WiFi Technology Will Change All Our Lives, in Interesting Ways

Untethered intelligence is the wave of the future, and here today. The success of cellular telephony has shown us that people hate wires, and that wireless technology has a bright future.

The initial uses of WiFi, or wireless internet technology have been mundane, such as removing the tether from your laptop computer and eliminating the need for Ethernet cables in homes. Now that this technology is maturing, inventors are finding more innovative ways to translate it into life changing products - products that can make a real difference in the way we work and live.

The first of these products promises to reduce the cellular burden on our pocketbooks - WiFi Voice-over-IP telephony. Most cellular subscribers don't use their cell phones very far from home, so why not have a phone that operates over local metro WiFi for a fraction of the cost. One company with an initial product in this area is UT Starcom - this phone is offered at a discount to Vonage subscribers. Other companies are looking to improve this initial offering, such as ipDialog, and Cisco Systems in the Silicon Valley. A key area for improvement is battery life - Silicon Valley chipmaker Marvell Semiconductor has innovated a chipset that will increase talk time to over five hours - moving WiFi handsets to a par with cellular.

VoIP-over-WiFi promises to offer a higher level of Internet integration with telephony, allowing a user to integrate functions such as personalized recommendations for restaurants, chat, etc, into conversations.

Another great WiFi product is a forerunner for what I am sure will be more of its kind - Nabaztag. Nabaztag,which is Armenian for rabbit, is a WiFi enabled rabbit that reads RSS feeds, shows the weather on its belly, plays a tone when you receive an email, reads emails, and plays "Nabcasts" similar to Podcasts.

This promises to be a great way for the blind and vision impaired to send and receive emails in the future - and for improved efficiency as you can do something else while your rabbit reads you the latest stock report.

WiFi in automobiles is now beginning to be deployed, which will allow cars to connect to local hot spots to find directions,
locations of local fast food places, and much more.

Mass free deployment of WiFi in Metro areas through such carriers as Metrofree and Earthlink will further expand the market for even more new WiFi gadgets, such as handheld wireless games, PDAs, and GPSs.

Eventually, I predict that we will have a receiver earpiece - allowing us to receive WiFi in our minds and access the entire Internet for knowledge.