Five Things You Should Know About Bluetooth

Big thanks to Shane Mc Allister of mobanode.com for Five Things You Should Know About Bluetooth.

MobaNode specialises in engaging with mobile consumers by delivering personal, targeted, relevant, content and messaging to mobile devices at events – music events, sporting occasions, conferences, expos and more…

Five Things You Should Know About Bluetooth.

1. Stupid Name? Bluetooth started as the code name for the association when it was first formed and the name kinda stuck. The name “Bluetooth” is from the 10th century Danish King Harald Blatand – or Harold Bluetooth in English. King Blatand was instrumental in uniting warring factions in parts of what is now Norway, Sweden, and Denmark – just as Bluetooth technology is designed to allow collaboration between differing industries and technologies such as the computing, mobile phone, and automotive markets.

2. Lots of devices! 2 Billion devices in 10 years – that’s a lot of Bluetooth Chips! The First Bluetooth phone only came out in 2000 – lots of change in just 9 years. Now bluetooth is in phones, cars, keyboards, mice, pc’s, printers, GPS, mp3 players, headphones, headsets, cameras, medical devices and more recently sunglasses, watches, photo frames, clothes and TV’s.

3. Strangest Bluetooth device? There are many, from cushions and banana shaped hands-free kits, to Hug-Shirts for sending hugs over a distance, but by far the oddest has to be the leather phone-trousers or Lederhosen as preferred by thigh-slapping Bavarian dancers. The keys on the side leg of the shorts and the microphone is in the suspender straps allow you to talk – supposedly to keep you hands free whilst working, but more probably used for to two handed drinking whilst on phone at Oktoberfest!

4. What is Bluejacking & Bluesnarfing? Bluejacking is sending unsolicited messages via bluetooth to phones. Usually harmless content like text, images, audio etc, however, if people aren’t expecting anything, most think that their phone is playing up. Most bluejacking is done for pranks in crowded areas – sending text to nearby phones with personal messages on it (e.g. Hello Gorgeous! I like your pink top!) . Bluesnarfing on the other hand is taking control of another phone via bluetooth and is more sinister. All phone data can be downloaded via bluesnarfing – calendar, contact list, email, images, videos and text messages. Because this involves the theft of personal data, it is illegal in most countries. Bluesnarfing and Bluejacking exploited weaknesses in the Bluetooth specifications,particularly between 2000 and 2004, but these weaknesses have been patched now.

5. What’s next for Bluetooth? The future for bluetooth is all about lower energy (and thus battery consumption) and higher speeds. Non-techy’s don’t read any further! The next version of Bluetooth, code named Seattle will have very fast data rates (480Mbit/s) and with very low poser. It will also allow for the initialisation of communication over Bluetooth, but then substituting Bluetooth for Wifi when more speed is required for larger data volumes – thus Bluetooth can become a broadcast channel as opposed to the point to point channel that it is today.

Thanks again Shane. Some good info there. This post really makes me wanna buy some new gadgets, including sunglasses, watches, clothes etc. Well, with the exception of the Lederhosen!

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