Samsung has showcased a device in San Francisco which is a three-inch long black box which fits under the dashboard and instantly turns your vehicle into a "smart connected car".
The Samsung device contains GPS, motion sensors, bluetooth, and the comms electronics necessary to connect to the internet and give you a wi-fi hotspot inside the car. Why would you want to turn your car into a connected car? Well, if pressing the button on a key fob to lock and unlock your car seems too low-tech for you, once this unit is fitted you can do the same thing using an app on your smart phone.
That isn't the major selling point though. Samsung says the key benefit is that you can upload your journey data to the cloud and get a breakdown of how often you brake harshly or drive above the speed limit, data which would help drivers get lower insurance premiums. That's going to be a hard sell. Insurance companies already offer their own black boxes for just this purpose, and many drivers quite rightly feel uncomfortable about a faceless piece of software evaluating our driving out of context, and worry about the privacy implications of their journey history becoming yet another database in the cloud.
About SKILLZONE News This article comes from the SKILLZONE email newsletter, published monthly since January 2008, and covering topics related to technology and the internet. All articles and artwork in the SKILLZONE newsletter are orignal content.