|
This has nothing to do with natural medicine, but it will radically change
your life in the next few years. This is one of the most exciting
new technologies that will hit the market in the next few years
and I suspect most of you are not aware of it.
Nothing says "the future" quite like wireless technology.
Writer Chester Gould knew this as far back as 1931, when he portrayed
Dick Tracy shouting into his two-way "wrist radio." Gene
Roddenberry put a slick little communicator in the hands of Captain
Kirk, and it evolved into an elegant "com badge" in later
episodes of Star Trek. And now that we've officially made it into
the future, we are just starting to use these kinds of devices and
many more. But something even more extraordinary is about to happen.
After years of competing RF (radio frequency) standards, a consortium
of nine of the world's electronics leaders has agreed to one transceiver
protocol known as Bluetooth. Why a powerful, world-changing technology
is named after a 10th century Danish Christian king (Harold Bluetooth)
who ruled in the time of the Viking attacks on Western Europe, is
probably a moot point. We, for one, welcome a name with some wacky,
obscure history behind it (I mean, iridium didn't get very far,
did it?).
Wackiness notwithstanding, Bluetooth, after much trumpet blowing,
is poised to bring us into the future, and soon. It's now widely
acknowledged that sometime later this year Bluetooth-enabled devices,
in the form of mobile telephones, PDAs, and some notebook computers,
will be with us. From there, over the course of the next few years,
Bluetooth chips will gradually begin to find their way into most
of the electronic devices that will be manufactured on the planet.
Bluetooth technology is the result of joint achievements of nine
major companies within the telecommunication and computer industries:
3 Com, Ericsson, Intel, IBM, Lucent, Microsoft, Motorola, Nokia,
and Toshiba. More than 1700 other manufacturers, from all parts
of the world and various fields of business, have now also joined
the Bluetooth family, making Bluetooth the fastest-growing industry
standard to date. By 2002, Bluetooth technology will be built into
hundreds of millions of electronics devices. That is the level of
pervasiveness of this technology.
You may want to take a minute to call your broker.... OK, we're
back.
What is Bluetooth, and how will it affect our lives in meaningful
ways?
Here's one example: Look under your desk. If it's anything like
the ones we're working at, there are about a dozen cables going
in all different directions, hosting dust bunnies, providing less-than-perfect,
fragile connections, and by their very nature, limiting the number
of devices each device can work with to the one it's directly connected
to. These cables and wires come with other inherent limitations,
like the need to set device numbers on SCSI chains, limited bandwidth
according to cable length and number, and crosstalk.
Now, imagine being able to configure your office, or the one you
share with your coworkers, without the limitations of wires and
cables. You have an employee at your office in San Francisco buy
a new scanner, take it out of the box, plug in the power cord, and
scan something. You work with it in Photoshop. Using the built-in
microphone in your computer, you make changes live while chatting
with your partner, and the two of you work on the document in tandem,
tossing the same file back and forth instantly. Finally you agree
on the design and e-mail it to your client. But no wires connect
any of these devices. In fact, your partner is working on his Apple
Powerbook at a tiki bar in the Bahamas, the client is in Paris,
and you're working on your Dell laptop, on the back deck of your
unwired ski shack in Tahoe.
This is not to say that Bluetooth will enable us all to live in
this kind of perfect world. But, if you could, why wouldn't you?
Bluetooth is a powerful wireless standard that originated as an
office-based LAN (local area network) solution but soon showed promise
of being much more. With a Bluetooth-enabled mobile phone in your
briefcase or pocket, a nearby Bluetooth-enabled device such as a
laptop computer can be wirelessly connected to the Internet... anywhere.
Bluetooth is a radio frequency system that is fast and robust, providing
solid connections and remarkable stability, even in extremely noisy
radio environments. In fact, there is even discussion of Bluetooth
as a means of delivering media, like music and even broadcast signals.
This may have huge ramifications in the entertainment industry,
which makes today's brouhaha over Internet-delivered movies appear
trivial.
The Phone Is, More Than Ever, Your Friend
At least for the near future, the locus for all out-of-office Bluetooth
activity will be your portable phone. The first evidence will be
a person you see walking down the street, apparently talking to
himself (let's call him Bob), until he turns and you see a tiny
headset with a short microphone stalk, an elegant construction like
the one coming soon from Ericsson, hung on a single ear. This small
unit will actually communicate wirelessly with the more familiar-looking
phone in his pocket or briefcase, which will do its normal job,
but with the actual voice transmission being relayed wirelessly
from the user's headset to the phone by the system's Bluetooth chip-enabled
circuitry.
The phone will also provide Bob's link to the Internet as he boards
his commuter train for the ride home. He can continue working on
the presentation he's been putting together on his laptop and simultaneously
make his plans for later that night, e-mailing his dinner reservation
to his girlfriend's favorite restaurant, Le Geeq. Later that night,
Bob is on his way to pick her up, and he realizes he's running late.
So he calls her with his hands-free phone kit in his car, also linked
by Bluetooth to his portable, now in his glove box. Dialing and
call answering are, naturally, voice controlled. Bob is a totally
wireless guy.
The advantage of having all these devices linked to a phone becomes
apparent when traveling to different countries, where phone standards
can differ widely. Because Bluetooth will be platform independent,
all Bob needs to do is pick up a Bluetooth mobile phone in the country
of his choice, and all his devices can be quickly tuned to work
with it. Bluetooth uses the global 2.45GHz free band and will therefore
be a universally recognized standard. This means Bluetooth products
will be usable and exportable to anywhere in the world.
With Bluetooth, your portable phone becomes much more than a device
for voice communication. It's the link for any kind of data transmission.
In short, any Bluetooth-enabled device will be able to communicate
with any other over short distances and over long distances, using
the phone as your link to the wireless world.
Just Like The Jetsons
Bluetooth will let a lot of things that used to be a hassle happen
automatically. One of the most inconvenient tasks facing any workforce
is keeping up with changes in plans. With Bluetooth, automatic backup
synchronization will keep you up to date, all the time. For instance,
as soon as you enter your office, the address list and calendar
in your notebook will automatically be updated to agree with the
one in your desktop, or vice versa. Or imagine your boss changing
your schedule while you are on the road. His workstation sends the
changes to your cellular phone, which automatically connects to
your organizer and updates the schedule. Hmmm, maybe this isn't
such a good thing after all....
But Bluetooth really shines as a road warrior's weapon of choice.
Connect all participants in a global conference for instant data
exchange, from the bed in your hotel. In meetings and conferences,
you can share information instantly with all (or some) participants,
without any wired connections. You can also cordlessly run and control,
for instance, a projector. Cordlessly connect your digital camera
to your mobile phone and transmit images wirelessly from anywhere
in the world. Add comments with your mobile phone or a portable
PC and send them instantly to a waiting television station, and
you have a whole new way to create live TV... a real edge if you're
a CNN reporter.
And keep in mind that back at home, Bluetooth can be integrated
into almost any consumer product that switches on and off. Household
appliances such as washing machines, lights, vacuum cleaners, TVs
and stereos, garage doors, central heating, and any number of devices
in cars or hotel rooms can be Bluetooth enabled. In this Jetsons-styled
future, the convergence of voice activation technology and Bluetooth
will certainly go one better than "The Clapper
Talking Tech
Bluetooth RF signals are solid to about 30 feet, but by increasing
the transmit power, you can communicate with devices up to 300 feet
away. Unlike infrared wireless technology (IrDA), a line-of-sight
transfer of data is not required. Bluetooth is able to go through
walls of all kinds (as long as they aren't metal - lots of metal
in a wall, like traditional plumbing or heavy steel reinforcement,
can potentially present problems), making it a viable alternative
to Ethernet and other LANs. Bluetooth's 2.45GHz frequency is the
one chosen for the Industrial Scientific Medical (ISM) band, so
you know this is going to be a pretty reliable connection. However,
it will still be susceptible to interference from similarly tuned
devices.
General Bluetooth specifications:
- Operates in the 2.4GHz Industrial Scientific Medical (ISM)
band.
- Uses Frequency Hop (FH) spread spectrum, which divides the
frequency band into a number of hop channels: During a connection,
radio transceivers hop from one channel to another in a pseudorandom
fashion.
- Supports up to eight devices in a piconet (two or more Bluetooth
units sharing a channel).
- Built-in security.
- Non-line-of-sight transmission through walls and briefcases.
- Omni-directional.
- Supports both isochronous and asynchronous services; easy integration
of TCP/IP for networking.
- Regulated by governments worldwide.
The 2.4GHz band is an unlicensed band. It shares airspace with
microwave ovens, various commercial data-transmission systems, and
the IEEE802.11 wireless LAN standard. This is the same standard
that Apple's new AirPort wireless system is based on. By installing
an AirPort base station and individual AirPort cards in a network's
PowerBooks or desktop computers, Apple users can enjoy the ability
to surf the Internet from anywhere in their home or office and set
up ad hoc networks, with fast data transfer rates, starting at only
about three hundred dollars total for a card and AirPort base, with
additional cards/users added for about a hundred dollars each. The
system has proved elegant and reliable, and users report few problems.
With up to ten users possible on a network, this has proved an ideal
small-office wireless setup, without the pain of running cables
everywhere.
ZDNET
Reference
Return to Table of Contents Issue #151
| 