Strongly Typed

During my senior year in college (2001-02) I took CS292 (since renumbered to CS492), a senior design project class. While our project was not the most exciting (we were evaluating which programming languages were well suited for COM development) another group worked on a program for Motorola that would help them debug their Bluetooth implementation. As we were all required to present on our projects, their presentations were my introduction to the Bluetooth communications protocol and all the potential it held.

That was five years ago and my visions of a connected utopia have been slow to materialize. However, several things have happened recently that persuade me there is still hope for the future, the most convincing of which occurred last night when I was out with my mother and father-in-law. As we were walking back to their Prius my father-in-law got a call on his cell phone. It was his brother, calling to finalize some details about the birthday dinner for their mother next week. When we got in the car and my mother-in-law turned it on it was suddenly filled with the sound of Uncle Charlie's voice. Why? The Prius had detected that one of the phones it was paired with was engaged in a call and seamlessly switched it over to the car's audio system. At that point all three of us were able to participate in the conversation - the audio quality was good and we didn't have to talk louder than normal to be heard.

In a similar vein, a couple weeks ago I ordered Aliph Jawbones for my wife and myself so we could talk to family and friends while we're taking care of stuff around the house. Pairing the Jawbone with the phones (Moto Razr and Moto Krzr) is straightforward and the voice quality is good. I'm also impressed by the fact that adjusting the volume on my phone will also adjust the volume in the Jawbone when it's in use. In fact, when I'm using the headset I don't have to hit any buttons on it at all - it acts just like an extension of the cell phone, which is exactly the way I want it to be. When I use bluetooth to pair two devices I don't want to have to manage both devices, I want to manage one and have the other act like an extension of it.

The next several items are all computer related. First, my wife uses her Moto Krzr as an EVDO modem with her MacBook via Bluetooth and has been doing so for the last half-year. While the speed is less than blistering it provides solid performance and lets her connect anywhere she's got a digital signal. I use Bluetooth to sync my contacts between my phone and my MacBook Pro. And finally, earlier this year I was able to use my phone as a modem (paired with my MacBook Pro via Bluetooth) to send a fax from Mail.app.

Even though it's taken a while (at least here in the U.S.) I feel like we're finally reaching a point where Bluetooth is really useful. I have to commend Apple for doing such a good job supporting Bluetooth in their operating system and chastise Verizon for their habit of crippling and disabling various Bluetooth profiles in order to force customers to use their (costly) services instead.