Hasta La Gadget!

Add Wi-Fi to the list of technologies that the electronics industry wants to use to help eliminate cable clutter.

A new standard called Wi-Fi Direct made an important step towards becoming product reality Monday when the Wi-Fi Alliance announced it would begin certifying products that comply with the standard.

The Wi-Fi Alliance is the industry consortium that oversees the family of wireless technology standards known as Wi-Fi.

With Wi-Fi Direct, devices will be able to connect to one another easily for permanent or temporary connections, without requiring them to join the network of a nearby wireless router.

Instead, you’ll just push a button or tap the “OK” button in an on-screen dialog box, and your devices will link up to each other.

Think of it as the wireless alternative to a USB cable. Wi-Fi Direct joins a host of other wireless technologies, such as WiDi, Wireless USB and W-HDI, all aimed at replacing desktop and entertainment-center cables with skeins of wireless data wending their ethereal way through your house.

Wi-Fi Direct connections could be used to show images from your camera on a friend’s HDTV, display PowerPoint slides from your smartphone on a client’s video projector, send web pages from your tablet to a printer, or even stream HD video from your laptop to your TV. A cutesy animation from the Wi-Fi Alliance (above) shows how this could work.

Devices could support any number of connections, limited primarily by the computing power of the devices themselves and their programming.

“Since you’re not going through a router, there’s no single point of constraint,” says Edgar Figueroa, CEO of the Wi-Fi Alliance.

The technology will support bandwidth and ranges comparable to what regular Wi-Fi offers: Figueroa claims about 200 meters of maximum range and about 250-300 megabits/second of real throughput. Of course, in the real world, where walls and electronic interference abound, you’ll probably see somewhat less than that.

It should be enough to support a single HD video stream, however, which would be plenty for most home users. And if someone is simultaneously downloading another HD video stream via your Wi-Fi router, the two streams wouldn’t interfere with each other.

The certification program means that manufacturers can begin building compatible products, then get them tested by the Wi-Fi Alliance so they can slap a “Wi-Fi Direct” logo on their packaging. That process starts with the makers of chipsets and plug-in cards, such as Broadcom, which announced a Wi-Fi Direct-certified card Monday.

Within the “near future,” says Figueroa, such capabilities will trickle down to consumer products that incorporate the chipsets and cards now hitting the market. In practice, it could be months before consumer products are on sale, and it may be a year or more before it’s widespread.

But then the tricky part begins, because not all Wi-Fi Direct devices will be able to connect with one another. Devices will only be able to connect with devices that have compatible Wi-Fi Direct support. For instance, a smartphone might support Wi-Fi Direct printing, but not Wi-Fi Direct for an external display — meaning you wouldn’t be able to connect it with your TV, even if your TV supported the standard.

Explaining all that to non-technical consumers is going to be the industry’s next big wireless challenge.

Wi-Fi® gets personal: Groundbreaking Wi-Fi Direct™ launches today (press release)

See Also:

• Intel Touts 'WiDi' for Connecting PCs, TVs
• Veebeam Uses Wireless USB to Stream Media From PC to TV
• Why Everything Wireless Is 2.4 GHz
• Wireless USB Box Streams Video from Laptop to TV
• New Frequency Set to Turbocharge Wi-Fi
• Blazingly Fast Wireless HD Hits the Mainstream

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Without mentioning specific numbers, Amazon says that sales of both the new Kindle–and Kindle e-books–are very strong.

Somewhere between a glorified Nintendo Power Glove and a Peregrine Gaming Glove, the concept KeyGlove uses a combination of 34 sensors and an Arduino to tell where your fingers are at any given moment and how your hand movements correspond to a virtual keyboard and the letters on it. For example, numbers are on your palm at the tips of your fingers, and letters correspond to taps either on the inside or sides of your fingers in different places.

The KeyGlove is a prototype right now, but it’s being designed for people who have difficulty using keyboards or want a different, more portable way to interact with their computer. The engineer behind the KeyGlove is pondering selling the device to interested buyers, and has even published some basic instructions on how to make your own, if you’re the DIY sort of person. Whether the KeyGlove will revolutionize the way we work with computers remains to be seen, but it definitely presents an alternative.

If you’re looking for a way to give your laptop a sound boost but maintain a clean and elegant workspace that’s not cluttered with large wired speakers, the Edifier Soundbar USB may be the perfect audio accessory for you. The brushed aluminum bar is just over 10-inches wide with a glowing blue mute switch and power button on the side. The Soundbar is entirely USB-powered, so the only cable you’ll need with the device is a USB cable, which is included in the package, and as long as it’s connected to your Mac or PC you can use it as external speakers.

The Soundbar USB also has an AUX-in port that allows you to connect other devices like a mobile phone or digital music player, but you still have to have it connected to a USB port on a desktop or laptop for power in order for it to work. Edifier promises the Soundbar has enough juice to sound out entire rooms and comes in a portable package with a carry pouch that can slip into a laptop bag or backpack. The Edifier Soundbar USB is available now from online retailers for $49 list.
 

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