If you are single, and have a mobile phone, the love of your life could be just a Bluetooth connection away. SmallPlanet has been testing their Bluetooth-enabled CrowdSurfer software for mobile phones and it appears to be gaining momentum.  The website works a lot like other online dating services but the CrowdSurfer software includes a Bluetooth scanning engine to find other users in the same room, restaurant, club, etc. The proximity-to-another-user software is supposed to work up to 100 feet and runs on various Nokia, BenQ, and Panasonic phones that have Bluetooth turned on. According to this ABC News video, you can also surf members profiles using their mobile-friendly web site.
(Thanks, Ken)

Treo 700w pictures are over at Engadget. They've had it only a few hours and are posting pictures with comparisons between the Treo 650 and this new model. We've been waiting for the Palm Treo 670 but it looks like it will be called the Verizon Palm Treo 700w. It is running Microsoft Windows Mobile 5.0 (not PalmOS!) and includes a 1 megapixel camera. EV-DO, Bluetooth, 64MB of memory, and possibly a 240x240 screen resolution (but Engadget isn't sure about that until further testing.)

Xeni Jardin posted this notice on the tech blog, BoingBoing:

Some quick notes from a conference call that just took place, hosted by the FCC about how to coordinate resources and personnel from internet/wireless private industry to help get communications networks up and running in in gulf states. Lack of communications systems has been identified as a critical issue holding back aid, missing persons, law enforcement, etc. in crisis areas.

FCC personnel are working throughout the weekend to coordinate these efforts with private industry, with wireless technology groups, FEMA, and state governments in Mississippi, Louisiana, etc.

One of the challenges they face in this effort is fact that the coordination effort involves multiple layers of bureaucracies — also, that there has been no central point for directing available assets offered by private industry. Participants on the call included folks from Cisco, Intel, and wireless organizations.

Another challenge: working with FEMA and local governments to ascertain whether it is more immediately effective to get old systems up and running, or create new temporary ones. Depends on tech behind communications system in question. COMPANIES WITH TECH ASSETS AND/OR HUMAN RESOURCES TO DONATE FOR COMMUNICATIONS AID IN KATRINA-IMPACTED AREAS SHOULD DO THE FOLLOWING

FCC Chief of Staff Dan Gonzales (dan dot gonzales at fcc dot org) says FCC needs the following information from would be tech donors BY NOON EASTERN ON SATURDAY SEPTEMBER 3.

1) identify the provider (name of your company or group)
2) identify assets you are willing to commit
3) state clearly what assets you are technologically capable of providing (IP? data? voice?)
4) what your logistical requirements are to bring that to the affected area.
5) can you bring generators? if so what size? capacity? power levels?

SUBMIT THIS INFORMATION TO

PART-15.ORG (they have an online submission form to collect this data)
or wireless@part-15.org

contacts: Michael Anderson (wireless@part-15.org) 630-466-9090, and Claudia Crowley (ccrowley at gmail dot com), 817-292-0230.

As many of you know, I co-founded and run the Southern California Wireless Users Group along with Frank Keeney. We have been running these meetings since early 2002.

Our meetings are held on Thursday's at the end of the month and tonight's the night!.

Mike and Frank are both out of town tonight, so your humble hosts have decided to launch the first informal SOCALWUG/IHOP meeting. This meeting will be a free-for-all, run-what-you-brung, informal meetup of SOCALWUG members. Bring your wireless cards, Linux laptops, digital picture frames, whatever, and ask a wireless geek for help. Or show off your hotrod of a notebook, access point, handheld wireless device, or any other neato gadget. If you are representing a company, feel free to get up and take the floor and show us your wares. For news hounds, catch everyone up on recent wireless events. (For starters, IHOP is installing wireless nationwide!)

SOCALWUG is going open source tonight. Participatory and open ended. Share and enjoy!

For meeting times and directions: Visit SOCALWUG Pasadena.

If you can't be there in person, participate online through email, IM, or IRC chat.

Coral Gables Florida is one of the first cities to employ the PayMint phonecall billing method for curbside parking meters. When you park at a meter, you dial a number, enter your license plate and walk away. The system keeps you "on the meter" until you call back to say you're leaving or hit a pre-determined maximum time, say, 2 hours. The system uses CallerID to identify callers already registered in the system. I don't know why this is limited to cellphones, couldn't you use any phone to dialup? This is not, as I first thought, a Bluetooth or SMS payment system that's so popular in parts of Europe. But for the TXT-deficient U.S. residents, it's still a step away from our loose change economy. NPR has an audio segment about the system or click the link to read about it.

You probably heard the technical details about the latest Bluetooth vulnerability. It's based on exploiting a weakness in the Bluetooth spec between paired devices, therefore affecting all Bluetooth phones using the current spec. The Wall Street Journal has a story today about the exploit and what it means to the 10% of cellphone users who have Bluetooth-enabled devices. And it appears that the exploit is not too hard to pull off, "Using their research, security experts said, a device capable of tapping into Bluetooth gear could be built for about $2,000."

$2000 eh? Looks like I found a new Bluetooth project.

[Thanks, Carl.]

Tomorrow marks the last ConQwest "Big Game" of 2005 taking place in Portland, Oregon. Big Games mark the confluence of the real and virtual. In this orchestrated event, people congregate in one general location, say Downtown Portland, and start playing a big game on city streets. An early big game was a simulation of PacMan using real people running around the streets of Manhattan. The controller used cellular communications to tell PacMan which way to run, and the ghosts tried to find him.

ConQwest is a sort of treasure hunt where players roam the city to find cellphone-readable Semacode pictures for points. The winning team gets $5000 donated to their school. Details on this and other Big Games are on PlayAreaCode. And watch the live event unfold Saturday, May 28th, 11:00AM PST.

I am a fan of big games and the convergence of social and virtual interaction really intrigues me, especially when it comes to gaming!

(via the Unwired list)

I just finished watching the third installment (Box 3.0) of From The Shadows, an internet "TV" show about underground technology hacking. It's made by my pals at Flexilis and some of the visionaries from, now defunct, TechTV. This is worth watching!

This episode is jammed with hardcore Wi-Fi exploration. The guys go warviewing (and warviewflying?) using high power antennas and end up finding unencrypted wireless cameras in a bank building. Yoshi mods a Sony PSP with a pigtail connector and attaches a panel antenna to increase the gaming distance to over 600 feet. And Humphrey Cheung shows step-by-step WEP cracking and explains what it's all about.

They mentioned that my book Wi-Fi Toys might be a good place to start your 2.4 GHz project. (I tend to agree.) - Thanks guys!

I spent a few minutes today with one component of the Cognio Intelligent Spectrum Management System. Built for a laptop computer and PC-card slot, this software/hardware combination works to turn your laptop into a professional wireless reconnaissance platform. Known to RF engineers as a "spectrum analyzer" this product is so much more. It not only tracks and displays radio signals in the area, it also provides clues as to what might be causing interference from a built-in knowledge base. And used as part of the larger enterprise system, it can work with remote devices over the Internet, potentially analyzing the airwaves from across the globe.

Complete Spectrum Analyzer system running on a Windows XP laptop

Click the link to continue reading and for more photos.

Mark Frauenfelder brings us an overview of some of the benefits software-defined radio, or cognizant radio, can bring to wireless applications. Software-defined radio (SDR) promises to become, basically, a radio-on-a-chip that can be modified "on the fly" to operate on differing radio networks automatically, merely by running different lines of code on an intelligent wireless platform. Cellphones, PDAs, and wireless laptops could benefit from SDR.

Imagine a radio that can tune in to any frequency and run any wireless protocol adjusted by the function being performed. You could have a cellphone that makes cell calls then cuts over to Wi-Fi then to WiMax then to Bluetooth then to who-knows-what? - All in ONE chip built in to a device! The power savings and increased functionality of an all-in-one solution like this is mind-blowing.

Peter Rojas recently interviewed Bill Gates at the Windows Hardware Engineering Conference. They talked about the next Xbox (which is becoming more than a game console), mobile gaming, the Windows Mobile operating system, and much more. Today, Eric Rice posted the audio of the half-hour interview as a downloadable podcast (MP3 link). If you haven't already, you can read parts one and two of the interview online over at Engadget.

The Bluetooth SIG said it plans to work together with Ultra Wideband groups in defining a way to have the two short-range wireless technologies, well, work together. The AP is reporting that the backers of these two personal area network (PAN) protocols are in preliminary talks on finding a way to make existing Bluetooth devices compatible with future UWB devices. Bluetooth is already supported on millions of devices, so this sounds like a win-win-win for Bluetooth, UWB, and consumers.

(via Engadget)

In their Circuits section, the New York Times overloads us with wireless articles today. Here's a few that caught our eye about "Wireless Living":
Review of mobile video on small-screened cellphones.
Discussion of form and function on increasingly small cellphones.
7 reasons why you can't log on to that local Wi-Fi hotspot.
How your car merges with your cellphone directory.

Privacy advocates are highly critical of the U.S. plan for embedding RFID chips (aka contactless chips) into U.S. passports. The ACLU is one of several organizations critical of the plan to embed the remotely readable data into passports, saying that RFID can be read and/or detected remotely.

By embedding personal information, or even the country of origin, on the RFID chip, citizens abroad could be identified merely by scanning for RFID passports. This takes wardriving to a whole new level.

Note: I was part of a team of researchers who showed that distance "limitations" with another short range technology, Bluetooth, were moot when working with modified equipment. So I can see why people expect passport detection from distances greater than the manufacturers predict.

(via BoingBoing)

On Saturday, the Caltech/MIT Enterprise Forum hosted a panel discussion on wireless business opportunites. Jeff Black of Partner Vision Ventures, Valerie Buckingham of Nokia Innovent, Jaideep Singh of Clearstone Venture Partners, and Moderator Joe Platnick from the Pasadena Angels each presented their perspectives on the business potential behind wireless innovations and new wireless applications. The presenters shared massive intel (i.e "drinking from a firehose") with the audience on topics ranging from Wi-Fi to cellular to location-based services, gaming and Bluetooth.

Key take-aways for mobile startups are… have a great team, create something new, develop cellular applications for more than one runtime environment (Java and BREW), and you can make millions on a few cents per downloaded application in a market of 900 million phones.

This 3 minute video (WMV) shows insights specifically on Bluetooth technology and how a startup can embrace the technology. Here's highlights:

If it's a critical component of your business plan, Valerie tells us that Bluetooth has a lot of potential in the consumer application space, Interesting stuff around gaming, BT tracking to consoles (Xbox, etc.) Kiosk connections, etc. It's a forgone conclusion Bluetooth will be there, but there's a lot of problems with Bluetooth. If you've ever tried to pair a BT phone you know it's still problematic.

Jeff speaks about attending the VON conference and meeting a hacker that seems to have exploited Bluetooth phones to make them dial a 900 number to "generate revenue".

Jaideep takes the view that Bluetooth is not an area for innovation. There's room for improvement, but everyones already has a BT stack.  He says that if he was starting a company he wouldn't spend time on BT innovation. Instead, he would build an interesting application around Bluetooth. It's like Wi-Fi. You're not going to go out and start a Wi-Fi chip company.  You're going to take advantage of existing infrastructure."

Also, this video segment touches on the panelists reponse to using Bluetooth at record breaking distances (like the 1 mile link I was involved in). Their response is that CDMA or GSM is better for long distance.

Watch (WMV file)