January 4, 2008 5:01 AM PST

Gracenote covers for Ford

Posted by Wayne Cunningham

Gracenote supplies cover art to Ford's jukebox interface.

(Credit: Ford)

At CES and the 2008 Detroit Auto Show, Ford will show off its next generation navigation system, initially to be made available on the all-new Lincoln MKS. The system's 40GB hard drive will include the Gracenote database, which will automatically tag any CDs ripped to the drive, something Gracenote already does in the Cadillac CTS and Lexus LS 600h. But Gracenote goes an extra mile with Ford, providing cover art for music playing in the system. Users will be treated to a scan of the album cover art while tracks from the album play. Further, the system incorporates Gracenote's Media Voice Operated Control System (MediaVOCS), which uses the existing voice command engine to enhance recognition of artist names. Although it is similar to the existing Sync system's ability to recognize spoken artist names, MediaVOCS offers further refinement, not only recognizing difficult names, but also accepting multiple names for a single artist, such as understanding that "The Stones" means The Rolling Stones or that "Dylan" means Bob Dylan. We haven't found out yet if you can tell it to "Get the Led out" to play Led Zeppelin.