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.

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)

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.

Anyway, some years back IBM introduced us to MicroDoc. Based in Munich, they're a specialist in all things embedded, and were IBM's first European Business Partner for everything related to their Embedded Java platform. The MicroDoc team are great people to work with, and have "embedded" in their DNA.

So we're delighted to finally announce, with MicroDoc, the availability of WECE with JSR82 built-in. It's been an annoyance for WECE customers seeking JSR82 to have to get a custom-build of the combined solution, and so ourselves and MicroDoc have created an off-the-shelf version that we think will help customers get up and running faster and more cost-effectively than they could before. We also think it's timely, as we've seen some encouraging increase in demand for applying Bluetooth in WECE-based systems in a variety of industry scenarios.

So from here on out, if you're looking for a "one-stop-shop" for WECE with JSR82, talk to MicroDoc.

http://www.microdoc.com/

Official Press Release follows.

------------------------------------------------------

October 28th 2008, Munich, Germany and Dublin, Ireland

Rococo Software Limited and MicroDoc GmbH have announced the general availability of IBM’s Websphere Everyplace Custom Environment (WECE) Runtime with built-in support for the industry standard Java/Bluetooth APIs (JSR82). MicroDoc, an IBM Global Porting Partner, and Rococo, a leading supplier of Java/Bluetooth technology, have partnered for several years to offer Java/Bluetooth technology to MicroDoc's WECE customers. However, this offering is the first time an "off the shelf" version of WECE has been made available with JSR82 support. This enables companies in the embedded marketplace to take advantage of the JSR82 APIs "out of the box", and create solutions with a lower total cost and lead time to delivery.

"As Java and Bluetooth have become more pervasive in the embedded marketplace, we have seen more demand for WECE with Bluetooth support as standard" said Hans Kamutzki, ceo of MicroDoc. "Often there's a lead-time to create a custom version of the JVM that can meet their needs, especially with Bluetooth" he said, "with this release, they can get up and running much more quickly, and at a lower overall cost for their solution".

Microdoc supports cross industry embedded Java users with customized VMs. MicroDoc products are sold in particular in the automotive sector, in transport and logistics, telecommunications and in the consumer market.

"We've worked with WECE and MicroDoc for many years", said Sean O Sullivan, CTO with Rococo. "There's been a steady increase in interest in the embedded Java platform, especially in the automotive, transport and machine-to-machine markets. We're delighted to have joined forces with MicroDoc to offer a shrinkwrap solution to these markets, and we look forward to continuing to enhance the JSR82 offering with richer APIs to reduce development time and enable the full power of Bluetooth to be harnessed in a variety of scenarios".

Rococo (www.rococosoft.com) was one of the original members of the JSR82 Expert Group, which defined JSR82, and has shipped its JSR82 implementation on over a hundred million mobile phones to date. Rococo also offers development tools to enable rapid the creation of Bluetooth applications in Java.

MicroDoc is a leading ISV, systems integrator and long term IBM partner located in Germany. Founded in 1991, MicroDoc has specialized in object oriented software technologies and provides software and services to a variety of markets. MicroDoc was the first European business partner for IBM’s embedded Java platform and offers customizing, platform ports, distribution and licensing for the IBM embedded product range. MicroDoc supports a variety of Open Source software products (in particular Linux) and is an active member of the Eclipse Foundation.

Contact:

Volker Höfer
vho@microdoc.com
+49-89-551 9690

Adrienne Wolfe
awolfe@rococosoft.com
+353 1 4877617

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.

This is a little different. Dr. Scott Dick is a Faculty Member and Lecturer at the University of Alberta. He specializes in computational intelligence (fuzzy logic, neural networks), machine learning and data mining, with applications in software reliability and livestock disease monitoring. He's been lecturing in Software Engineering since since 2003; he introduced mobile-computing platforms in 2004.

He's using Impronto in his courses. You may be aware that we offer our tools for free to Universities and have done for several years now.

I asked him "what's he doing with Impronto - and what's the context". I thought it might be useful to share that with you. Here's what he wrote:

I am a faculty member in Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Alberta, teaching in the Software Option of the Computer Engineering program. I am using the Impronto development kit in a "capstone" software engineering design course, for senior students in the last semester of their degree programs. The purpose of a capstone design course is to provide students with a hands-on opportunity to design a relatively large product in a group setting, thus allowing them to demonstrate how they can apply all the knowledge and skills they have acquired in the course of their education. The outcome of this course is the completion of a reasonably "large" system -- one that could not possibly have been built by a single student in the time available. Capstone courses are often regarded by employers as a revealing test of the students' ability to work in a team and complete a complex project.

Some years ago, I realized that basing all of the capstone projects on desktop platforms was a disservice to the students. Modern software development was increasingly oriented towards mobile platforms and wireless networks, and indeed most of the really creative and interesting products were now being targeted at mobile devices rather than desk-bound PCs. There is also a trend towards multi-platform computing, where functionality in a system is partitioned between high-powered desktops and less-powerful mobile devices.

I thus began looking for technologies and development platforms that would allow the students to create desktop systems, mobile systems, or heterogeneous systems for their capstone projects. We selected Impronto as part of the mobile-computing infrastructure because it is an easy-to-use JSR82 implementation (the students have already had several courses with programming assignments in Java) that is easy to install and maintain on Linux systems. We use Bluetooth networks because of their limited range (10 meters); switching between base stations is an important part of true wireless networks, but an 802.11 network's range (100 meters) would cover the entire building with a single access point. We have Bluetooth radio antennas for the desktops (USB dongles), and Bluetooth-equipped PDAs (with development kits) as the remainder of the infrastructure for the course. We are also currently acquiring a set of Tablet PCs, which are another point in the spectrum of mobile devices.

Students generally have a great deal of freedom in selecting the projects they will work on; I believe (and experience confirms) that one of the important determinants of success in a capstone project is for the students to choose projects that they feel passionate about. I do not, for instance, require that any of the projects incorporate mobile computing (although there is a set of three laboratory exercises to familiarize the students with the mobile computing infrastructure). In the past four years, just under half of the student groups have elected to tackle mobile-computing projects

------------------------------------

So there you go. We're aware of quite a few other Universities and Research Labs using Impronto in different ways. If you're interested in sharing your work and your experiences, drop us a line.

- Irish Proximity-Marketing company (BlueIsland Media)
- Setanta Screens (who do largse screens for sporting and other events)
- Telecom provider Airspeed
- PTV.ie - interactive TV supplier for bars etc.

The collective have branded themselves IrishBluetooth.com, and Oxegen seems to have been the first major trial of the solution. And a whopping success it's been:

- 24 Bluetooth Access Points covered 80 per cent of the 10 square mile Oxegen site
- 49,000 phones detected (out of 69,183 people at the event)
- 14,000 downloads

And what were people downloading? A Java app with detailed information about running order, site map, and health and safety information for the venue.

The feedback all around is that it's been a huge success, and the group plan to roll it our now to many high-trafficked sites over the next 12-18 months. Next stop: Marlay Park, where there are several gigs coming up, including Mr Bonet, (or ex-Mr Bonet) Lenny Kravitz.

Great stuff - and another good news story for Bluetooth in the proximity-space.

This week, The Guardian ran an article about the CityWare project which is a pretty sizable project out of the University of Bath. The project has several goals, around understanding how people interact and move through their urban environment, but also helping shed light on opportunities and threats associated with the wireless devices that people carry with them. With regard to the latter, it's a little ironic then that the project has come under fire from privacy advocates, with regard to the fact that cityware collects data about people's movements (or more pedantically, about the movements of their Bluetooth-enabled devices) without their knowledge.

In their defense, the Cityware people say that they don't actually collect personal data about people - they're just recording the Bluetooth address of the devices, plus the Bluetooth friendly name (like SOS W350 or Sean's Mobile) if there is one.

It's the latter in particular that I think is causing the problem, although of course, hard-core privacy people would also be concerned about the ability of someone to find out my Bluetooth address and then search the Cityware data (if that were possible) to pick up my "trails" in the system.

On balance, I'm with the Cityware people on this one. Here's why: I reckon I'm "tracked" in some fashion about (wild guess) 200-500 times per day: Credit Card usage, Surveillance cameras *everywhere*, my mobile phone (by the operator), car-tolls (EZPass), Bus passes, ATM usage, and so on, and so on. OK, I know some of these are different, and in theory, they're all in different databases. So argument number one is that Cityware doesn't really add an undue overhead to what's already going on. Plus, some of these are "non optional to me" - I can't ask the store owner to switch off the CCTV while I do my business. Not a great argument I know, but it brings me to my second point: control.

Argument number two is: if you want to not be tracked by Cityware, it's easy. Switch off Bluetooth entirely (safest if you're really concerned). If that's a pain, just ensure your friendly name is set to something innocuous, as opposed to say, your name, your address, and your PIN code :-)

Argument three is: eh, don't live in Bath. Ok just kidding on that one. In fact, the software has been used in other cities also, so even if you don't live in the lovel city of Bath, you may be "at risk".

I have a little bit of sympathy for Simon Davies, of Privacy International who said this:

"For Bath University to assert that there aren't privacy implications demonstrates an astonishing disregard for consumer rights. If the technology is as safe as they claim, then all the technical specifications should be published and people should be informed when they are being tracked."

I agree a little: there are some privacy implications, but in my opinion, they're just not radically different from the environment we're immersed in every day.

Where Simon completely loses my sympathy is when he says this:

"It would not take much adjustment to make this system a ubiquitous surveillance infrastructure over which we have no control."

This is just untrue, and gives the Privacy brigade a bad name. Somewhat hyperbolic to say the least. Dr Evil will have to install Bluetooth radios within 50-100 feet of every living person in every city in order to make this "ubiquitous", and it's a little unfair to say you have no control when you can , you know, just....turn.....Bluetooth......off.

Anyway - I think the project is way cool, and is genuinely interesting research. I also think that if they force people to opt in to the project (as in, alert people every time they're going to collect a bit of info) then the experiment is affected dramatically, and it alters the data. I think this is data worth analysing, not least because it may have clues for we might better manage how and where our identities are exposed by the electronic bag of tricks we carry around.

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!

I was at a Mobile Web 2.0 Summit recently in London. Part of the conference had a "pitch" session for startups. Each company had 10 minutes to pitch their wares to the attendees, who included VCs, Telecom Executives, Press and assorted bloggers and industry people. Dial2Do even pitched (and sang)! But that's another story...

One of the companies that pitched was called aka-aki, from Germany. They are a very interesting startup that mashes up Bluetooth, Social Networking and some other concepts into an innovative service. I asked them if they would consider doing an interview for our blog, and they kindly agreed. This area, which I'll choose to call:

proximity-and-location-based-social-networking

is heating up now, with Imity being acquired by Zyb recently, and with a few other players having emerged in the last 6-12 months. So - without further ado.......

1. Give us a brief background on the company. How did it come about - what was the inspiration? How many people are there now, and where are you based?

aka-aki evolved from the diploma project of 5 of the 8 founders at the Berlin University of the Arts in 2007. The inspiration was to bring about all the functions known from social networking on the internet to the streets. Because real life is still not happening in front of a computer. It happens on trains, in universities, in bars and clubs and airport waiting areas. So clicking people would be very useful here in real life on the streets. So we had this vision and found technologies that everyone carries in their pocket (bluetooth and mobile internet connections) to bring social networking to real life. We created aka-aki, got the best score at university for it and decided to found a company that goes on developing aka-aki and brings it to the market. Now, in summer 2008, aka-aki is a Berlin based startup with 14 people working in the office.

2. Tell us a little bit about yourselves. What's your background? What are you working on in general?

Most of the founders of aka-aki have a marketing background - they studied advertising and strategic communications. With this background they know about the important challenges for any mobile application in a still-developing market. but they also know how to face them and are now working full time in their company to make aka-aki what is called a killerapp. Of course this happens hand in hand with the IT specialist co-founders and software developers! But the fact that the founders do not come exclusively from the IT field, brings a special extremely user-focused way of thinking to the company. A lot of other companies seem to have a great technology first and then hire some marketing people to find something it could be used for. We do it the other way around.

3. Give us the elevator pitch on Aka-aki? Who's it for? What does it (basically) do? We'll go in to more detail on key features later on...

Aka-aki can be used both with a PC via the community website and a Java application on the cellphone. It offers three main features:

1. It lets you click people in reality: When someone interesting is around, the cell phone instantly shows you a photo, common interests, mutual friends and much more.

2. aka-aki automatically writes your personal diary of encounters: it saves all your encounters for future reference on the aka- aki website, so you can even make new contacts later on. It could be the end of the business card and the second chance for missed connections.

3. It lets you carry your friends in your pocket: aka-aki helps you to keep in touch with your friends on the go: text messages can be exchanged, no matter whether from the website to the mobile, from the mobile to the web or whatever. and using microblogging you can show your friends what you are up to right now and see what they are doing.

All in all it is fun on the go. And it is the first mobile community with elk. Yes, elk.

4. How long have you been working on aka-aki?

The diploma project started in fall 2006. Software development started in spring 2007. After having founded the company in summer, we started a closed beta test in late summer 2007 and opened the service to the public on April 3rd 2008.

5. What stage is it at now?

Well, right now it is still in beta. And developing. We research how the users use it, what they think and do with the features we offer them. This is a process that will not stop. As long aka-aki is used by people it will continue to change. Since the public launch we have almost 5000 people signed up and using it as of June 2008. We still consider it to be at a very early stage. And of course, there is much more to come.

6. What's it built or written in? What platforms does it support? What influenced the tools or languages you chose to write the software in?

For now the mobile interface is a Java app for mobile phones. That decision was made very early, because at the moment this is the only platform that is supported by a very large number of phones. Apps for iPhone, Blackberry and WindowsMobile will follow.

We started with Java because it is supported by the largest number of devices. We always knew that the biggest challenge for aka-aki would be to gain a critical mass of users. So we chose to make technical barriers as low as possible. That is also the reason why we chose bluetooth and not GPS.

7. Were there particular technical limitations of Bluetooth, or Java, or JSR82 or other technology that you had to address? If so - give us a little bit of background on that?

No. Even JSR82 seems to be quite widespread today. Bluetooth is limited to about 20 meters, but that is no problem for our approach of telling something about the people that are really THERE. If my GPS tells me something about somebody around the next block and whom I cannot see... well, I probably would not talk to him anyway.

But aka-aki is always open for including other technologies when they become widespread enough and if they enable new interesting features that make the user experience better.

Of course porting is always a problem that needs a lot of time and man power. But we give our best. And we also handle this by having a basic version of the service that can be used without the mobile app. That is what our pending patent is about.

8. You have a patent pending in an area that sounds pretty cool - can you elaborate on that a bit and explain it?

The patent pending technology allows us to log encounters between mobile devices without the need for software being installed on those devices. So we can include information on who met whom when into social community networks. Using this we can make the technical barriers for potential users even lower.

9. What was the biggest problem or roadblock you had to deal with in the project so far? Technology? Money? People? Location?

Well, we had no real road blocks to date. We always faced the problems when they appeared and solved them or adapted strategy.

One of the biggest problems for us are the costs for mobile data services in Germany. But this is changing right now. Though slowly.

And, as everywhere in the European IT industry, finding J2ME developers is a challenge. So, if anyone looks for a job in rocking Berlin... call us!

10. What's next? What do you hope to work on over the next 12 months?

One next big thing will be the launch of the english version to make aka-aki available for international users. Further there will be versions for other platforms.

11. Anything else I should have asked you? Anything else you'd like to say?

Sign-up! www.aka-aki.com

And finally of course, there's the mystery of the elk :-)

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.

- I prefer clip headsets versus the wraparound or paired in-ear types
- I can see who's calling before I decide to answer
- It has a radio - I need this as my phone tends not to have one

No pricing availability as yet.

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.