CES 2005 Part 4

  Leave a comment      Email this to a friend TrustedReviews Newsletters

Broadcom didn’t have a stand on the show floor, instead opting for a private demonstration enclosure. Inside the Broadcom enclosure was an impressive array of cool new technology – some of which I had no idea Broadcom was involved with.

First up was Broadcom’s new one touch wireless security setup. Now, if you think this sounds similar to Buffalo’s AOSS, you’re right. The general idea is that equipped devices will be able to negotiate and instigate WPA security by pressing a single button.

On show were devices from LinkSys and HP, but Broadcom has many other partners on the way. The HP partnership is a good one, and means that anyone with a WiFi enabled printer will be able to use WPA encryption, without needing to know anything about setting it up. I’m a firm believer that wireless networking is the key to technology convergence in the home, and anything that makes WiFi easier, must be a good thing.

Another wireless standard that Broadcom is working with, is Bluetooth. I use Bluetooth a lot and there’s one thing that I hate about it, and that’s the awful PC interface that you generally have to put up with. However, Broadcom was showing something off that could change all that.

The Bluetooth application that Broadcom had on show was superb. From the image above you can see that the app looks like a phone, making it instantly more user friendly than most Bluetooth utilities, and there will even be skins available for it, in order to make the app look like your particular phone.

The Blutonium app has an array of user friendly features like one-touch GPRS (or 3G) modem connection, and a single button press to compose and send SMS messages from your computer. You can even synchronise your phone with Outlook, all from the same simple interface.

Broadcom will be sending me an evaluation copy of this Bluetooth utility soon, so I’ll be able to get a bit more first hand experience of it. But if it turns out to be as good as it looks, I imagine that some smart mobile phone manufacturer will be snapping it up soon and bundling it.

Add your comment