Many might not think about it, but Bluetooth wireless communication has increasingly become part of our everyday lives.

It’s used to link mobile phones with hands-free headsets, it’s used to transfer files, it’s an essential part of connecting controllers to games consoles and peripherals to computers and tablets, and that’s just the start.

But what is it? How does it work? And why is it called Bluetooth?

The last question has a relatively simple answer. Bluetooth is the anglicised name of Harald Bl

Tech your kids will laugh at

Technology is very like fashion: today’s must-have item is often tomorrow’s utter embarrassment.

Take mobile phones for example: while the Motorola DynaTAC 8000X was a really big deal in the 1980s, it was also the size of a house and looks as daft to us today as the Samsung Galaxy Note, er, looks daft to us today.

So what gadgets will we be blabbing on about on our way to the nursing home? Let’s find out.

1. 3D glasses

We don’t need hindsight to tell us that 3D specs make us look silly: we know it already, especially when we’re wearing the damn things on top of normal glasses. If 3D’s here to stay – and it’s not clear yet that it is – then it has to be glasses-free. Glasses-free 3D TVs are already incoming, although the technology’s still in its very early stages.

2. Wires

Whether it’s network connections or chargers, our children’s future is cable-free: next-generation 802.11ac Wi-Fi will bring gigabit speeds to wireless networks this year, while wireless charging has been possible for years. All wireless power needs now is for a heavyweight manufacturer, possibly with a name that rhymes with “bapple”, to embrace it.

3. PCs

The future of the PC is “personal computing”, not “personal computer”: new form factors such as tablets and hybrid devices are taking the PC in all kinds of interesting new directions, while smartphones, mobile broadband and cloud-based services mean computing is something our kids will do on whatever kit happens to be handy.

4. Optical discs

It’s clear that Blu-Ray is the last hurrah for the optical disc: services such as Netflix and iTunes are the future of content distribution. The idea of ordering media on a disc and waiting for a smiling postman to deliver it several days later will soon seem as quaint as chasing a mammoth when you’re feeling a bit peckish.

5. Keyboards

Physical keyboards are probably going the way of the 8-track cartridge: tablets are doing just fine without them, and the arrival of technologies such as Kinect, eye tracking and effective speech recognition means we’ll spend more time gesturing and grunting at our kit than we do prodding clacky keyboards. The technology isn’t quite there yet, but it’s coming.

6. USB drives

In an age of DropBox, iCloud and SkyDrive, copying files to a thing you put in your pocket is just weird.

7. iPods, sat-navs and digital cameras

As far as the mass market is concerned, the age of the stand-alone, do-one-thing device is coming to a close: iPod sales are being cannibalised by iPhones, cameraphones are replacing cameras, and if your phone doesn’t have sat-nav built in you can get it in app form. Phones won’t replace everything – sticking SLR lenses on an iPhone is just silly – but for most of us, if a phone can replace a single-function device then sooner or later it will.

8. Amazon Kindle

Amazon’s Kindle is a lovely wee thing, but it’s a transition device: it fills a niche because for now, traditional computer displays aren’t as nice as paper. Apple and the rest of the electronics industry is working on that, and displays of the future will be as easy on the eye as ink on paper.

9. Remote controls

Even if the future of TV isn’t gesture controlled, it probably won’t have one remote control per device either: our smartphones can already control our home entertainment kit, albeit with a little bit of help, and there are already apps to control internet-enabled telly devices such as Sky boxes, Tivos and Apple TVs. All we need now is for manufacturers to agree on a single standard.

10. Landline phones

Remember when we used to call buildings instead of people? Crazy times, man. Crazy times.

10 things we wish Apple would reinvent

Apple’s genius isn’t in invention – it didn’t invent the smartphone, or the tablet PC, or the digital music player – but in reinvention: it saw what other firms were doing and found better ways to do the same thing.

That’s resulted in some truly terrific bits of kit, but what would happen if Apple’s talents got the chance to work on a bigger canvas?

Here are ten industries and items we’d love to let Apple loose on. Let us know your nominations in the comments.

1. Mobile phones, again

Of course Apple will make the iPhone 5 thinner, cleverer and more useful, but we’d much rather have better data plans than a slightly thinner iPhone. Apple clearly sees the networks as an irritation – it tried and failed to introduce a non-removable, flash-able SIM that would have effectively cut the operators out of iPhone retail – but while that climbdown shows that Apple can’t boss the networks around too much, it still has enough muscle to demand more customer-friendly options. Top of our list? Shared data plans that work across multiple bits of Apple kit without unnecessary extra fees, such as charging for tethering. That’s the equivalent of ISPs charging you to connect anything to your router.

2. Home automation

We’ve been promised home automation since the 1930s, and we’d love Apple to give it a go; however, we suspect that the future of home automation is third-party apps on Apple (and Android) devices rather than anything Apple-branded.

3. Photography

Meeting somebody doesn’t mean you’ll go into business with them, but Steve Jobs’ meeting with Lytro means that Apple has at least considered using the firm’s extraordinary shoot-first-focus-later technology in the iPhone.

4. Mobile payments

2011 wasn’t quite the year of mobile payments but momentum is building, and Apple’s only taken tentative steps into this fast-growing market. US shoppers have the EasyPay option in the Apple Store app for easy mobile purchasing of Apple kit; imagine if EasyPay added NFC technology and worked in other shops too.

5. Power

The weak point in mobile devices remains power: if you open up an iPad you’ll find that it’s largely made of battery. Future Apple kit may dispense with batteries in favour of long-lasting fuel cells – patents show that Apple’s certainly experimenting with the idea – but in the meantime the challenge is to make mobile devices slimmer, lighter and longer-lasting, and Apple’s working on that too.

Apple could also reinvent the humble charger: while wireless charging has been around for years, adoption by Apple could finally make it the default option for gadgets.

6. TV

We’d love a single TV to replace our various set-top boxes and media devices, and Apple is apparently working on it: The rumours are becoming more numerous and more frequent. Can Apple really deliver TV with what Steve Jobs called “the simplest user interface you could imagine”?

7. Business computing

Steve Jobs famously hated the enterprise market, but unhappy white-collar workers really want Apple kit in their offices. The hot trend in IT these days is “consumerisation”, where tech-savvy employees bring their iPads and iPhones to work; a recent study of IT professionals found that 87% of employees were using personal devices for work purposes, with iPhones particularly popular.

8. In-car infotainment

It doesn’t matter whether you drive a Ford or a Ferrari: in-car infotainment systems are mostly rubbish and crying out for a bit of Apple attention (although BMW’s iDrive, Mini Connected and Ford Sync deserve a bit of praise). On Kickstarter the Devium Dash has the right idea: instead of a stereo and sat-nav, there’s a bit to stick your iPhone in and some car-friendly apps.

9. Public Transport

What’s public transport like in your area? If it’s anything like ours it’s grim, polluting, sits you next to madmen and smells faintly of kebabs and farts. Now imagine something like Heathrow Airport’s ULTra Personal Rapid Transit System with an added dose of Apple smarts: futuristic, elegant and hopefully both madman- and whiff-free.

[Image Credit: Ultra Global PRT]

10. Manufacturing

Is anyone else uncomfortable with Apple’s choice of suppliers? We know everybody’s outsourcing and Apple’s better than many, but Apple has the smarts – and the cash – to do something different. As Kevin Meyer, author of Evolving Excellence, puts it: “How about… sinking a billion or two into developing truly innovative manufacturing methods and systems. Imagine what could happen if the same level of design prowess that was applied to product design was applied to manufacturing design.” He adds: “Apple has the unique opportunity to change a global dynamic.”

Amazon Kindle Fire 2 rumours rounded up

The Kindle Fire has been a big success stateside, though it sadly hasn’t yet made it to the UK.

However, there is plenty of speculation and rumour about what the Kindle Fire 2 could bring to the party – and whether it will be available in the UK.

So we’ve rounded up all the suggested Kindle Fire 2 specs, release date and more and put together this little piece to share them all with you.

Kindle Fire 2 release date

The Kindle Fire 2 is set to land in spring 2012, according to DigiTimes, which reported that Quanta Computer has already been given the order to start producing the new device.

The Kindle Fire 2 screen will be bigger

The Telegraph – and many others – predicts a Kindle Fire 2 / iPad 3 summertime tablet fight-fest based entirely on a single post by the not-always-that-accurate DigiTimes, which says that the Kindle Fire 2 will have an 8.9-inch touch screen and will begin manufacturing in the first quarter of 2012.

That may well be true, but Digitimes also reports that the Kindle Fire 2 screen will be 9.7 inches, or maybe 10.1 inches. Perhaps the Kindle Fire 2 is made from potatoes and powered by clockwork elves.

An analyst writing in February 2012 predicted a 9-inch Amazon Kindle Fire tablet, as well as a refreshed 7-inch model by the middle of 2012.

Chad Bartley of Pacific Crest has increased his Kindle Fire 2012 sales estimate from 12 million units to 14.9 miilion units, partly due to the expected new models.

“We are raising our 2012 sales forecasts to 14.9 million from 12.7 million,” he wrote in a note to investors.

“But we believe there is an upward bias, particularly from the new 7 and 9-inch models, which we expect to launch in mid-2012.”

The Kindle Fire 2 processor is a quad-core Tegra

That’s what Boy Genius Report predicted back in May, anyway: Amazon was “planning on releasing at least two before the end of the year… the big boy? That’s codenamed ‘Hollywood’ and will be based on the Nvidia Tegra 3 which will bring a screaming quad-core processor with a 500% performance increase”.

That would come in handy, as some reviews have pointed out that the current Fire is a bit slow, but if it’s coming there’s no way you’re getting it for $200. Amazon may be losing money on every Kindle Fire, but there’s losing money and there’s losing enormous amounts of money.

The Kindle Fire 2 is the real Kindle Fire

Speaking to Gdgt, a “source” claimed that the Kindle Fire 2 is the tablet Amazon really wanted to make, but couldn’t get out in time for the pre-Christmas shopping period.

The Kindle Fire 2 operating system is Android, sort of

As with the first Fire, the Kindle Fire 2 should run Amazon’s own fork of Android, which adds a nifty interface to Google’s OS. Expect integration with the Amazon app store and services rather than Android market and Google books.

The Kindle Fire 2 display won’t be a hybrid

A hybrid e-ink/LCD screen is one for our Kindle Fire 2 wish list, although we don’t expect to see it on the next Kindle Fire.

The Kindle Fire 2 specifications might include some missing features

There are some obvious omissions from the current Kindle Fire – GPS, a microphone, cameras – but we’re not sure the Kindle Fire 2 needs them: if it wants to be an iPad rival then yes, such things are important, but they’re not necessarily deal-breakers for sofa surfing.

The Kindle Fire 2 name probably won’t be Kindle Fire 2

If a launch is imminent, Amazon won’t want to annoy existing Kindle Fire customers by suggesting their shiny new tablet is already obsolete. It’ll be called something different, such as Kindle Burny. OK, probably not Burny.

————————————————————————————————

Samsung chose its European Forum in Prague to announce its first-ever Ice Cream Sandwich powered tablet, the Samsung Galaxy Tab 2.

With so many iterations of the Galaxy Tab, it is easy to forget just which Tab this is the sequel too. It is in fact the successor to the first-ever tablet Samsung released, the original 7-inch Galaxy Tab.

While its specs may not have changed that much in 18 months, the chassis certainly has. While Samsung opted for a thick slab of tablet with a white back first time around, the new Galaxy Tab as a more rounded silver back. Its style is much more in keeping with the original Samsung Galaxy S smartphone.

Powering the tablet up and we impressed by the speed of the thing. Given that the Samsung Galaxy Tab 2 has a 1Ghz dual-core processor, it didn’t blow our mind speed wise but flicking through varying menus didn’t muster up any lag and flicking from different apps – we went from the Social Hub to camera didn’t expose any weaknesses in the Galaxy Tab 2′s power.

In the hand, the Samsung Galaxy Tab 2 certainly feels a lot lighter than its predecessor – in the specs list Samsung has it badged at 344g. The lack of jagged edges makes it fit the hand a lot better. And while we have never been truly enamoured with the 7-inch size for a tablet, it was a decent enough device for browsing the web and flicking through Twitter and the like.

When it comes to cameras, the Samsung Galaxy Tab 2 has a 3MP snapper on the rear and a VGA camera on the front.

Although a conference room isn’t the best place to take an image, the camera worked well with the mix of bright white and blue, the two colours which dominate Samsung’s stand.

When it comes to connectivity, Samsung has significantly juiced up its AllShare service and actually made it work anywhere. Before, where it was for those in the same house – a bit like Bluetooth – this has been expanded to work anywhere, as long as you have your device linked to the service.

Depending on your tastes for Samsung software, you will be pleased to hear that there is a new hub. Called the Video hub, this is where you can get your movie content and works in the same way as the Music and the Game hub.

There’s also an app recommendation engine on the tablet as well.

Other than that, the Samsung Galaxy Tab 2 is a decent update for those who like the 7-inch tablet size but it does lack wow factor when it comes to specs. This is purely Samsung’s fault, having already released the more powerful Samsung Galaxy Tab 7.0 Plus (1.2Ghz) and the Galaxy Tab 7.7 (1.4Ghz).

But, and this is depending on price which is still TBA, the Samsung Galaxy Tab 2 is a great sign of things to come for ICS on tablets.

The Samsung Galaxy Tab 2 UK release date is March and will come in 8GB, 16GB and 32GB flavours and the option to upgrade memory through a microSD slot.