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In the United States, Bluetooth gets absolutely no

respect. It is however, becoming more and more

common in notebooks, PDAs, and especially cell

phones. Bluetooth will provide wireless users a

way to transmit small amounts of data over short

distances.

Now, Bluetooth is facing stiff competition from

new wireless technology. Referred to as UWB or

Ultra Wideband, it promises data transfer of up

to 480 MB a second - while most current Bluetooth

devices transfer data up to 721 KB a second.

For the time being, Bluetooth devices are surely

cropping up. Below, we will look at some of

the accessories offered with Bluetooth technology.

Talking to the dashboard

When pairing it with a cell phone, the CCM Blue

Warrior car kit becomes a great speaker phone that

plugs into the power adapter of your vehicle. The

noise cancelling microphone will reduce background

noise efficiently, with the large buttons making

adjusting the speaker volume a snap. Although

the Blue Warrior is far from sexy or sleek, it's

very practical.

Tiny tuning box

Part MP3 player and part hands free phone, the

compact and lightweight Sony HBM-30 is an attractive

gadget that lets you accept calls with minimal

interruption of your tunes. When you get an incoming

call it will automatically pause your music, then

you speak into the built in microphone that you

can wear around your neck or clip to your clothes.

The pen

With Nokia's SU-1B digital pen, you can doodle and

make hand written notes in ink on a special pad

then transmit them from the pad to your Bluetooth

phone. Being an alternative to typing on a cell

phone keypad, the pen is very handy, although a

pricey tool from MMS fans.

Snapshots

If you want to make slide shows with your camera

photos, the Nokia SU-2 image viewer will let you

disply your pictures on a TV or projector. Simply

hook this square gray device to your TV's input

with the built in cable, then beam the pictures

to the SU-2 from your Bluetooth enabled phone and

the photo fest will begin.

This device is a snap to set up and use, although

it displays resolutions of up to 640 by 480. If

you have a newer phone that takes high resolution

photos, you won't be able to use the Nokia SU-2

image viewer.

Keep in mind, the 640 by 480 pixel photos will

appear blocky on TV screens, no matter what you

do. If your phone can send batches of photos, you

can create a slide show - although Nokia claims

you can use sequentially beamed shots as well.