It's a phone, it's satnav, it's a car stereo - no, it's Carstars

TALK ABOUT combining technologies from multiple different markets, Carstars must take the biscuit. It rolls elements from the consumer electronics, mobile phone, GPS and car industries all into one.

Plus the device has just won a best of CES award from CNET for best car technology.

The touchscreen Carstars is still at an early prototype stage but essentially offers an intelligent in-car music system combining products from Gracenote, Voxonic and Omnifone.

The headlining-grabbing bit comes with the 'celebrity guide' which employs speech generation technology from Voxonix (not Nuance, for once) to mimic a pop celeb who will suggest what music you might listen to.

Apparently, Voxonix can bring rapper, Tupac, back from the dead if you like. Voxonic also offers speech recognition so you can shout name, artist, and track at the device to get it to play something you want.

Where does it get the music from? Here's the clever bit - the source can be a radio; a CD/DVD, a musicphone or an MP3 player. And this is where Gracenote's technology comes in.

Gracenote recognises the artists and type of music you pump into the system - compares that to a database of music associations - and then suggests music the car driver might want to listen to.

Omnifone's contribution is more subtle. It will offer a subscription to its Musicstation unlimited music download service.

So if Carstars suggest something you ain't got, you can download it. More importantly, you can share those tracks across multiple devices.

Omnifone's Tim Hadly wouldn't be drawn on the precise details but potentially you could pay a monthly Musicstation fee and listen to those tracks in the car; on your mobile phone; on an MP3 player and on a PC back at home.

Omnifone will also be the power behind a music news service which - get this - could tie into the car's Satnav capability to inform you which of your favourite bands are playing nearby.

The fine details of exactly how the Carstars will work have to be ironed out but you can bet that it will provide a mobile internet link via 3G/HSDPA and talk to your phone or MP3 player via Wi-fi or Bluetooth.

Shame, then, that this INQ hack's first run in with Gracenote's music detection service with the Ion USB turntable was that unimpressive. µ