Surur's Journal: singularity - some-one who gets bluetooth

Bluetooth dead? I hope not... (Score:5, Insightful)
by singularity (2031) * > on Tuesday November 09, @05:16PM (#10767042)
( http://www.vampy-alumni.org/hank/ | Last Journal: Tuesday October 12, @11:17PM )
I am glad to see Bluetooth development continues. It seems like a technology that was released just a little before its time.

I have written before on my desire to see a true PAN (Personal Area Network), and there does seem to be some work being done on this idea.

Instead of going to all-in-one units (the PDA/phone/camera/game machine Slashdot users like to rant against), why not have individual pieces that work together seamlessly?

Imagine a phone being broken into three pieces - a headset (similar to the Bluetooth ones you are seeing now), the actual phone receiver (for interacting with your provider) that is nothing more than a small matchbook sized piece without any UI, and then a full PDA to contain addresses and phone numbers. Want to call someone? Grab your PDA and hit a phone number. it uses the PAN to tell the phone what to dial, which then uses the PAN to interact with the headset.

Do not want to carry the PDA that day? Fine, leave it at home. It is always synced with the phone device, which can be controlled using your voice (voice dialing).

Taking pictures? Listening to music? Why should my digital camera be limited to the 128-512 meg flash card I put into it? I have my iPod/MP3 player with hard drive on me! The camera could use the PAN to save images to the hard drive on the MP3 player. You could even separate the MP3 player from the hard drive, and use the PAN to stream from hard drive to a set of PAN-enabled headphones (or to an MP3 control device hooked up to the headphones).

So you put pictures you took with your digital camera onto the hard drive. Want to view them? Take out your PDA with its nice screen and view them on that via the PAN.

Want to get online? Pull out your PDA (or laptop) and have it interact seamlessly with your phone device to get online.

Walk up to a computer? Have it PAN-enabled so it detects who you are before you sit down (or not, depending on how security-minded you are).

The advantage of Bluetooth over 802.11[x] is the power constraints. Bluetooth and similar technologies are designed with battery life in mind. I do not want to have to charge every PAN device I have every night to make sure I do not run out of battery just walking around.

The technology to do all of this currently exists. I think this is the next step Bluetooth (or a Bluetooth replacement) needs to take.
- (c) 2004 Hank Zimmerman