Rococo

Back at Mobile World Congress in February, we were treated to a very early look at the pre-release of Jabra's new Halo Bluetooth Headset/Headphones. Even then, with a demo set that didn't do anything, the looked and felt, well, cool.

Well - last week I went out and bought a pair at FNAC in Paris while attending the Broadband Conference (more on that in a separate post). So I've been using these for just over a week now, every day, and it's time to offer some thoughts.

First off the basics: they look and feel good when you pick them up. They come with a plug charger for wall outlet, and a USB charger, and with a little wired connection for when you want to use them as "just regular headphones". They have A2DP (let you listen to streamed stereo music over Bluetooth and control the stream). The lining on the inside is a nice furry felt-style cushion material that in nice to the touch. The overall styling is distinctly "Apple" like in a kind of sleek/minimal way. I reckon they don't look to dorky when on - the guys in the office coughed loudly when I said that :-)

After charging, pairing was a cinch. and went without a hitch to an iPhone, a Laptop and to two other phones I tried. The halo can pair with two devices at once - very handy if (like me) you'd like to use them with your laptop (for music, and for Skype and VoIP calls) and with your phone (for music, for for taking/making calls).

First thing I did was play some music. They have a strong confident sound - full and not tinny or weak as I've had from some other A2Dp capable headsets. Very encouraging. Plus - they felt good on - comfortable and light. The little ears slide in-out on a light ratchet and so you can adjust them to get a good fit. They're also angled slightly so they kind of "clamp" your head gently so they feel snug. All in all - initial fit and sound was a winner.

That button you see on the right hand ear piece does multiple things: it'll pause music you're playing and re-start it. Holding it in will turn them on or off. And I think it does re-dials as well but I haven't tried that as yet.

The volume control is innovative and takes a little getting used to. You touch near the small plus symbol on the right ear piece to turn up the volume and near the minus to do the opposite. Touching quickly also acts to skip tracks (forward or back). I found I could get the hand of the up/down volume ok - but I Haven't managed to get the hang of track skipping as yet.

Amazingly - these are designed to work as a great pair of headphones, as well as be a wireless headset for making and receiving calls. I was sceptical about the latter at first (there's no obvious place for the microphone and I reckoned the audio pickup from my voice would be rubbish). I was wrong!

So the next thing I did was to make some calls. I was *very* impressed. I expected people I called to be saying "can't hear you' and "huh?" - instead - it was clear as day, even in relatively noisy environs at the Broadband conference. I even called Dial2Do and played with the services in there for a while to test whether my voice made it through to the voice recognition safe and sound. it worked extremely well. I have to say I was not expecting that - the Halo is just an excellent headset, as well as being a quality pair of wireless headphones! Amazing.

So what's the catch? Well - they're not cheap - mine cost Euro 99 in FNAC. However, when you consider their multiple-use as headset/headphones and the overall audio-quality, I think they're worth it. These are one of the few headsets I've tried that I actually enjoy using and wearing for extended periods. yesterday I did a 2 hour bike ride and listened to podcasts from the iPhone in my bag all the time, and took a few calls while en route.

The catch I can see is yet another innovation: the hinged arms on the Halo. These have taken me a little while to get used to - as they take a little ooomph or "english" to pull apart when you want to fold up the headset. They sort of snick in to place and apart, and with time, you get better at doing it. But initially, it's a little nerve wracking when you're pulling at these to fold them up. As I say - with time the action and my method has improved. And they didn't fly apart in my hands like I was afraid of. In fact - the build overall feels solid and sturdy.

Folding them up turns them off, and folding them back out turns them on. This behaves very well (unlike some headsets or car kits) - simply open the headset and click both arms in to place, and it instantly reconnects to either your phone or laptop.

Overall reaction: I'm very impressed. Sound is great, fit is comfortable, and the core functions work very well. I'd recommend these to anyone who listens to music regularly and would like to do so wirelessly over Bluetooth from your phone or laptop, or better still, both. The Halo's a winner, and a great example of Bluetooth-done-well!

Gripes? The only niggle is that some people are going to worry about breaking those hinged arms on the Halo. I think they'll get over that with time.

Posted by Sean at 11:16 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Well - it takes a little while to digest CES - the Consumer Electronics Show held in Las Vegas every year at the start of the year. And of course, typically after you get back from any travel you have a backlog of "other work" to do - and so - time passes. So I'm only now getting around to putting some detail down of what I saw at CES.

Rather than cram everything in to one post, I'll do a few small ones. So let's start.

Bluetooth was *everywhere* at CES. And as a sure sign of success for a technology, it's moving firmly from that "zowee - it works!" stage to the more mundane, accepted, everyday ordinary-ness stage. You know, the way we now treat electricity and phone systems? Well it's not there yet - but is surely headed that way. Good news for Bluetooth and a sign of the Bluetooth SIG playing a very sure-footed game as they continue to embrace and extend in the short range wireless space, while continuing to do to competing things with the standard : innovate to add features, while simplifying the end-user experience.

As I say - we're not there yet - especially on the "simplify" side of things, but excellent progress being made. I expect 2009 to be a good year for Bluetooth in general, especially in gaming, automotive, and of course, the stalwarts of phones and headsets.

Speaking of headsets, I'll do a round up of headsets from the show in a separate post, but as a taster, check out these puppies from Plantronics: The new Backbeat 906's - stereo, lightweight, and very very tasty. They come with an adapter for turning your ornery audio device into an A2DP source, and look beautiful. Plantronics have a reputation for sound quality, so if they've pulled this off with this pair - they're on to a winner. Me want :-)

(That's the adapter on the table)

Posted by Sean at 03:49 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

We get asked quite regularly about Bluetooth-based Proximity Marketing Solutions. Rococo doesn't actually make or sell these, but some of our customers do, and so we typically refer people to them.

So - I though t might be useful to share our standard "form response" to enquires about Bluetooth Proximity Marketing Solutions. There's quite a range of them out there these days, and for the laugh and because we're slightly mad, we plan to try out a few of them over the next few months. So if there's one missing from my list - let me know and we'll take a look at it.

Meanwhile - here's some unstructured notes about these and some comments on some of the ones we know about. We also try and keep a list of links for these alive at http://delicious.com/sos100/proximity_marketing%20

Let's recap what these things are:

They are a combination of hardware and software which is designed to let a Marketer or Someone Who Wants To Promote Something send messages over Bluetooth to nearby mobile phones. Doesn't have to be a mobile phone of course, but that's the typical use-case. The idea is you're walking in a mall, and suddenly have a special offer beamed to your mobile phone from one of the stores nearby.

That's the basic idea. Send some little digital "micro-ad" to a phone, ideally where the ad is relevant to something close by (Bluetooth range is around 10 metres or 30 feet).

After the basic, you can fancy-up the solutions: instead of a little ad, the item sent to the user could be a little application that does something, or a video clip, or a photo. where it's an application, that application could also then enable the user to interact with the marketing system, to ask for specific product information, or to fill out a mini-survey and send it back. And so on.

The use cases are typically around the following areas - so far:

- Selling stuff: this includes Malls and Retail environments, to enable shops to send offers and promotions to people near them, but also includes public spaces, bus stops for example - again send messages and offers to people waiting at the bus stop.
- Promoting things: Cinemas and Hotels use them to promote (respectively) Videos and Ringtones for the movies on offer, or local restaurants and services convenient to the hotel
- Driving user interaction: Nike have used it in New York to power a design-your-own-shoe display; you download an application and then use it to design your own show, which is displayed on the big video board. Alternatively, at concerts, it's been used to enable attendees to post messages on video boards at the event.

And so on. There are various other scenarios you can imagine, but they're mostly variations on a theme. The better ones use the inherent fact that they know you are nearby and that you may be temped in to some marketing or purchasing action on the spot.

Anyway - without further ado - here's some of the off-the-shelf solutions we know of:

BlueMedia (Ireland)
- They offer typical retail-oriented solution; well tried and tested in a variety of markets; dedicated proximity marketing boxes attached to a central PC server; excellent reference sites with quality brand names:
- http://www.bluemedia.ie/

BluePodMedia:
- http://www.bluepodmedia.com/
- As used in football stadia in the UK http://www.engadget.com/2008/01/18/bluepod-media-brings-bluetooth-to-football-stadiums/
- They also did some cinema stuff: http://www.abce-ireland.ie/cgi-bin/gen5?runprog=abce/abce&type=page&p=news_111007.html&menuid=news|n1|news_111007|news_111007

Qwikker (used by CBS Outdoor among others)
- http://www.qwikker.com/
- http://www.cbsoutdoor.co.uk/web/Current-news/Newspage-UK/Viacom-Outdoor-launches-Bluetooth-Network-on-London-Underground.htm
- http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/scotland/tayside_and_central/7228905.stm

Proximitymedia
- http://proximitymedia.com/home.htm

HueTouch (basic Bluetooth campaigns...)
- http://www.huetooth.com/bluetooth-proximity-marketing-Huetouch-express.php

BlueMoz (Italy)
- A new one on me: http://www.bluemoz.it/english/index.php

Anyway - you get the idea. A bunch of stuff available, which may do a subset or all of what you want, off the shelf, and will come with manuals, support, etc.

Alternatively, people sometimes look at getting a custom-built solution. Often this is driven by the need to have an application be downloaded to the phone. One of the key issues here is that you'll be forced to deal with the full gamut of software development variable such as how to support all the models of phones that will try to use the application (e.g. a survey)?

An evolving area; we'll do some in-depth reviews of a few of them over the next few months.

Posted by Sean at 02:37 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Well, I have to say, we tried a couple of the JawBone Headsets, and we did not have an experience that matched their killer video for the product:

http://us.jawbone.com/demo.aspx

So I was interested to see this review of the JawBone from GuideWire:

http://guidewiregroup.wordpress.com/2008/10/15/i-cant-hear-you-ive-got-a-jawbone-in-my-ear/

Man - was he not impressed! I'm wondering if anyone else had similar experiences? Interesting also that he switched to a GigaAnt (tried them, like them). He had come from a Plantronics, and they're noted for their high audio quality.

We'll give the JawBone another whirl and report back.

Posted by Sean at 02:03 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

We've been doing some work with Android, which you'll have spotted does not currently have JSR82 support. If anyone is interested in getting a very very very early release of some internal stuff we've done to offer JSR82 support in the Simulator with Android, drop an email to us a sos "at" rococosoft "dot" com.

Posted by Sean at 04:18 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

We've been busy at Rococo with a few new projects, some of which are finally beginning to see the light of day. For those of you asking about a Simulator that works with Android - you'll have to wait another few weeks :-(

However, we've been doing some work on both Windows (XP, Vista) and Windows Mobile. Today we're releasing a 1.0 version of our Impronto DevKit for Windows XP and Vista. As you may know, in the past, we've been grumbling about the missing APIs for L2CAP in the Microsoft Bluetooth Stack. Well, we're still grumbling, but we decided to go ahead and release Impronto, without L2CAP, for WIndows XP and Vista. It passes the JSR82 TCK, apart from the L2CAP elements. All feedback is most welcome! And as usual, the tools are offered free for non-commercial use.

You can request the new version at the Rococo website, here:

http://www.rococosoft.com/registration_impronto.asp

Release notes are here:

http://www.rococosoft.com/DevKitWindowsRelNotes1_0.html

We'll shortly release Impronto for WIndows Mobile also, which *does* have full L2CAP support. This required creating an extension layer for L2CAP in order to provide the full JSR82 functionality and pass the full TCK.

More to follow as we get our new work out the door!

Posted by Sean at 06:23 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Good article in last week's Silicon republic about Bluetooth being used in Proximity marketing, even if I do say so myself (I'm quoted in the article a few times). I particularly liked this tidbit which helps answer the question : "what proportion of phones (in general) have Bluetooth switched on?" :

An estimated 35,000 shoppers pass through the mall’s doors every day and around 20pc have their phone’s Bluetooth setting switched on by default.

Very interesting - as this kind of data can be hard to get. You need somewhere where they know their volume of foot traffic (like a mall) plus some Bluetooth-aware kit running (like a proximity marketing solution from Bluemedia) in order to get this tally. Most useful.

The Bluemedia stuff looks pretty cool and we plan to give it a closer look and report back down the line.

Posted by Sean at 03:50 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

An excellent review and round-up of a set of Bluetooth headsets may be found on Tom's Guide here. Ideal for anyone thinking about a new purchase. Top Job!

Posted by Sean at 02:52 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Bluetooth has been receiving some coverage recently on both the low-power and high-bandwidth elements of the standard being plumbed-in right now.

A few tidbits:

So, Ultra Low Power Bluetooth (the WiBree technology from Nokia being incorporated in to the standard) is now going to be Low-Energy Bluetooth. Good call! Much better name. Good piece of coverage here which has Robin Heydon from CSR dispelling some common myths about Low-Energy Bluetooth. If you've ever met Robin or seen him speak, you would be wise be be sure you stand on very, very solid ground before crossing technical swords with the man. I think he pretty much demolishes the argument about Low Energy Bluetooth not cutting it.

Of course, CSR would be talking up Low Energy Bluetooth: they're one of the first out the gates with demonstrable kit. Healthcare is a primary target, and judging from some of the traffic we've seen at Rococo around JSR82 in Healthcare, we're inclined to agree.

Meanwhile, High Speed Bluetooth, the natty tweak to the standard that will cheekily let it do bulk transfer using 802.11 if it's available, is getting some plaudits from some analysts.

And almost finally, as one of the commenters here says, a lame-o idea to have Police spamming, sorry, sending messages via Bluetooth to people while driving!! Eh, might need a bit of a re-think on that guys! Safety issues anyone (aside from the impracticality of pairing with another driver while passing by. Eh. Nope)

Now these are a much better idea! Saw them at a conference recently and gave them a whirl - very sweet.

Posted by Sean at 12:12 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

We've speculated in the past about some cool ways in which Bluetooth can add a sprinkle of "location love" to already existing applications. For example, we've previously mentioned that when you add Bluetooth to (say) FaceBook client running on a phone, you get a potentially cool mashup: your fb app could now alert you to when other facebook friends are nearby (assuming they're running the same app of course) and all sorts of things could be triggered as a result:

- auto updates of status ("Sean passed Joe in the Office")
- offers to IM / message over Bluetooth on the fly ("Joe's nearby. Nudge him?")
- mini-gaming ("Joe's Androids wish to invade your phone. Fight?")
- and so on

Anyway - another datapoint arrives for this, in the form of MyBlogLog. They've mashed up Bluetooth location with a MyBlogLog client to let you see other MyBlogLog members nearby. As TechCrunch says, there are others doing similar things, also using Bluetooth - Imity, Mobiluck, Aka Aki are cited (some of the others are using GPS). Twinkle on the iPhone is using the in-built location function to show people on twitter who are nearby. All in all, the first wave of potentially engaging location apps are only now beginning to emerge; I'd expect a slew of them over the next twelve to eighteen months. Thereafter, we'll expect to see location as an element being considered in many apps - it'll no longer be a "whoah - cool!" feature.

All of which should be good for FireEagle.

Posted by Sean at 05:01 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Really excellent, in-depth review of current options for using Bluetooth in the car. Also has some excellent coverage of the issues and limitations of audio quality in Bluetooth (versus other standards).

Also covers the 3rdi security camera.

Posted by Sean at 02:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Mentioned before here that one of the great potential areas for Bluetooth to be used is in various forms of Healthcare scenarios, especially in monitoring one or more vital stats about a person, and transmitting that back to a gateway, mobile device, generic collector, etc.

Here's a new one on me: Bluetooth in Prosthetics. Good article on how Bluetooth is used in artificial legs for a US Irag vet from CNN.

Fascinating.

Posted by Sean at 10:28 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

These are very tastily done. I see one in my future. Y'know, for research purposes :-) On a serious note - we'll start to see volume Bluetooth-in-watches towards Christmas '08, imho. More information here: http://www.howardchui.com/2007/06/15/sony-ericsson-fossil-launch-new-bluetooth-watches/#comment-8917

Posted by Sean at 11:47 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Watches

Watches will be big for Bluetooth - trust me - especially once the Ultra Low Power stuff is integrated in to the standard. In the meantime, we're beginning to see products from Fossil and this latest one from Turtle Wireless.

Printers

Polaroid have announced a ZINK (zero ink) based Digital Instant Photo printer that uses Bluetooth, among other things. Ideal for printing small photos from cameras wirelessly.

Robots

- The Spykee will let you move and sneak around taking pictures to be sent to your mobile phone.
- Similar in some ways to the Sony Ericsson Rob-1, mentioned here before

Industrial

See the Schenck Bulk Solid Metering control - evidence of more "traction" for Bluetooth in Industrial or machine-to-machine applications

And finally

Bluetooth madness: XMPP based Jabber Powered Bluetooth Doorbell

Posted by Sean at 10:08 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

The Intempo Digital BTA 01 - a little adapter that you can plug in to your iPod Dock. ocks thinks there's an iPod there, and you can stream music from any suitable phone or other music source over Bluetooth to it. Pretty well priced, IMHO.

Posted by Sean at 09:39 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

A detailed reviewed here of this Plantronics headset. One of the most useful aspects of the review is that he actually pairs it with multiple phones and tries it out, reporting back any issues.

Posted by Sean at 09:33 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I promise to try this one out and report back.

MapMyTracks uses a java Applet to track and record your position using either built-in GPS (if the device has it) or an external GPS unit via Bluetooth. It uses JSR82 in the latter case.

Specifically targeted at Sports scenarios - track your run, cycle, sail, etc. Site looks half-decent - but the devil's in the detail. I'll see if it works with my Sony Ericsson and an external Bluetooth GPS and report back.

Posted by Sean at 03:01 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Belatedly, I must wish Bluetooth and the SIG a very Happy 10th Birthday.

I think that the SIG has been playing a stormer recently, in terms of growing brand awareness for Bluetooth, integrating other cool short range wireless standards, and simplifying life for users. The future for Bluetooth looks very, very bright indeed!

- 1.8 Billion devices shipped to date
- 500 Million Bluetooth enabled phones shipped last year
- All main game consoles now ship with Bluetooth
- New product categories emerging in Industrial, Healthcare, Automotive by the week

"Long May Ye Run"

As part of the celebrates at CES, the SIG announced their winners of the Best of CES a while back at the CES show. My favourite is definitely the Parrot Wireless Speakers (review here) - the Parrot products generally rock, and I never appreciated how tricky it is to do this well, until I attended some of the talks at the Bluetooth Evolution Conference back in late '07.

Posted by Sean at 02:48 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

From the "such an obvious good idea store": The Nokia E51 has a dedicated Bluetooth Key. How handy is that?

Posted by Sean at 02:46 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

As discussed last year - mobile marketing with Bluetooth really seems to work, and the stats in terms on user-engagement, when it's implemented responsibly to the "right" target audience, are off the scale.

- Marketing targeted at men in clothes stores in India. Get them to play games while they shop. As they play and win, they get discounts.
- Football clubs using Bluetooth to market to fans in the UK. Free content and downloads for fans at the games. From BluePod Media.
- And another from the UK, posters that are "active". Particularly interesting as it's a local authority behind this (as opposed to a mega brand or marketing company).

Bluetooth is inherently local. As I have mentioned before here, there are some good angles to use Bluetooth to promote contextually relevant offers and information. By definition, when you connect to a Bluetooth service, to some extent, that service "knows" where you are ("in train station", "in football stadium", "in store") and can impute some things about what you're doing, or what you might be interested in. The benefits for marketing and promotions are obvious. Watch for Google to add some sizzle in this area as they get Android handsets out to market.

Posted by Sean at 01:47 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Good idea. The battery life on most headsets isn't brilliant (definitely not in the "fuhgeddaboutit - battery lasts for ages!" category). So this little puppy from Orange/Iqua could catch on.

Posted by Sean at 10:25 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I mentioned before that one of the issues for Bluetooth Headsets is the "other people's reaction" problem.

This is the social problem whereby, for "observers" (people seeing other people with Bluetooth Headsets, whether or not they're currently using them), the first reaction is often "dick - head", and for the potential users/wearers, they have concerns about being perceived as a DH.

Larry David (of Curb Your Enthusiasm) has a funny take on it here at Gizmodo:

By the way - the discussion that follows that clip on Gizmodo is both interesting and surprising! Worth a read.

Posted by Sean at 10:34 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

CSR released their Q3 results a few days ago. As per last time, they make for interesting reading. Some highlights:

- Attach rates for Bluetooth in handsets heading somewhere between 40-50% in 2007
- CSR market share in headsets is still 80% and expected to remain that way in 2008. Wow.
- Pull-through rate for headsets (as in the percentage of phones that cause a headset to be sold) is 20% and rising
- Design wins for HiFi with Sony and Philips
- Slightly worrying increase in inventory - but not too worrying

All in all - pretty compelling stuff. With their push to ensure they have non-cellular (phone) sources of revenue, plus their move to non-Bluetooth areas (GPS, WiFi), plus their continued leadership within Bluetooth (Ultra Low Power, UWB, etc), they're being very smart about spreading their sources of revenue and seeding new growth segments in the market.

They're also some of the best technical speakers at conferences that you'll ever hear, period :-)

Anyway - stock price is (imho, deservedly) on the up as a result:

Posted by Sean at 12:26 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

More on Ultra Low Power Bluetooth (formerly WiBree). Nick Hunn of EZURiO gave an excellent talk as part of yeaterday's Ultra Low Power panel session in the afternoon. One of the really striking points he made is about the latent opportunity in connecting "stuff" that hasn't traditionally been connected before. This is sometimes drily referred to as "M2M" or Machine-to-Machine applications, but is better described as "the internet of things".

It's sometimes difficult to convey certain idea, but I think his slide showing (for comparison), how few of our "machines" (washing machine, fridge, car, hoover, toilet, scales, industrial, ...) are currently connected to anything, and how numerous they are. I asked him could I re-use his slide here, and he kindly gave me permission:

Posted by Sean at 04:33 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Jens-Uwe Soehner, from Parrot, gave a great talk yesterday as part of the session covering Consumer Electronics. Parrot have really driven the market for Bluetooth in the car. Their car kits were the first ones to look good, be beautifully packaged, and (oh yeah) actually work well! :-) They've been growing rapidly, and have a "fabless" approach to manufacturing (they design the products and contract out the manufacturing), which gives them agility and flexibility in creating new products.

Recently they've been expanding in to other areas, including Photo Frames, and Wireless Speakers. It was the latter area that Jen-Uwe covered in his talk.

In particular, he covered such practical issues as:

- No one wants to pair to individual left and right speakers to set them up - the user perceives it as "a pair" and expects to see the pair appear as one entity when they scan, connect, pair and use. This was a really obvious point, but I have to say, hadn't occurred to me until he said it!

- Some of the issues involved in setting up and calibrating a pair of wireless speakers, especially with regard to issues of latency (basically: how to ensure music arrives and plays through both speakers in sync). He also covered how much more complex this gets in 5.1 surround sound systems, where audio must sync to videa streams.

- Power: could people adjust to the idea of "your speaker needs new batteries" (for home stereo/AV speakers)? Would they be re-chargeable? How can they be designed to minimise power drain.

Great talk. look out for it when the slides are on the site. Meanwhile, I'm looking forward to getting my hands on their cool new speakers.

Posted by Sean at 11:22 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I'm at the Bluetooth Evolution Conference in London, yesterday and today. I'm partly here to educate myself on some aspects of where the Bluetooth standard is headed, and Day One proved very educational. The focus for the day was High Speed Bluetooth - which I've mentioned here before, and is the name given to a new version of the standard that will have much higher data rates.

High-Speed Bluetooth will enable such useful scenarios as downloading a full album to a device in about a second (yes please!), or grabbing a DVD-quality movie from a kiosk in about 30 seconds.

The High Speed Bluetooth plan for dummies is as follows:
- Integrate Ultra-Wide Band support in to the Bluetooth Standard (using the WiMedia Alliance's version of UWB)
- The Bluetooth Standard will remain backward compatible - so everything that works now continues to work
- The UWB elements at the lower levels (PHY and MAC layers) co-exist with the current Bluetooth Baseband and PHY layers, and are intended to be used only when needed (this means they don't drain power when not in use)

Several of the presentations covered how and why UWB is a great match for Bluetooth, providing significantly higher bandwidth (480Mbps at 2-4 meters, 110Mbps at 10 meters), good spatial separation (you can have lots of them around the house without causing interference to other wireless stuff or each other) and a really low power cost for transmission (downloading that movie won't blow your battery).

All in all - very compelling, and as a consumer, I'd have to say: I want it!

One of the interesting debates on the day broke out when there was open speculation about whether Bluetooth could do the same trick (incorporate a higher speed underlying transport), but with 802.11 (Wireless LAN) instead of UWB. Why would they do this? Peter Judge of TechWorld gives his own take on the debate here. He seems to take the view that some of the players consider Wireless LAN an alternative to UWB, and are frustrated with UWB progress.

I have to say, that's not exactly what I heard them say. My overall takeaway was: UWB will happen, and is happening in Asia (of course) already. I got the sense that one or two phone manufacturers may test the waters for higher speeds in Bluetooth using Wireless LAN for very specific use cases, but that this didn't amount to a full-on "let's switch from UWB" plan. For a variety of reasons (security, speed, antenna requirements and design purpose), I think UWB is very much on solid ground for High Speed Bluetooth.

The sooner the better.

Posted by Sean at 09:46 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I'm at the Bluetooth Evolution Conference in London today and tomorrow. I'll drop a few items in as I watch the presentations.

To kick off, here's one I missed, from 2006, that was mentioned in one of this morning's presentations: The Hug Shirt.

Yes, it's a shirt. And Yes, it has Bluetooth. The idea is - you couple it with a Java enabled mobile phone, and use it as follows:

- You and your friend both get hug shirts
- Pair with your phones
- Then one of you, eh, hugs yourself; sensors in the shirt create hug data
- The hug data is sent to the phone, which then sends it to your friend's phone (via SMS, I *think*)
- Your friend's phone then sends the hug data to the shirt, which then gives the hug to your friend (via actuators, also in the shirt)

Apparently it's washable as well. Amazing!

Posted by Sean at 03:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

You can only smile at this. Love it. They've created a driver so that you can use the Wii remote with the Series 60 phones.

Fan-tastic!

Posted by Sean at 06:20 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Available November. Thin Bluetooth speakers that can be used as handsfree phone speaker (as they have a microphone). Niiiice.

Posted by Sean at 05:44 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Bluetooth in Set Top Boxes has long been speculated about, but actually rarely seen in shipping devices.

Interesting then, that Broadcom has added Bluetooth support to their reference platform for consumer set top boxes.

Aside from the usual "remote control" and streaming audio scenarios, I think this is partly about positioning the platform for the higher-bandwidth versions of Bluetooth coming down the pipe. As mentioned here before, when the newer versions of Bluetooth ship in the next 12-18 months with UWB support, it'll be possible to stream video at high quality from (say) set top box to (say) a suitably-equipped flat panel TV.

More wires that can be junked. Excellent! Imaging being able to drag a flat panel screen to the garden, the kitchen, whereever, just plug it in and start watching. Yummy.

Posted by Sean at 05:38 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Kind of non-story seems to have circulated about there being Bluetooth, or not, in the new iPod Touch.

For heaven's sake, let's get A2DP in to the Macs as a priority so I can stream wireless music to my Moto S9s at my desk!!!

Then the Apple munchkins can fix the iPhone-minus-phone later!!! Let's get our priorities right people!

Posted by Sean at 05:20 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

From the "slightly over-the-top" department, comes this BBC Three exposition on how hackers can scam mobile phones over Bluetooth. They connect to "vulnerable" phones (incorrectly positioned in the item as "any phone with Bluetooth turned on") and they get the phone to dial a premium rate number they own. Good scam, and well described for the most part.

My only gripe is the things they do not cover:

- Not all phones with Bluetooth would let you dial out
- Not all phones with Bluetooth would let any external connection access the dial function without either a) asking permission via the UI and / or b) pairing first
- Anyone who finds themselves scammed this way will of course get their funds refunded when they report the Premium Rate scam to the authorities and their mobile company; the scam-boys can of course be caught this way (it's getting harder and harder to create scam premium rate gigs, at least in Ireland and the UK it is)

These are minor gripes though. If their item was accurate, they managed to scam STG 500 in a relatively short amount time. Serious enough.

Posted by Sean at 11:19 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

More sad techno-lust stuff. Toshiba are first out of the blocks to ship a consumer version of a "wireless dock" for some of their laptops. It uses Ultra-Wideband, costs $500 (versus $180 for non-wireless version).

The really sweet bit is the Wireless DVI - you bring your laptop near the dock (within 3 feet) then BING! Your video pops up on your external monitor. Sweet.

I saw a demo last year of Philips HD TVs using a very early version of UWB to play DVDs streamed over UWB from a player to the TV. This is (I think) the first consumer product to do this for real.

Yummy.

Posted by Sean at 02:42 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

We're fans here of Salling, especially their Clicker application.

So we just came across BlueShareWare.com, who do something similar to Salling (Bluetooth Remote control for Mac or PC), plus something different:

- Outlook Dialler (lets you dial someone on your phone directly from within Outlook over Bluetooth)
- LockItNow (uses your mobile as a security token to lock or unlock your PC)
- BeamItNow (auto send photos from mobile to PC)

Nice set of applications. Must ask them if they're using JSR82 (and if not, why not!!! :-)

Posted by Sean at 02:14 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

The SoundBall: A football (that's a "soccer" ball for our North American friends) with built-in motion sensors. Transmits motion data via Bluetooth to a computer that makes appropriate noises based on the received data.

From Aleksei Stevens : http://www.alekstevens.com/

Posted by Sean at 09:28 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

It probably had to happen - Bluetooth moves in to soft furnishings. Check out the Bluetooth Pillow, eh, cushion thingie. Next up, Bluetooth Pot Pourri?

Posted by Sean at 02:57 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I've mentioned CSR here before, in many ways the poster-child for Bluetooth Technology. Well they've just released their Q2 results, which make interesting reading. As ever, it's a "record" quarter yada yada :-) Some selected highlights:

- Revenue for the quarter is up to $215.9m (Q2 2006: $182.4m)
- Operating Profit is up $44.8m (Q2 2006: $42.4m), but operating margin is down to 20.8% (Q2 2006: 23.2%)
- Non handset segment of the business growing nicely - now 21% of total revenues (H1 2006: 13%)

I also found these comments interesting:

- They reckon they can do average revenue growth of 15% - 20% p.a. over the next five years which implies CSR will reach $2 billion revenue by 2012
- They see attach rates (% of handsets having Bluetooth) growing from 35% (2006) to 40-50% (2007) to 70% ("medium term")
- The non handset areas flagged as opportunities are MP3 and MP4 players, digital televisions, gaming consoles, PCs, cars and cameras.
- As for headsets (where they are dominant): they "expect to maintain our headset market share at above 80% in 2007 and achieve a significant leadership position thereafter."
- They have stacks of cash ($185.1M), DSO is down, Inventory looks pretty well managed
- They have a range new products under development outside of "traditional" Bluetooth (GPS, Ultra low power Bluetooth, Ultra Wideband, etc.)

All in all - I think this is a pretty good story. They have loads of cash, are managing their way out of a) handset dependency and b) Bluetooth dependency, have some new gear in the pipeline, and seem to have reasonably well-managed costs. Will have to watch that margin slippage though, but it's likely that as Bluetooth matures, the margins on that side of the business slip further, especially as China becomes a larger mix in the target market (China kills margins, methinks!!).

The market reacted to the short term guidance (which was at the low to medium end of expectations) by taking the stock down 14%. I think this is probably a buying opportunity :-)

[Disclosure: I own no CSR stock]

Posted by Sean at 10:54 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Jawbone have a compelling demo on their website of their noise-cancelling Bluetooth headset. If it really works like they say, it's a winner! Nice design too.

Posted by Sean at 02:46 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I just had some gadget fun in the last week or so. I now have a new phone (SonyEricsson w880i) and a new set of Bluetooth Headphones (Motorokr S9). That's "headphones" not "headset" as they're stereo, support A2DP, and are ideal for listening to music streamed wirelessly over Bluetooth, among other things. Oh joy of joys!

They are both rather excellent (so far) and the Bluetooth stuff has all worked tickety-boo. The SE plays nice with the headphones, and happily streams music to them. The headphones themselves have rather nice audio quality - the controls are a little sensitive and fiddly to get used to, but once you do, they're fine.

The SE of course has JSR82 (ahem, supplied by the world's leading independent vendor of JSR82 technology). The headphones, being small, lightweight and very embedded, do not (AFAIK).

If you're stuck for gadget ideas for the special someone in your life, the Bluetooth SIG have some suggestions, in their Summer Gift Guide!! :-)

Bluetooth Summer Gift Guide 2007

Reviewing this list, it seems to me that SonyEricsson's strength recently has most definitely been on the phone side of things, as opposed to the accessories. Meanwhile Motorola have been having phone woes, but their accessories really shine.

Posted by Sean at 06:16 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Way back when we first started doing JSR82 work (eh, circa 2000), we were constantly asked:

"What applications will use this API?"

These days, I have a bit of a banter I can wheel out to answer this, plus I have something I didn't have then : data. Way back then though, there would be some mumbling, followed by :

"um....games?"

There have been a number of games using the API to good effect for person to person multiplayer Bluetooth games over the last year or two. We ourselves built a version of "Who wants to be a millionaire" as a *demo* for our JSR82 work back in 2001!! It ran on Palms and allowed one person to be the quizmaster, doling out questions wirelessly to the players, who could then answer, "phone a friend" or "ask the audience" all over Bluetooth and all in Java (via JSR82 of course). Ah, the old days :-)

Anyway, here's a register article about a new one called mobslinger.

I might try putting together a list of the best in the next week or two.

Posted by Sean at 04:28 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Some more coverage on new Proximity marketing solutions rolling out in the UK this year. Interesting to see how these work out. Anecdotally, most people I've talked to who've experienced these kinds of things as pure "end users", have actually quite liked them!

Posted by Sean at 09:56 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I snowboard, and I cycle (to work mostly). I got a present from my sister of a pair of O Neill H3 "Fat Controller Gloves". Demo on their site here.

I finally got around to using them this week. Very nice. Pairing is a doddle (press the button on the iPod connector and then press any button on the gloves). They pair and then "just work". Lovely.

You can then control volume and forward, back, pause and play from the gloves. Perfect for the bike, haven't yet had a chance to try them on the snowboard. Now all I need is some Wireless Headphones and I'm sorted! :-)

Posted by Sean at 11:10 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

When I first saw this laser Bluetooth Keyboard, over two years ago, I thought "no way". I genuinely thought it was either a) a mockup or b) a hoax!

Nope. It really does work! I took one for a test drive at the recent 3GSM in Barcelona.

Light, portable, not cheap. But very, very cool. More for my shopping list :-)

Posted by Sean at 07:05 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

OK, I'm definitely in the market for a nice new set of Bluetooth Headphones. The time has come, and so my research is commencing in earnest.

The Plantronics reviewed here look to be some of the nicest (and admittedly priciest) so far. Sweet!

More to follow...

Posted by Sean at 11:31 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

On a minor follow up note to my last post. I should also of course have mentioned the Apple iPhone when I mentioned Bluetooth headphones and music over Bluetooth being "big" in 2007.

Apple really "get" Bluetooth. The consumer experience using it on their Laptops to date is simply one of the best around, and I'd expect them to carry this through to the iPhone. It has Bluetooth 2.0 support, so pretty soon, I expect to s the "cooloscenti" wearing wireless Apple and 3rd party headphones, streaming the music in CD quality to their ears from their new iPhone, and experiencing that seamless handover stuff that Bluetooth does very well when a call comes through (music fades, player pauses, call comes through, do the call, hang up, music restarts and fades up).

Niiiice :-)

Maybe later they'll also put JSR82 support on it, to support their widgety innovation on-phone.

Posted by Sean at 01:37 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Music over Bluetooth, and in particular Bluetooth Headphones are going to be BIG this year, in my humble opinion.

Logitech, Motorola, Creative and others are all now shipping top-notch Bluetooth Stereo Headphones. It's hard to explain until you've tried one of these with say, an iPod or a true music phone, or your laptop. I think you'll find:

a) the audio quality is now very, very good!
b) you're never going back to wired headphones

It's one of those little things - once you'd had the freedom of a wireless headset, and been relieved of that awful feeling whereby you accidentally drag your laptop with you when you get up from your desk, 'cos you forgot you were "plugged in" it it via your headphones, there's just no going back. Some of them even look cool.

http://store.everythingq.com/content/accessories/73-136--769.htm
http://direct.motorola.com/ens/BTStereoHS_Web_Features.asp?country=USA&language=ENS
http://www.logitech.com/index.cfm/products/details/US/EN,CRID=2412,CONTENTID=12492
http://www.creative.com/products/product.asp?category=243&subcategory=248&product=11644

Won't be long before Nike does a wireless version of it's new Hatphone, surely?

Posted by Sean at 04:03 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)