Esmertec and Rococo Software are collaborating to enable Bluetooth and Java technology for mobile devices.

After a bumpy road, cool applications drive Bluetooth acceptance into high gear. The electronics industry loves to hype the latest, greatest trend, and not long ago the topic du jour was Bluetooth. When Bluetooth technology didn't meet analysts' projections for exponential growth, many people dismissed it as not being viable.

On November 5, 2003, the Bluetooth Special Interest Group (SIG) released version 1.2 of the Bluetooth Specification. While this announcement probably went unnoticed by all but the most hardcore geeks, the new specification will usher in a new generation of products that will have better audio quality, coexist better with Wi-Fi, and connect faster and more reliably.

Bluetooth isn't just for data access and synchronization - a new generation of applications is coming. According to In-Stat/MDR, the number of Bluetooth-enabled mobile phones will grow to a minimum of 300 million by 2005.

Many of the technologies in use today can be compromised in many ways, Bluetooth among them, yet they continue to be used because the benefits are deemed to outweigh the risks.

Bluetooth and Wireless Ethernet can happily coexist, at the same time, in the same space, and sharing the same frequency.

One technology that's hot these days is undoubtedly Bluetooth. Named after the Danish King Harald Bluetooth (who ruled from approximately A.D. 940-985, and is reported to have united Denmark and Norway), Bluetooth is a short-range radio wave wireless technology operating in the 2.4GHz frequency spectrum.