Bluetooth is not a dental condition, nor is newly discovered dinosaur remains. Though dentists and paleontologists will most certainly use it soon along with the rest of us.

Bluetooth is the name of a new wireless technology that promises to make wires between devices obsolete. It is named after Harald Bluetooth, a Viking king that brought feuding Danish states together to form Denmark. The founders of the technology include Nokia, Ericsson, IBM, Intel and Toshiba who pioneer the technology in1998. Since then more than 2000 companies have joined the Bluetooth Special Interest Group.

One of the most exciting uses of this technology will be the ability to use a cellular phone to connect to the Internet and share that connection with any device within range. That could be a notebook computer or a hand-held computer such as a Palm or Pocket PC.

Wires on a desktop computer can also be replaced with Bluetooth. Monitors, printers and computers with the radio transmitter chips will be able to talk to each other wirelessly.

At a nuts and bolts level, Bluetooth-enabled devices within a 30-foot range of each other will be able to swap data through the air, as if they were connected via cables. In some cases if a device can put more power behind the transmission that range could be increased to 300 feet.

The technology swaps data between devices at about 720 megabytes per second, which is about 13 times faster the top speed of a 56K analog modem, the device that most home users connect to the Internet with over a phone line.

In the handheld world, you'll be able to walk into a room and automatically synchronize your mobile data with your PC or with another hand-held device in the vicinity. This can be set to work automatically or only on request by authorized devices. Imagine synchronizing schedules with your kids and spouse every morning over cornflakes.

Those are pretty utilitarian uses of the technology that everyone will come to appreciate, but the magic of Bluetooth will appear when technology companies get imaginative.

Eric Janson, VP sales, marketing and applications engineering, at Cambridge Silicon Radio, an Austin-based maker of Bluetooth chips, is expecting some innovative uses of the technology.

"There's some wacky and wild applications out there," he said.

Toy manufacturers are particularly excited. While there's a lot of secrecy Janson has been privy to a few curious projects. An in-line skating manufacturer wants to transmit data from skates to a watch to show a skater how fast they are going.

A fast food chain representative Janson spoke to said the company collects data from every restaurant they own, "like how much French-frying they are doing." Bluetooth will make that data collection process by simply strolling through a kitchen with a hand-held data collection device. "Presumably they'll sell the information to cardiologists in the area," he said, chuckling.

Companies in the warehousing business are also talking about putting Bluetooth technology in their pallets, which could be set to broadcast their position every two minutes.

Bluetooth won't be without its problems.

The technology works in the industrial scientific and medical (ISM) band of the radio spectrum with is in the 2.4 GHz range. Some extended-range wireless home phones have been using this part of the radio spectrum.

If that spectrum gets noisy, because there's lots of Bluetooth devices busily chatting among themselves, then data speeds will drop.

A microwave can also cause trouble.

"At lunch time you're going to see data rates drop when some reheats a burrito nearby," said Brent Bettencourt chief technology officer of AirPrime, a Santa Clara, California wireless chip maker.

Microwaves operate in the ISM band. So do some garage door openers.

Bettencourt said the troubles will be predominant during to busy times of they day when everyone uses their Bluetooth devices all at once. When the Bluetooth spectrum gets busy, devices will reduce their communication speeds to accommodate the disruption. However, Janson doesn't think this will be a problem.

This kind of interference should be minimized by the frequency hopping nature of Bluetooth. The data from a Bluetooth device is chopped up into small data packages that hop from frequency to frequency within the ISM band.

The other concern about Bluetooth is interoperability. The Bluetooth specification developed by the SIG is like a recipe. Everyone who follows it should turn out the same dish, but there will be variations. Those variations could cause incompatibilities between Bluetooth devices from different manufacturers before a standard is put in place.

Janson agreed that it was a concern, but is pretty certain that a standard won't be long in coming and that any issues will be resolved.

"Interoperability is a key concern for the SIG, " he said, adding that devices that don't perform won't get certified. A lot of that work gets done when Bluetooth product makers come together at a tech meet.

"Everyone shows up in a big room," said Janson, "and they try their technology with other devices. That has been quite good for everyone involved."

First generation Bluetooth products will start appearing on store shelves toward the end of the year with the bulk of product rolling next year. By 2005, researchers at Cahners In-Stat Group predict that there will be 670 million Bluetooth-enabled devices in circulation.

To date, few companies have any products to show off. Ericsson was the first to announce a cellular phone that's equipped with a Bluetooth headset. It will ship late this fall. Motorola has also announced a Bluetooth phone available in December. RTX Telecom, a Danish company, has introduced a Bluetooth attachment that allows a PC to talk to Bluetooth devices. San Diego-based Widcomm has also announced that computer maker Acer will manufacturer its Bluetooth module for the Handspring Visor hand-held computer. These products are all expected to hit store shelves by 2001.

While Bluetooth makers start to roll out products, another wireless technology is appearing in networks. It's called 802.11, a rather unfriendly name developed by the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers. 802.11 was conceived as a wireless LAN (local area network) standard that moves data at up to two megabits per second. A modification to the standard, dubbed 802.11B, cranked that up to a zippy 11 Mbps.

Like Bluetooth, the technology works in the 2.4 GHz frequency band. Unlike Bluetooth, it has a reach of 300 ft. Nevertheless Bluetooth can be engineered to rival 802.11's range by adding power. Even though the two technologies are being seen as complimentary, history shows that similar technologies sometimes become competitive.

So will your toaster talk to your alarm clock using 802.11B or Bluetooth? Consumers will decide that this year.

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