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February 22, 2005
Wideray or the Highway
Posted by Dana Blankenhorn
With Bluetooth viruses causing all kinds of havoc, and forcing millions to close the open ports on their phones, it seems strange to be writing about a "Bluetooth Network" connection.
But that's Wideray.
Here's the deal. Wideray customers put kiosks in the stores, and when someone comes over with a Bluetooth device they can feed whatever they want -- games, demos, product details. (It also works with Infrared or WiFi.)
I have used the system at trade shows, and its effectiveness is limited by the client device. If the device has limited power and storage, the effect of the download is minimal.
But, with even Nokia Symbian phones attaining the power and storage of older PDAs, this is changing. Wideray now supports Microsoft and Symbian, as well as Palm devices.
They claim patent protection, but I have to ask myself, on what? The "service point," obviously. But if you made a better one, or simply made the download part of the environment, the patent becomes worthless.
The key, it seems, is signing up more phones, more retailers, and more content. They can still wait for the market to catch them. It will.
Comments (2)
+ TrackBacks (0) | Category: 802.11 | B2B | Business Models | Business Strategy | computer interfaces | e-commerce
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Dana Blankenhorn has been a business journalist for over 25 years and has covered the online world professionally since 1985. He founded the "Interactive Age Daily" for CMP Media, and has written for the Chicago Tribune, Advertising Age, and dozens of other publications over the years.
1. Jesse Kopelman on February 22, 2005 04:49 PM writes...
I wonder how many technology patents would actually stand up to a challenge? The few I have looked at are either so vague or so all encompassing to be meaningless. The patent system is becoming/has become a joke.
Permalink to Comment2. philox on March 24, 2005 06:48 AM writes...
Indeed the patent doesn't seem to protect something as the service point seems to be just an agregation of different technologies. I know another company named Kameleon Mobile Technologies who seems to have real patents for their product similar to wideray's solution. Thier patent are on the enhancement of Bluetooth. The first one on power consumption for the service point called a "BlueSpot" as well as for the client device. Kameleon Mobile Technologies claims to have reduce the power consumption by 700 times. The second patent is on connection time: the connection takes only 20ms instead of up to 15 sec with regular BT. Their architecture is different you just have to be near the BlueSpot to initiate the connection and then the download can occur directly through GPRS, EDGE, 3G, etc... check the website! www.kameleon-europe.com
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