CUTTING THE WIRES
(UPDATE BELOW)
Looks like USB devices will go wireless sooner than later. From Gizmodo:
"Belkin is jumping on the wireless USB bandwagon with this four-port hub. That’s right, it’s packing wireless USB, letting you roam free with any USB device. Using Motorola spinoff Freescale’s Ultra-Wideband (UWB) technology, this hot connection gives you data rates that are a hundred times faster than Bluetooth.
So imagine, you walk into a room with your notebook, plug in the wireless USB dongle and you’re instantly connected to that USB hard drive you have stashed under the desk. No wires, no muss, no fuss."
Belkin's press release on this can be seen here. MSRP is $129 with availability this spring. Pricing of course will come down as standards are ultimately defined and more of the wireless hardware companies jump in over time.
Why is this particularly cool? Well, given my continuing enthusiasm for USB-based computing devices (see yesterday's post and here, here and here), it adds local wireless to that computing.
Not a huge deal, but definitely a "nice-to-have" convenience.
Geeky, I know, but wireless USB is still pretty cool.
UPDATE:
Looks like the wider effort towards an Ultra Wide-Band standard may be faltering. From Mobilemag on 1.22.06:
"If you were hoping that the confusion caused by all the new wideband standards would ease as proponents of the various standards cooperated, you will be disappointed by this news. The IEEE Task Group TG3a was formed to determine and ratify a single ultrasound, because the group has given up and voted to disband themselves.
The group felt that they would never be able to reach a consensus and form a single standard. The problem is that the WiMedia Alliance and the UWB Forum both had significant members on the Task Group (indeed, the Task Group was made up almost exclusively of members of the two groups), and neither group was willing to budge from the loyal support of their particular standard. Freescale is the major force in the UWB Forum. Though they have fewer members than the WiMedia Alliance, they spent a lot of time and money to push their position.
It will be interesting to see how this competition resolves itself. One can only hope that it isn’t too ugly or confusing for us lowly consumers. wideband standard. That job was obviously harder than it may ".
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