According to the news release, you can now tell the car anything from “Call John Smith” to “Find ice cream,” and it will know just what you mean. Ford engineers worked with voice tech company Nuance Communications in order to introduce all these new commands to the updated technology. And they did so in a way that allows drivers to speak more naturally to their cars, instead of having to memorize specific commands. (That’s a good thing, considering how many there are now!) So for example, you can say things like “warmer,” “increase temperature,” “temperature up,” and SYNC will know which function you’re requesting.

The voice upgrades will arrive in the next generation of SYNC which powers the driver connect technology, MyFord Touch. It launches later this year on the 2011 Ford Edge.

You can see the system in action here.

The new AppLink program, downloadable on the Fiesta for now with other models to follow, allows drivers to access and control their Android and Blackberry phones using voice commands. With AppLink, drivers can control apps like Pandora internet radio, Stitcher “smart radio” and Orangatame’s OpenBeak app for Twitter, which are the first to become AppLink-enabled. (Yep, people will be tweeting while driving!)

Most other SYNC-equipped cars will get access to the technology sometime next year at which time other smartphones will also be supported, but there are no details yet on which vehicles or phones those will be.

So how do you add your Dropbox to the Start Menu? The How-To-Geek figured out a hack for this that using the Libraries feature and renaming the “Recorded TV” library to a different name. Obviously, if you use that library for your saved TV shows, this solution is not ideal. But if you don’t, then you can definitely take advantage of this hack. The details and steps, screenshots included, are available here on the howtogeek.com blog. 

Recently, though, Redmond Pie introduced us to a different way of getting our calendars to sync - this time by using a third-party service called fbCal. Now fbCal isn’t anything new – we also looked at this ages ago as a way to port Facebook calendars into Outlook. However, using it with Windows Live Calendar is new.

Some people may find working with fbCal easier than having to navigate through Facebook, but ultimately it’s going to be a personal preference. I think the most obvious reason to go this route instead of the manual method is because fbCal works with a lot of different products, including Outlook, Google, iCal, and more – so it’s a great way to easily get your Facebook calendars into all the services you use.

If you want to try the fbCal method, the steps & screenshots can be found here.

After installing Windows Live Photo Gallery (a part of the new Windows Live Essentials suite) on two computers, you can then set them up to sync with each other. To do so, click Setup gallery sync…from the File Menu in Photo Gallery and follow the instructions provided. (You’ll need to be signed in with your Windows Live ID first).

In addition to syncing the photos themselves, the software also syncs your history of edits.

Sync currently will work with up to 20 synchronized folders containing up to 20,000 files each.

The new services will come without a monthly subscription fee for the first three years. (Years! Not months – years!) When you customize Sync, those customizations will stay with your phone and are able to be used in other Sync-equipped vehicles, so you never have to start from scratch when buying a new car.

To take advantage of the service, SYNC users simply pair their Bluetooth-enabled phone with SYNC and activate the service via www.syncmyride.com.

You can get the new version of SYNC on 2010 vehicles from Ford, Lincoln and Mercury.

With AOL Sync, you can synchronize your AOL Address Book and AOL Calendar data with your desktop apps, PDA, and mobile devices, including both Blackberry and Windows Mobile. This service is made possible thanks to AOL’s new partnership with Plaxo, a company that provides address book synchronization tools. At the moment, only the address book sync portion of AOL Sync is live, but the Calendar support is being worked on for the future.

You can try the new service here. (via jkontherun.com)

So what’s new with the latest version of Allway Sync? FTP and Amazon S3 support. Now, Allway doesn’t just help you sync across machines – you can sync to the cloud too. 100GB for about $20 a month. But you don’t have to use that particular option – the program is available as a portable app that can travel with you on a USB flash drive or a U3-enabled flash drive.

On each PC, I picked a few folders (Documents, Downloads, and Pictures) and right-clicked on them, choosing "Add Folder to Your Live Mesh." It was that easy, I swear.

What's really cool about Mesh is that I could finally sync up my documents, photos, etc. from all my PCs to essentially merge together and become one, big, "meshed" folder. It didn't get all confused that I was syncing up a folder called Documents to another folder called Documents. It just knew what I wanted to do. After syncing, I was surprised at how much duplicate content I had, probably from having to move files to and from PCs the old fashioned way - email, USB drives, via the network, etc.

When conflicts arose, I had the option of viewing both files and choosing which one to keep. But what was really great is that the conflicts weren't displayed as annoying pop-up messages while in the middle of syncing, thank goodness - they were just items in a list that I could review at my leisure.

I'd like the option to keep both copies of some files, but, at the moment, you have to pick one to keep or just leave the conflict be. The only problem with this is that Windows Live Messenger chat logs for the same contact had the same name on different machines and I wanted to keep both logs. Other than that, I could rename documents and photos to resolve the duplicately named, but different, files, but I'm still hoping for a "keep both files" button in a future release.

When viewing a Mesh-enabled folder, a pop-up window appears next to the Windows Explorer window, showing the history of your interactions with the folder (Sarah added this, Sarah deleted that), conflicts, members, and synchronized devices.

Although Mesh is going to do much more than just this syncing in the future, for now, it's providing a great way to keep my files in sync as I move from computer to computer.

I also discovered that I could invite some friends to Mesh by sharing a folder with them, something that could be done from either a PC or my Live Mesh online desktop. If you have Live Mesh and haven't shared your invites, please do so! I know some people who are *dying* for them.

If you want to learn more about Mesh and its future, I found the article and interview by Steve Gillmor, speaking with Microsoft Mesh lead David Treadwell (who should really start blogging again) absolutely fascinating. Be warned though, this isn't the kind of article you should skim quickly. Save it for when you have some time to grab a cup of coffee, sit down, read, re-read, and really take it all in. It's worth it, I promise. If that sounds like something you would like to do in that alternative universe where you can actually sit down and read things, well then, just go get the podcast and listen to it on your commute instead.

The Sync Framework works on Windows Vista, Windows XP, Windows Server 2003 and Windows 2000 Service Pack 3.

For an example of what Sync can do, check out SyncToy 2.0 Beta.  SyncToy is a free tool which helps you copy, move, rename, and delete files between folders and computers quickly.