The Rocket

Issue date: 12/9/05 Section: Life

Media Credit: Brandon Himes

The seasonal barrage of advertising has left me unsatisfied this year. Normally the cacophony of bells and whistles offered by the season's latest and greatest techno-gizmos leaves me with visions of sugar plums dancing in my head. That's not the case this year. Well, at least says a computer geek with a pension for cynicism. What's got me so bitter even about the Christmas season?

Many geeks, myself included, were dreaming of a blue Christmas rather than white this year. This was because throughout the course of the year, a technology called Bluetooth has become a buzz word amongst the latest and greatest of gadgets. The geek community was hoping for this to be the holiday season that marked the Bluetooth revolution.

However, the best this season has to offer is lacking this highly desirable technology.

Bluetooth, named after a historical king of Denmark, is a way to communicate between devices wirelessly over a short distance. If you're familiar with Local Area Networks (LANs) and Wide Area Networks (WANs), Bluetooth is used to create a Personal Area Network (PAN) which allows personal Bluetooth devices to talk to one another. Bluetooth does this via a short wave radio signal. Bluetooth differs from wi-fi, the technology used for wireless internet access in that a wi-fi signal travels much further. Bluetooth signals typically have signals below 33 feet. Wi-fi is also a much stronger signal than Bluetooth, so it can carry much more data.

While these differences make Bluetooth unsuitable for wireless internet access, the decreased cost and small size make Bluetooth well suited for communication between devices. Basically, Bluetooth is a way for gadgets to work together wirelessly other over short distances.

Bluetooth is such a desirable technology because of the immeasurable abilities it bestows on the devices that take advantage of it. Do you find yourself frequently wishing that your Personal Digital Assistant (PDA) could show you if you've gotten any e-mail recently? If you answered yes then you're probably a big time nerd with no social life. But don't worry, Bluetooth can help you. Well, with the e-mail thing anyway; I don't think there's much hope for that social life.

Using Bluetooth your PDA can connect to your phone and tell it to access the internet. A wi-fi hotspot is no longer a prerequisite for downloading data or checking your email on your PDA.You can check your e-mail anytime, anywhere.

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