Onstar Navigation System to Deliver In-Car Spam

pneuma_66 writes: "According to the New York Times (Free reg, don't cha know) navigation systems, like OnStar, are planning to deliver ads based on the car's location. For example, the system will 'notify' the driver of sales in nearby stores. The vp of OnStar says "The privacy and the confidentiality of our subscribers are of the utmost importance", well lets see how the big companies play with this new wealth of information."

Comments

Car Talk

[ian_po]

Mod this as off-topic if you want. This week on the NPR radio show CarTalk, The lady who's voice they use for *OnStar(tm) called up and talked with Tom & Ray. Apparently GM buys the OnStar service from another company. The lady spoke about how advanced the voice regognition was and that the text to voice (that uses her voice) does not sound like your average: "At. The. Tone. Deposit. Thirty. Five. Cents." This voice tech seems like the only cool thing that the /. crowd would even care about.

The lady who called herself "Mary-Mac" said that she was just in Silicon Valley laying down more voice takes for OnStar, in addition to the thousands she has already done. I would not be surprised if they were finishing up this new spam stuff. And while the call was very self promoting, she also agreed with the hosts Click and Clack that you should pull over when using your cell phone. She even nice enough give them an OnStar-ish sound bite.

You should check out CarTalk, it is on your local NPR stations on the weekends and last week's show can be heard during the week on their website. The hosts regualarly beat up on GM and OnStar, so much so they almost talk about it every week now.

And in other news...

[t_allardyce]

United Airlines has said today that to increase lost revenue from recent events, it has decided to start sponsoring terrorism. The airline will soon place adverts on their new bullet-proof doors and on the tail fin - which experts say, is the most likely part of the plane to survive in a crash. Also, prospective terrorists will be given cash back if they agree to promote inflight purchases when hi-jacking "This plane is now under control of the Al'Quaeda terrorist group, please remember, Pepsi-Cola(tm) is available on the inflight trolly for a discounted price, buy now, before we crash into the whitehouse. Did I also mention 'Jones Funeral Services'? yes, for a special promotion, Jones are offering 3 pine-wood coffins for the price of 1!!! (buy now, while limbs intact)"

(see, you can't call me a karma whore, im about to get modded to -50)