Tech upturn finally allows bluetooth to bare its teeth

AFTER years of being confined to the brilliant-but-useless shelf of the technology revolution, Bluetooth appears to at last be coming of age.

Bluetooth is unquestionably an great idea. It represents the inspired vision of an invisible cable that can connect anything to anything, a wireless contraption-to-contraption communication system that promises a future in which that space behind the desk is no longer a snake pit of dusty cables.

But for many technophiles, Bluetooth has been the technology that cried wolf. The problem was not Bluetooth itself, which can wirelessly connect devices up to 100 metres apart, but with its take-up. Bluetooth-enabled pro-ducts took forever to appear, and the earliest ones sometimes spoke incompatible languages, rendering useless the entire purpose of the exercise.

However, chip vendors, solutions providers, and product manufacturers - including Sony, Ericsson, Nokia, Epson, Apple, and a raft of big PC makers - have been very busy over the last 12 months, and the result is the first significant wave of Bluetooth products to hit the marketplace since Bluetooth first appeared more than three years ago.

This time last year, there was barely a handful of bluetooth-enabled products out there. But in last few months, no less than 460 have appeared for sale in the US and Europe.

This season, Bluetooth - which is named after a 10th century Danish monarch who must have hated all those cables in his longhouse - has gone considerably beyond wireless connections between desktop PCs and nearby printers.

"This is a very exciting time for Bluetooth," said David Hall, the chief technical officer with Ascom, a Glasgow-based technology company, which is developing Bluetooth applications for possible use in public transport systems.

"There are so many Bluetooth-enabled products on the market now. We're talking PDAs, laptops, cameras, mobile phones, you name it.

"With Bluetooth, most new mobile phones can now be used as a wireless modems for sending pictures back to your computer from digital cameras, for example, but that's just one use.

"For a long time, while the tech sector was in economic slowdown mode, Bluetooth was simply consigned to the back burner. Now the big players are all jumping in. Microsoft's next windows system is expected to support Bluetooth, so when that happens next year, I think it will really bring about mass-market appeal."

Devices to which Bluetooth modules can be added, if they are not already built in, now include Palm organisers, mobile phones, Mac and Windows laptops and desktops, headsets, printers, digital cameras, and camcorders.

Bluetooth fans can also look forward to a new era of peace and compatibility between Mac and Windows. Bluetooth allows the two systems to exchange files easily without any special software.

And in the corporate world, once unthinkable laptop-to-laptop exchanges in hallways, offices and conference rooms, without regard for operating system or security, can now become a reality.

MARK SMITH The Herald 27/05/02