When Victor Lortz's phone buzzes, it may not be just an e-mail or text message. He gets updates from his car, too. Anytime something hits or shakes his parked Infiniti sedan with significant enough force, an app on his smart phone lets him know, and streams live video from the vehicle.

Lortz is a senior research scientist at chipmaker Intel's research labs in Santa Clara, California. He's working on a project that connects the electronics inside a car to the Internet, so that mobile apps can provide a car owner with updates on his vehicle when the two are apart.

The system developed by Lortz and colleagues at Intel involves installing a custom circuit board with Atom mobile processors (the type used in some notebook computers). That board interfaces with the car's electronics, and connects the car to a cloud server over a mobile network.