Bluetooth

Bluetooth

Bluetooth is a very secure and elegant, royalty-free, ultra-short range wireless network technology originally developed by Ericsson and later The Bluetooth Consortium founded by Ericsson and other big companies and now by the Bluetooth SIG.

The current version 1.1 operates in the same internationally unlicensed 2,4Ghz frequency band as WiFi or 802.11b, which has prompted a lot of uncertainty to the future of Bluetooth due to the much higher power output of WiFi appliances. Bluetooth uses frequency hopping at 1600 hops/second spread over 79 frequency slots, which makes it highly resistant to interference and Apple Computers has introduced high-end PowerBook portables with integrated Bluetooth and 802.11g to clearly state the case that these technologies can coexist on the same band (802.11g uses the same 2,4GHz band as 802.11b and is very much backward compatible with 802.11b).

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See also:

• Future Bluetooth
• Security alert - an vulnerability in Sony-Ericsson T610 and Nokia 6310i
• Bluetooth news blog

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Bluetooth sites:

• Bluetooth SIG public pages
• Bluetooth SIG member pages

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Bluetooth mailing lists and archives:

• http://groups.yahoo.com/group/blueinfo/ - Interesting stuff for you Blueholics
• http://groups.yahoo.com/group/bluetech/ - Highly technical, archives open only to members

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Bluetooth products and companies:

Content download / Bluetooth Hot-Spot implementations

• http://www.wideray.com/product/hardware.htm
• http://www.i-jack.com/eng/index.html

Stores

• BlueUnPlugged - The Biggest Bluetooth Store, nice for catching upcoming products.

Input devices:

• Baracoda Pencil - The First Bluetooth Barcode Scanner
• Flexis Bluetooth Keyboard - made out of silicon, can be neatly rolled up, weighs aroung 180g. This doesn't seem to be sold anywhere yet.
• Microsoft Wireless Optical Desktop for Bluetooth - The First Bluetooth keyboard

Phones with built-in BT are available from:

• Sony Ericsson:
• Nokia:
• Siemens:

Coming soon from:

• Motorola:

Laptops with built-in BT are available from:

• Apple Computers
• HP - nc4000 portable with (optional) integrated 802.11b (upgradeable to g) AND Bluetooth. Also handhelds with integrated BT+Wlan are available from HP
• Dell The 8600, 9100, and XPS Models