I lived in Minneapolis and St. Paul for almost 4 years without a car.  After a big pay day from a consulting gig, I decided that I was going to buy a car I really wanted so I bought an Audi TT.  When I was younger, I was constantly hacking my car.  I learned a lot, but didn't want to deal with a CD player that only worked when the dome light was on.  I really loved my TT, but with almost 100,000 miles it didn't make sense to bring it out to Reno when we had just purchased a new Scion XA and would only need one car.  Before we moved to Reno, we also purchased a Tom Tom.  Anyone who knows me has a story about how directionally impaired I am.  The Tom Tom helps, but my ideal car would have something like this...

PaidContent is reporting, that Ford has gone with Microsoft for a new autocomputing platform that will "allow for hands-free phone communication and other wireless info transfers inside the car, including the ability to receive e-mail and download music." 

My next dream car will tie to my dream CMS.  Jackie and I have been working on a way to organize our photos and posts about our Travels.  I'd like add latitude and longitude coordinates for images and stories about the specific places we visit in our travels.  My dream car will tell us when we're going to be near places I've liked.

Apple's iLife applications and .Mac work well for individuals, but where is the OurLife server based applications?  Maybe the new iCal compatible calendaring service in 10.5 is the start, but we also need server based (our distributed client based) applications for organizing and sharing our images, music, and videos.  I'd like to get a Mac Mini with a big firewire 800/400/USB2 drive when Apple upgrades those to Core Duo 2's to start organizing content in the condo.   Maybe if I get that  working well, Jackie well let me install one in the car.

UPDATE:  Another Mini Mac/Frontrow driven carputer made it to the Digg front page today.  This one has item list, schematic, and a video of the carputer in action.