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Thanks to voice-controlled systems like Ford's Sync , drivers don't have to take their eyes off the road if they want to place a call or switch to the next track on their playlists. Today, Ford announced the next step in the company's roadmap to connect mobile phones and cars. With Sync AppLink, Ford is introducing a new platform that allows developers to offer voice controls for their mobile apps on Sync-enabled cars. At first, AppLink will only work with Android and BlackBerry devices, but the company plans to offer support for Apple's iPhone OS and other smartphone platforms next year. Sponsor The first Sync-enabled applications, which will be available later this year, are Pandora , Stitcher , and Orangatame's OpenBreak Twitter app. Even though Sync is based on the Microsoft Auto platform, Ford did not announce that it plans to support the upcoming Windows Phone operating system. Drivers will be able to control AppLink-enabled mobile apps through voice commands that will be routed through the Sync system, as well as from buttons on the steering wheel. The first car to feature this new service will be the 2011 Ford Fiesta . Ford plans to offer AppLink on all Sync-equipped cars next year. Existing Sync users will be able to update their car's software at a later point as well. Same Apps - Just Controlled by SYNC From the user's perspective, installing a Sync-enabled app is no different from installing a regular app on their mobile phones. The only difference is that the car will notice when you start a Sync-enabled app and allow you to control the app's function with your voice. This allows Ford to plug right into the existing developer ecosystems and distribution channels for all of these platforms and developers only have to make relatively minor updates to make their apps compatible with Sync. It's important to stress that these applications are running on the user's phone and not on the car's built-in Sync hardware. Sync only passes the voice commands on to the application but doesn't interact with the app beyond this. In Ford's parlance, these are "brought-in" apps, as opposed to "built-in" apps (like Ford's Vehicle Health Report and 911 Assist) or "beamed-in" cloud-based apps that send traffic information and turn-by-turn directions to the car. Sync AppLink for Developers Ford is currently working with a small group of trusted partners and plans to open up the Sync API and software development kit to a broader selection of developers later this year. Ford also announced the launch of a Sync developer community that will give developers a pathway to partner with Ford on Sync-enabled applications. Image credit: Flickr user Jim Trottier Discuss

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Ford Sync Will Soon Let You Control Your Mobile Apps by Voice

Virtualization is a star - at least in the big stage of the iPad. Since the device launched, Citrix Receiver has been one of the top ranked business apps in the store. Chris Fleck, mobility leader on the Citrix team shares this demonstration showing a Citrix Receiver application enabled with four applications running side by side on iPad. He goes further to show the same apps running on a host of other devices. Sponsor Born to Multitask Citrix Receiver uses HDX, the name of the remoting technology Citrix has innovated based on the ICA Protocol (Independent Computing Architecture) the company has been developing on for over 15 years. Fleck tells us that HDX is conceptually similar to RDP/VNC but it includes significant optimizations for WAN performance, Multimedia, and user experience across multiple devices and OS's. Here is a clip from the demonstration video showing four side-by-side apps running on iPad. Citrix Receiver is able to zoom on in each application to make it full screen, or display all four simultaneously. Many Apps - Many Devices The demonstration continues showing each device in this picture, from Mac to PC, iPhone to Android, all running the same applications. At one point, Fleck goes on to demonstrate how to "flick" multiple applications on the iPhone. This demonstrates one app showing full screen and the four other applications are swipable, like photos in your photo library. This seems like a natural extension of the iPhone and really could be useful for building larger enterprise applications or portals. This demonstration reminded us of one thing, the apps matter. When we see an iPhone application on Android, or Windows 7, it still looks pleasing to navigate. Perhaps there is room in the enterprise for a Apple's Mobile Human Interface Guidelines . Enterprise designers, maybe it's your time to build insanely great apps for the enterprise that follow patterns of the iPhone and iPad. Whether new, or old, Citrix Receiver is breathing life into applications and iPad is getting down to business. The company plans to release this capability with its partner SoftwareFX at the Citrix Synergy event next month. Do you think Citrix Receiver become a default way to connect iPad in the enterprise? Discuss

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Coming Soon: Multi-Tasking on the iPad with Many-Device Apps

According to Dow Jones , some college have banned the iPad from their networks. Princeton and Cornell, for example, are seeing major networking and connectivity issues that mirror the problems many users are seeing with their iPads at home. Princeton also decided to share details about the issues it is seeing on its network in a detailed statement that could help Apple diagnose and fix the connectivity issues that have plagued the iPad since launch. Sponsor As we reported earlier this month, quite a few iPad owners have experienced WiFi connectivity issues with their devices. There seems to be a wide variety of issues, ranging from bad WiFi reception to regular drops on the WiFi connection because of what looks to be a bug in how the iPad connects to some routers. The iPad's Problem According to Princetion: DHCP According to the report from Princeton, at least one of these connectivity problems can be traced back to how the iPad handles DHCP leases. DHCP, which stands for Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol , is responsible for assigning IP addresses to computers on a local network. Normally, these IP addresses are renewed at regular intervals. If the device doesn't request a renewal of the address, the DHCP server can hand this address out to another device. The Princeton team found that, under certain circumstances, iPads renew their lease of a given IP address once but then allow the lease to expire. Once the lease has expired, however, these devices still try to use the same address without asking for a new lease, which is bound to fail, as the router doesn't remember the device anymore and has probably assigned the IP address to another device already. You can find more details about Princeton's diagnosis - as well as a step-by-step guide for reproducing this issue here . Is This Good News for iPad Owners? If this is indeed the source of most iPad connectivity issues, then this is good news for Apple and iPad owners who are currently experiencing these issues, as a straightforward software update can probably remedy this problem. Discuss

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More Details Emerge About the iPad's Connectivity Issues

Xtify's recently launched geo-messaging platform is demonstrated in a new YouTube video created by Motorola, makers of popular Android devices like the Motorola Droid smartphone. The Xtify geo-location platform and its associated SDK (software development kit) was announced at February's Mobile World Congress in Barcelona. With the SDK, developers can integrate geo-targeted messaging into their applications, starting with Google's Android mobile operating system and later arriving to the Blackberry, Symbian, Windows Mobile and iPhone operating systems. Prepare for your mobile apps to get a lot more pushy. Sponsor Xtify: "Geo-Relevant" Messaging for Android With Xtify-enabled applications, messages can be customized and sent to users based on their exact location. For example, local search and discovery applications could send you messages about businesses close by. Shoppers could be sent mobile coupons as they walked through the mall. Restaurant guide applications could ping you with recommendations about top-rated nearby establishments. Travel apps could pop up interesting facts about landmarks, historical sites and other points of interest as you went sightseeing. While obviously marketers are going to glom onto the opportunities a local-aware messaging platform like this offers, Xtify's SDK, as you can see in the examples above, could be used for more engaging mobile messages than just coupons, ads and geo-spam. Why on Android First? It's not surprising that Xtify launched first on Android instead of iPhone. Just prior to the platform's debut, Apple announced that location-aware ads would not be allowed in all of its mobile applications. Likely concerned with the potential for abuse, Apple posted a notice to their developer center reading: "If you build your application with features based on a user's location, make sure these features provide beneficial information. If your app uses location-based information primarily to enable mobile advertisers to deliver targeted ads based on a user's location, your app will be returned to you by the App Store Review Team for modification before it can be posted to the App Store." Android has no such restrictions due to its nature as a more open platform where apps don't have to go through a review process prior to arriving in the app marketplace. That should help Xtify get a head start since developers can simply take the SDK and run with their ideas without fear that their app will be rejected. The Demo Video A few weeks ago at the CTIA Wireless conference , Motorola had the chance to demo the Xtify geo-aware push notification platform for Android and recorded a video of that experience. Motorola Program Manager Randy Ksar has just now posted the demo to the Motodev blog here . As the video shows, notifications can be completely customized and then tracked on the backend, displaying what notification was sent, when, to who and what actions were taken after it was sent. (Skip to minute 4:10 if you just want to see the message demo on the Android phone itself). Xtify can also be integrated with existing content management systems or CRM systems, or it can run independently. On the platform, developers can create campaigns, trigger rules, run scheduled events, create personalized, dynamic messages, set geo-fences (e.g. apps know when you're at "home" versus at "work" and adapt accordingly) and access advanced reporting and analytics for evaluating a message's success and the campaign's ROI. According to Xtify's VP of business development, Joshua Schiffman, the company has several very large media companies that are close to launching, but is not permitted to announce who and when at this time. He does note, however, that Xtify has seen interest from some "online and mobile publishers with tens of millions of users each month and location-relevant content," including those running movie booking services, restaurant review services, city event finders and travel services. They've also fielded inquiries from some big-box retailers, national brands, mid-size companies with a few million users and traditional publishers looking to deliver news updates. Image credit on original post: FoneHome . Discuss

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See Xtify's New Geo-Notifications in Action on Android

Haartez reported today that the Israeli government has banned the iPad. "(T)he Communications Ministry has blocked the import of iPads to Israel, and the customs authority has been directed to confiscate them," wrote Bar Ben Ari and Zohar Blumenkrantz. The ban appears not so much to be the result of a coherent technical decision as a nutcluster of bureaucratic infighting. Sponsor The Communications Ministry engineers apparently refused to pass the device, since its WiFi operates to different standards than Israeli WiFi, which are similar to European standards. However, the instruction to ban the device was made without the approval of Communications Minister Moshe Kahlon. "The head of customs at Ben-Gurion International Airport said yesterday they have confiscated 10 iPads, including those their owners declared," Haaretz reported. The owners are being charged a fee for every day their iPads are held in a government warehouse and the government is refusing to say whether the iPads will be approved or how they will need to be altered to conform with Israeli law. "Paging Captain Yossarian. Paging Captain John Yossarian to the customs authority, please." Discuss

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Israel Vs. iPads