It's time for an update on the next software release.

First, it's not going to be called 1.1 after all - it will be release 2.0. There are a number of reasons for this, including there being a lot of new functionality, and avoiding potential confusion with the 1.0x branch.

Although Alpha testers have had the new software for several months, we have not been fully focussed on it for much of that time. This has been due to settling in as a division of a new company, and to a greater extent because of our comittments to the development of other products. You'll hear about those other projects soon, but I do apologise for the delay in car player development.

The good news is that from early August thru Q2 2002 we will be working almost exclusively on the car player software. The first priority is to finalise the spec for 2.0, complete alpha testing, and get a public beta released as soon as possible. In practice we believe that beta will become available at the end of September - I'll refine the date as the alpha phase progresses.

At the same time - and independently of the 2.0 schedule - we are reopening the voice recognition project. You may recall that we recently recruited John Graley, who joined us from the application team at ARM, and his priority is to progress this area of functionality. We'll update on this from time to time.

After 2.0 we have a number of exciting ideas including a revisit of the UI, but I'm going to hold back the teasers for another time

Rob