I think I'll stick to IEEE 802.11.įinally, on a more technical note, lithium polymer batteries may finally be maturing. You would figure the IEEE 802.11 folks could come up with a better namesake than a Judy Blume novel. However, given the spelling, there is going to be an ugly tendency to call this device a wifey. The name being proposed is Wi-Fi, pronounced "Y-Fy." This name is supposed to be a play on hi-fi, used back in the old days for high-fidelity stereos. ![]() The IEEE 802.11 committee is looking for a more user-friendly name. Until the two standards bodies can work things out, IEEE 802.11 devices and Bluetooth devices can interfere with each other. While you would think that there would be room for both standardsâ€"and there should beâ€"they both use the same 2.4GHz frequency. This is an 11Mb wireless LAN standard that has a longer range, but higher power consumption. Ironically, one of the problems with Bluetooth is that it interferes with the other wireless networking standard known by the user-friendly name IEEE 802.11. However, unlike IrDA (which is still mainly a curiosity), Bluetooth has the potential to be something quite useful. I figure Bluetooth is going to be like IrDAâ€"the hardware was there long before the driver interface. Ericsson has a Bluetooth-based product already announced: a wireless headset for their cellular phones.Įven if hardware is shipping, there is still much work to be done creating ways to automatically configure and interface a network of mobile devices in real time and have those devices accessible by applications in Windows®, Palm OS, Mac, and Linux-based machines. The word is that PC card-based Bluetooth products may be released in mid 2000. This year, there are prototypes in the form of development boards, chipsets, and even PC card-based transceivers. Last year, Bluetooth, the wireless personal area network standard, was just a specification. That's significantly more than the current MP3 players out there, but not bad considering the capabilities of the system.Īnother technology that has gone from infancy to adolescence is Bluetooth. It should be available sometime early next year at around $700. Instead, it has been licensed to a Korean manufacturer. The Compaq folks told me that they would not market the system. So, who developed this little gem? Surprisingly, it was a Compaq research team in Palo Alto, California. But these problems could be fixed without much effort. Also, there is no docking cradle for the box you need to plug in the power and USB cables manually, which can be a little annoying. The system has an annoying three to five second delay from the time you press the power button until the screen turns on. My reservations about the box are really just nit picks. ![]() The box is designed with a 10MB RAM buffer that caches the MP3 file so that the hard disk isn't continually running. You would think that adding a hard disk would wipe out the battery pretty fast, but actually it has a fairly long life span. A USB port is used for downloading, which is important considering how much music you can fit on the drive. The machine comes with a 3 � 6 inch LCD display with a file manager to help you organize your music. Instead of 30 to 60 minutes of music, this machine can store 70 hours of tunes. Of course, having a hard disk means the box that would normally be the size of a cigarette pack is now slightly larger than the original Sony Walkman, but there's a huge gain in the amount of music you can store on the box. Instead of using flash memory for file storage, this box had a 4.3GB hard disk. One cool item I came across is a new MP3 player with a twist. Here are some cool new technologies I found in my recent travels, both physical and virtual. Hen I look down the road I see a convergence of technologies that will bring us some pretty exciting products in the not-too-distant future. On the Cusp-70 Hour MP3 Device, Wireless Networking, and Any-shape Batteries
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