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What is Bluetooth?

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Is the name Bluetooth new to you? If so, read on. (If not, this article may be too basic for your tastes…) If you've seen people walking around with an object stuck in their ear that's vaguely reminiscent of the earpiece that Chief Communications Officer Uhura wore in the original Star Trek TV series, the odds are that what you’re seeing is a Bluetooth headset.

What is Bluetooth?
In an increasingly connected world, many of us find ourselves ankle deep in piles of cables. If you're trying to connect your keyboard, mouse, printer, camera, cell phone, PDA, or other peripheral to your PC, odds are you're using a cable. Likewise, if you're trying to keep your hands on the wheel of your car, you may be struggling with a cable between your phone and ear.

To address these annoyances (not to mention accident risks) Bluetooth is one of several wireless technologies aimed at reducing the number of cables you need to be connected. Bluetooth technology is used to create a small wireless network (called a piconet) between two pieces of hardware through short-range radio signals.

O.K., I simply can't go on to explain Bluetooth without a side note about the unusual name. The super-short story is this: In the mid-1900's, a Danish king, Harald Bluetooth, united Denmark and part of Norway into a single kingdom. (You might wonder if there was a dental-related incident involved in the unification, but we'll likely never know.) The Bluetooth technology name is said to be a nod toward Harald's unification success.

What we do know is that roughly a thousand years after Harald's exploits, Swedish telecommunications company Ericsson conceived the idea for the technology which was then developed by Nokia, Ericsson, IBM, Intel, and Toshiba. Since 1998, Bluetooth has been working its way into the market as a way to connect devices such as keyboards with PCs and headsets with cell phones.

Why another connection type?
Today you may already use several different types of wireless communications. For example some computer products use infrared light waves (like those used between your TV and its remote) to connect things such as printers and cameras to your PC. Because infrared uses light, it depends on a line-of-sight connection, so it doesn't apply to situations where you might have to send a signal around corners or through walls, which you'll often want to do when connecting computers and other devices. For example, when I'm talking on my cell phone, I can leave it on a counter and walk around the house with the headset on and not worry about losing the signal.

Another wireless technology you may hear of or use is called WiFi (for Wireless Fidelity). (By the way, the official name, IEEE 802.11b is a good example of why the Bluetooth name may not be so weird after all.) WiFi also uses radio frequency communications, but is more commonly used for high-speed connections on the Internet and local area networks. If you see someone working on a laptop in a coffee shop, it's likely they're connected to the Internet using WiFi.

Bluetooth can also be used for connecting to the Internet, but today, the more common applications are connections between cell phones and headsets and between PCs and their related mice and keyboards. What's cool about Bluetooth is that after you set them up, two devices using the technology will create and sustain a signal that's unlikely to be bothered by other nearby radio transmissions. People using Bluetooth headsets are fairly easy to spot. What you're less likely to notice are some of the other cool products that use Bluetooth, such as mice and keyboards. Microsoft offers several Bluetooth-enabled products. You can learn more about the technology, the products, and how to get started using Bluetooth here.

Additional sources used for this story:

WiFi Planet
Bluetooth, wireless groups sync up
Bluetooth
Bluetooth Wireless for the Holidays
How Bluetooth Works
What the Heck Is Bluetooth and Why Should I Care?

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