Mobile > BluetoothEssentials

Does this sound familiar? Your mobile phone, your smart phone and your notebook all come equipped with Bluetooth, but you hardly use it because other than a clunky headset, there's not much to connect to. That may have been true in the past, but while you weren't looking, an array of cool and useful Bluetooth devices has appeared on the scene.

Ozmo wants to be part of the latest round of Personal Area Network (PAN) technology, this time leveraging Wi-Fi.

While developers have been hard at work building Android applications that can use GPS (Global Positioning System), Wi-Fi and cameras, they just discovered they likely won't be able to offer applications that use one common mobile phone feature: Bluetooth.

A future version of Bluetooth will be able to increase throughput for sending videos, music, and other high-bandwidth applications by using a nearby Wi-Fi network, the group in charge of Bluetooth development says.

Bluetooth has been a big success in the mobile world, but primarily for just one application: wireless headsets. These are extremely popular and with good reason: You can't beat the convenience, and they are have become quite inexpensive.

Bluetooth's low-power variant could be everywhere starting next year, and other low-power networking options had better watch out, say the new standard's backers.