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I like technology that bounds forward and screams: "I want to make everything wireless!" This is the Viking beast of Bluetooth technology. Along with wireless phones and PDAs, Bluetooth technology can make your PC wireless, your printer, your keyboard, and the mouse, too. Cameras? Video? Bluetooth will unwire that also. And we’re not talking the frustratingly slow, paint-peeling speed of downloading Internet data via wireless phones now. The first generation can send and receive 1 mgbs of data, and the second generation promises to double that. Bluetooth will be able to send and receive robust wireless data from car bases, houses, offices, and even ATM machines.
Bluetooth is actually a double wireless product: a protocol and hardware. "Think of it as cables without cables," says Keith Nowak, media relations manager at Nokia. "It is a personal area network. You can have your wireless phone talk to your PC’s printer, then get up and take your phone in the car where another network is set up, and then have your phone shake hands with the office Bluetooth system and download any up-dates for your calendar." This network is limited to 30 feet that the 25mhz radio signal can travel from the Bluetooth chip to its base.
Bluetooth is more than a personal wireless network. Wireless devices that have the Bluetooth chip can also communicate with each other. It is similar to Apple’s airport system, except the Bluetooth chip is much smaller and the Bluetooth protocol allows communication between a PDA, a cellular phone, or any other Bluetooth device. Bluetooth Protocol version 1.0 was introduced in the second quarter of 1999, and the 2.0 version will be produced between 2000 and 20001.
Perhaps the sneakiest use of the Bluetooth network is if you come into contact with another Bluetooth phone, the two can communicate like walky-talkies and avoid charges by phone companies. Of course, if you are within 30 feet of the person you are talking to you can put down your phone and have a normal conversation. But, with the amount of cell phones conversations at Nobu, someone in the room must be calling someone else there.
They’re Giving It Away Free
"It is one of the first examples of open hardware technology for a group of companies manufacturing the same device, " explains Linda Billhymer, director of marketing at Motorola’s Personnel Area Network’s Division. The second part of the Bluetooth wireless technology is a small chip, one centimeter squared, that has a radio transmitter.
On Feb. 25, Cambridge Silicon Radios was the first to demonstrate the wireless transfer of text between BlueCore01 ICs embedded in two P. notebooks. The BlueCore 01 single chip Bluetooth IC uses standard CMOS processes and combines the 2.4-GHz radio, the microcontroller, the baseband, and the RAM needed in the Bluetooth radio. With an external flash ROM containing the CSR Bluetooth software stack, BlueCore 01 provides a system for Bluetooth data and voice communications. All this for a cost of $5.
As the technology of the hardware is open source, Motorola, as well as other manufacturers are planning to produce their own chips. Intel is looking to integrate their Pentium III processor with the Bluetooth chip.
It is one of the charms of the wireless revolution that technology based upon the invisible has been applied even to industries which are by definition the most solid and, no pun intended, concrete.
The Old Gang
"We are very committed to an open standard, and open to a much wider audience," says Billhymer of Motorola. "Lightning strikes a third time for the Ericsson and Nokia developmental team, which joined Motorola to produce WAP and SyncML and has cooperated with Intel, IBM, and Toshiba to produce the Bluetooth technology.
Put Your Product Where Your Mouth Is
With new technology advancements, the promise of products always seems to be a year away. However, Cambridge Silicon Radios has the first Bluetooth product ready for market. Casira is a power station that can send and monitor individual commands, and exchange data sequences between Bluetooth systems. It looks remarkably similar to a silvery portable disk player, but comes with a $8,000 price tag. Using the Bluetooth technology, Ericsson is producing a hands-free headset for mobile phones that hooks around the user’s ear with a microphone curling down to the mouth. It’s not really different from cradling a cell phone between your shoulder and cheek. The cool silvery StarTrek design of the headset is the real draw for gadget freaks. Motorola anticipates retailing its first Bluetooth phone by the end of this year.
The future of Bluetooth is more visionary. "A Bluetooth world would be quiet dramatic," says Doug Heintzman, manager of the Standards Initiative at IBM. "You would have Bluetooth technology in airports, public places, banks, offices. If you came into contact with an ATM machine which used Bluetooth technology, you could not only wirelessly do your banking, and then the machine would send data with listings of nearby movies and a local data base for Chinese restaurants."
C.J. Kennedy is already getting her Bluetooth costume ready for Halloween.
