On a parellel thought to this how about we have an area in riocar where folk can list remotes that work within the write freqencys for Hijack to pickup and translate into the player. If you have a pioneer steering remote all you need is an occasional remote for searchs.

Another way round this a utilitiy written for the player that will site in the background then when given a signal pops up you then enter into it a set of letters via a scroll type interface and then on another signal it fires that into the player search engine.

I don't know if it is possible but if one well it could allow searching from the front panal.

As to the palm idea i think it would be not too hot for in a car due to problems of no feedback.

If you could type into the palm the start of the song it might be able to fire the write codes to the player.