’s cool.

Okay, so it may be hard sitting there reading this to picture in your mind’s ear just how Sync works and sounds, but a quick trip to see Sync demonstrated in person will calm those Hal from “2001 A Space Odyssey” fears, and let you see just how easy Sync is to use, and how easily it becomes a part of your driving life. Ford has Sync in the Focus, the Edge, and the Fusion now, and on the way for the Escape, F150, and Taurus making it a lifestyle feature that spans all economic levels, and can make anyone who owns it at least a little bit cooler… not that I needed it mind you.

Come see, hear, and experience Sync at Ricart Ford in the Megamall today, and you'll probably have a new Ford at your house tonight!

Ford and Microsoft team to put vehicles in "Sync"

In the fall, your new Ford could well be a whole lot smarter than it is now. By smarter, I mean more intelligent, because Ford already has a really good looking line up! The thing that will make your new Ford smarter is called "Sync", and the system was the "People's Voice" award winner at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, and there was plenty of cool stuff on display that "Sync" beat out!
Before you have visions of Hal from "2001 a Space Odyssey" taking control of your ride, you should know that "Sync" is a fully-integrated system that allows hands free operation of your phone, hands free text message reception via text to voice technology (you can even respond with a series of set responses), and hands free operation of your Ford vehicle's audio entertainment system...including using voice command to play songs from a range of media players that can be connected to the "Sync" system! This part is really neat! You will have the ability to select tunes from your MP3 player by saying things like "Play artist My Chemical Romance", or choose a specific song like "Play track, The Black Parade"! You can even have it select specific types of songs, by matching parameters of the tunes with other songs on the system.
The new Ford and Microsoft "Sync" system is just another step forward for the car company that got the ball rolling for the industry early last century, and is leading the way forward this century. Guess what my new Focus is gonna have on it?