Microsoft’s Automotive Business Unit (I guess they are the MapPoint people?) is teaming up with a gasoline dispenser manufacturer to develop a system where drivers can download tunes while they’re filling up. Straight from the I-don’t-think-we-need-this department, the prototype gas pump would be able to transfer purchased songs over Wi-Fi to your media device (most likely read Zune) or advanced car stereo.
Assuming each pump would only have access to an average Internet connection, it could very well take longer to download 3 or 4 songs than fill up your car. But then again, this is America and the Hummer H2 holds 32 gallons. No word yet on whether the songs are DRM protected or not. I would assume that they are and that they would have to somehow be tied into a proprietary account you have with the service or your gas card.
{ 8 comments… read them below or add one }
“I-don’t-think-we-need-this department”, lol, nice.
Wow, that is straight silly.
“i-dont-think-we-need-this department” reminds me of Slashdot, heh.
This is pretty useless, though.
Wow. I really do not even know what to say. It is incredibly random though.
I was discussing these types of things happening in the future, a few weeks ago with a friend of mine. Seems like its already coming true…
Checkout the blog post: http://www.whalesalad.com/2006/12/18/viral-music/
Typical software company b.s. Instead of making gas pumps more reliable and cheaper to produce, they insist on adding useless features that only drive the cost to the end user (in this case, the poor sap buying gas) up. Techies need to realize that the average person does not care about mp3 players and doesn’t have time to waste fiddling with random gadgets… they just want cheap gas fast.
Definitely a waste of money. Why would you want to download a song by pulling up to a gas pump when you can use your cellular data package to do it anywhere?
it’s a last ditch attempt to keep people buying gas, not switching to hybrids/walking/whatever. :)
I thought electics+gas was a BAD thing… (mythbusters aside)
{ 1 trackback }