Featured at Ford's booth this week at Convergence 2000 is the iButton Key, which looks more like a key fob but is, in function, "a handle to the Internet."

That's how Wingcast CEO and President Horel Kodesh referred to the device during a press conference Tuesday at which he elaborated on Ford's philosophy of making the car "a node on the Internet." The iButton, he said, "stores the personal preferences of users, allowing them to connect home, work, and car." What's unique about the iButton is that "people will be able to move their preferences with them" and ensure that when they interact with various online services they need not restate those preferences, Kodesh said. "It will allow them to "seamlessly quickly get to where they need to get."

A chip in the iButton enables it to open doors (home and car), plug into computers (it has a USB port), and activate vehicle information systems.

"We want to make sure that, basically, all the portal information that we offer from whatever angle or point of view is going to be shared irrespective of where people are, what they do, and what kind of device they use to access this information," Kodesh said.

Telephone numbers, addresses, and MP3 song play lists are examples of the type of information the iButton can access. Kodesh emphasized that the preference information is not housed in the device; like the services it can access, the iButton derives its usefulness from the Internet. He also pointed out that the idea behind the iButton may, in final form, take a different credit-card-like shape.

Also on display at the Ford booth is a Lincoln Navigator demo vehicle featuring a rear seat multimedia system that employs the IEEE 1394 digital network interface. It includes two independent video displays, a Sony Playstation II, DVD player, Sony digital video camera, and 1394 customer convenience ports.

The system enables three channels of audio and video transmitted simultaneously over the 100-Mbps network. Video displays may be added or removed without hardware or software modifications.