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Thursday, October 28, 2004

Actually, Not the Bluetooth Killer App 

Alex calls me out on some sloppy google research. I shot myself in the foot with the old Kb vs. KB thing and granted Bluetooth 8 times the bandwidth it actually has.

How embarassing.

(And in front of so many people).

That does pretty much sink the wireless idea. However, I'd just like to say, I wouldn't have thought the camera would transfer the full, uncompressed image, but rather the JPEG. Given that most of my camera's photos come out at around 600K, I guess you can see why I thought Bluetooth would be feasible, given my misunderstanding its performance.

Also, a while ago, I heard some rumor of some new WiFi standard being worked on to provide a high-speed personal wireless network, like Bluetooth, but better suited to something like this. It was like 802.something, as I recall, but I might well be hallucinating it. I can't seem to find anything about this anymore, since I have no idea what it would have been called. Ah, those vague, convenient rumors.

Finally, I'd like to point out that the wirelessness was not the main point of the post. If they could figure out a way to jam a more universal port onto the iPod (USB2 or Firewire), so that people could connect up the camera, it would still work about the same; you'd still have your iPod in your pocket. The main idea was about what the iPod could become, and how it could better integrate with all sorts of other electronic devices to provide storage for them.

And, I want it to be a cell phone, damnit.

Comments:
Oops, didn't mean to embarass you. I thought it was a good idea, but just wanted to see for myself if it was feasible.

The best solution would be for a camera maker, such as Canon, to partner with Apple and put a firewire port on the camera itself so that it could hook up to the iPod. You could even use the cable that comes with the iPod, since the firewire end is an industry standard part. There would need to be some software on the iPod end of things to handle the transfer, and that seems like a relatively easy engineering problem to solve.

I've been dreaming of this feature for a while now.

/Alex

ps, what you should *really* be embarassed about is your misuse of the phrase "begs the question". ;) The phrase is really closer to meaning "circular argument" or perhaps "tautology" and does not mean "causes us to ask". (sorry for the pomposity, that phrase is a pet peeve of mine)
 
Hey, when you google "Bluetooth bandwidth," scan a page only long enough to find a number, and then go shoot your mouth off, you deserve what you get (I actually yanked it off the page you linked to, the FAQ).

However, I'm not embarassed about the "begs the question" thing you point out. I actually didn't know that, and will probably correct that in my own speech, especially since given the things I like to talk and write about, I have probably been missing pportunities to use the phrase in its original sense.

It's obviously used more commonly in the incorrect way in modern usage, and yet, everyone gets the meaning intended: something that makes a question so obvious that just about anyone would ask it. Given that people don't check common sayings to make sure that they don't correspond to some term of art, I don't see any problem with this usage.

In fact, I never fight it. Language changes over time in response to usage. And coming from someone who seems comfortable with "shizzolation", I think you know what I mean. :)
 
Yah, it's the whole prescriptive vs. descriptive debate. I'm actually in the descriptive camp most of the time, but it's just this one particular phrase that irks me.

In other news, I found something similar to what I'm looking for:

http://catalog.belkin.com/IWCatProductPage.process?Product_Id=173207

The next step is to integrate that into the camera itself, fo' shizzle.

chizang out.
 
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