Bluetooth Marketing in your hand

The tiny new Bluetooth Marketing device from Huetouch, the Huetouch Lite is a great step forward in Bluetooth Marketing technology, the Lite can be remotely managed using the Hue Live interface from anywhere in the world. The Lite can support between 7 and 14 simultanious connections and can fit in the palm of your hand, making it ideal for portable proximity marketing solutions.

Proximimty Marketing is the means of sending messages to mobile phones via Bluetooth for free.

See more at www.huetouch.com

Remember David Beckham in his Bluetooth Ad ?

http://themobileexpert.blogspot.com/2007_05_01_archive.html

Well now you can have the ultimate mobile accessory, and no!!! your dont need David beckahm and his little ear accessory, its a Bluetooth Marketing System that runs off your mobile phone! yes the new huetouch Mobile product can deliver proximity marketing from any Microsoft windows mobile device. See huetouch from more !!

Boys in Bluetooth

http://www.itvlocal.com/wales/news/?player=WAL_News_15&void=255519

See products that can make this happen for police forces at huetouch

Tech-savvy Letting Agents

We are revolutionising house hunting for the Chelmsford community as we bring the latest texting technology to Chelmsford. Tenants can now receive property details to their mobile phones whilst outside a Martin & Co property, simply by sending a text message.

Known as “Textboarding” house hunters will be able to text a property code (which is displayed underneath the Martin & Co “To Let! boards) and instantly receive a text message back containing that property’s details.

Stephen Frost, Principal at Martin & Co Chelmsford said: “Textboarding is the future for house hunting, we are very excited to be providing this technology to the people of Chelmsford. You’ll now notice Textboards on all Martin & Co To Let boards so if you’re house hunting in our area you now have an even easier way to find property details. Also, if you are a landlord, you’ll get even more enquiries on your property.”

The History of Bluetooth

The Bluetooth specification was developed in 1994 by Jaap Haartsen and Sven Mattisson, who were working for Ericsson Mobile Platforms in Lund, Sweden. The specification is based on frequency-hopping spread spectrum technology.

The specifications were formalized by the Bluetooth Special Interest Group (SIG). The SIG was formally announced on May 20, 1998. Today it has a membership of over 11,000 companies worldwide. It was established by Ericsson, IBM, Intel, Toshiba, and Nokia, and later joined by many other companies.

Bluetooth 1.0 and 1.0B

Versions 1.0 and 1.0B had many problems, and manufacturers had difficulty making their products interoperable. Versions 1.0 and 1.0B also included mandatory Bluetooth hardware device address (BD_ADDR) transmission in the Connecting process (rendering anonymity impossible at the protocol level), which was a major setback for certain services planned for use in Bluetooth environments.

Bluetooth 1.1

* Ratified as IEEE Standard 802.15.1-2002.
* Many errors found in the 1.0B specifications were fixed.
* Added support for non-encrypted channels.
* Received Signal Strength Indicator (RSSI).

Bluetooth 1.2

This version is backward-compatible with 1.1 and the major enhancements include the following:

* Faster Connection and Discovery
* Adaptive frequency-hopping spread spectrum (AFH), which improves resistance to radio frequency interference by avoiding the use of crowded frequencies in the hopping sequence.
* Higher transmission speeds in practice, up to 721 kbit/s, than in 1.1.
* Extended Synchronous Connections (eSCO), which improve voice quality of audio links by allowing retransmissions of corrupted packets, and may optionally increase audio latency to provide better support for concurrent data transfer.
* Host Controller Interface (HCI) support for three-wire UART.
* Ratified as IEEE Standard 802.15.1-2005.

Bluetooth 2.0 (currenly supported on all Huetouch products)

This version of the Bluetooth specification was released on November 10, 2004. It is backward-compatible with the previous version 1.1. The main difference is the introduction of an Enhanced Data Rate (EDR) for faster data transfer. The nominal rate of EDR is about 3 megabits per second, although the practical data transfer rate is 2.1 megabits per second.[8] The additional throughput is obtained by using a different radio technology for transmission of the data. Standard, or Basic Rate, transmission uses Gaussian Frequency Shift Keying (GFSK) modulation of the radio signal; EDR uses a combination of GFSK and Phase Shift Keying (PSK) modulation.[9]

According to the 2.0 specification, EDR provides the following benefits:

* Three times faster transmission speed — up to 10 times (2.1 Mbit/s) in some cases.
* Reduced complexity of multiple simultaneous connections due to additional bandwidth.
* Lower power consumption through a reduced duty cycle.

The Bluetooth Special Interest Group (SIG) published the specification as "Bluetooth 2.0 + EDR" which implies that EDR is an optional feature. Aside from EDR, there are other minor improvements to the 2.0 specification, and products may claim compliance to "Bluetooth 2.0" without supporting the higher data rate. At least one commercial device, the HTC TyTN pocket PC phone, states "Bluetooth 2.0 without EDR" on its data sheet.[10]

Bluetooth 2.1

Bluetooth Core Specification Version 2.1 is fully backward-compatible with 1.1, and was adopted by the Bluetooth SIG on July 26, 2007.[9] This specification includes the following features:

* Extended inquiry response: provides more information during the inquiry procedure to allow better filtering of devices before connection. This information includes the name of the device, a list of services the device supports, plus other information like the time of day and pairing information.

* Sniff subrating: reduces the power consumption when devices are in the sniff low-power mode, especially on links with asymmetric data flows. Human interface devices (HID) are expected to benefit the most, with mouse and keyboard devices increasing their battery life by a factor of 3 to 10. It lets devices decide how long they will wait before sending keepalive messages to one another. Previous Bluetooth implementations featured keep alive message frequencies of up to several times per second. In contrast, the 2.1 specification allows pairs of devices to negotiate this value between them to as infrequently as once every 5 or 10 seconds.

* Encryption Pause Resume: enables an encryption key to be refreshed, enabling much stronger encryption for connections that stay up for longer than 23.3 hours (one Bluetooth day).

* Secure Simple Pairing: radically improves the pairing experience for Bluetooth devices, while increasing the use and strength of security. It is expected that this feature will significantly increase the use of Bluetooth.[11]

* Near Field Communication (NFC) cooperation: automatic creation of secure Bluetooth connections when NFC radio interface is also available. This functionality is part of the Secure Simple Pairing where NFC is one way of exchanging pairing information. For example, a headset should be paired with a Bluetooth 2.1 phone including NFC just by bringing the two devices close to each other (a few centimeters). Another example is automatic uploading of photos from a mobile phone or camera to a digital picture frame just by bringing the phone or camera close to the frame.

Future of Bluetooth

* Broadcast Channel: enables Bluetooth information points. This will drive the adoption of Bluetooth into mobile phones, and enable advertising models based around users pulling information from the information points, and not based around the object push model that is used in a limited way today.

* Topology Management: enables the automatic configuration of the piconet topologies especially in scatternet situations that are becoming more common today. This should all be invisible to the users of the technology, while also making the technology just work.

* Alternate MAC PHY: enables the use of alternative MAC and PHY's for transporting Bluetooth profile data. The Bluetooth Radio will still be used for device discovery, initial connection and profile configuration, however when lots of data needs to be sent, the high speed alternate MAC PHY's will be used to transport the data. This means that the proven low power connection models of Bluetooth are used when the system is idle, and the low power per bit radios are used when lots of data needs to be sent.

* QoS improvements: enable audio and video data to be transmitted at a higher quality, especially when best effort traffic is being transmitted in the same piconet.

Bluetooth high speed

On March 28, 2006, the Bluetooth Special Interest Group announced its selection of the WiMedia Alliance Multi-Band Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing (MB-OFDM) version of UWB for integration with current Bluetooth wireless technology.

UWB integration will create a version of Bluetooth wireless technology with a high-speed/high-data-rate option. This new version of Bluetooth technology will meet the high-speed demands of synchronizing and transferring large amounts of data, as well as enabling high-quality video and audio applications for portable devices, multi-media projectors and television sets, and wireless VOIP.

At the same time, Bluetooth technology will continue catering to the needs of very low power applications such as mouse, keyboards, and mono headsets, enabling devices to select the most appropriate physical radio for the application requirements, thereby offering the best of both worlds.

Bluetooth SIG is also developing a method of radio substitution to use an alternate MAC/PHY (such as IEEE 802.11) for application requiring more speed. It will allow Bluetooth protocols, profiles, security and pairing to be used in consumer devices on top of the already present 802.11 radio, when necessary. [14]

Bluetooth 3.0 (actual version number TBD)

The next version of Bluetooth after v2.1, code-named Seattle (the version number of which is TBD) has many of the same features, but is most notable for plans to adopt ultra-wideband (UWB) radio technology. This will allow Bluetooth use over UWB radio, enabling very fast data transfers of up to 480 Mbit/s, while building on the very low-power idle modes of Bluetooth.

Bluetooth low energy

On June 12, 2007, Nokia and Bluetooth SIG announced that Wibree will be a part of the Bluetooth specification, as an ultra-low power Bluetooth technology.[15] Expected use cases include watches displaying Caller ID information, sports sensors monitoring your heart rate during exercise, and medical devices. The Medical Devices Working Group is also creating a medical devices profile and associated protocols to enable this market. Battery life for devices using Bluetooth low energy technology is designed to last up to one year.

Minority Report comes of age with Bluetooth Marketing

Forward thinking Bluetooth Marketing company Huetouch came one step closer today to delivering the future outlined in the Tom Cruise movie Minority Report. To add to their full range of Marketing Solutions, the innovating company now has in built Bluetooth tracking to identify individual handsets and send specific content to the device based on previous activity. Now Bluetooth Marketing is more targeted and can deliver individually tailored content to users.

BLUETOOTH® TECHNOLOGY OVERVIEW

Definition
Bluetooth wireless technology is the global short-range wireless standard for personal connectivity of a broad range of electronic devices – from mobile phones and headsets to cars, MP3 players, cameras and printers.
The technology is now available in its fourth version of the core specification and continues to develop, building on its inherent strengths – small-form factor radio, low power, low cost, built-in security, robustness, ease-of-use, and ad hoc networking abilities.

Specification Version
The Bluetooth SIG adopted Bluetooth Specification Version 2.0 + EDR (Enhanced Data Rate) in November 2004. In March 2007, the Bluetooth SIG announced Bluetooth Core Specification Version 2.1 + EDR (Enhanced Data Rate) which adds improved pairing and lowers power consumption. The Bluetooth SIG is currently working on the next version of the technology which will incorporate ultrawideband technology as a high-speed alternative for manufacturers and Wibree technology as an ultra low power version of the specification Specification Make-Up Unlike many other wireless standards, the Bluetooth wireless specification gives product developers both link layer and application layer definitions, which supports data and voice applications.
Spectrum Bluetooth wireless technology operates in the unlicensed, 2.4 GHz ISM band.

Interference
Bluetooth wireless technology’s Adaptive Frequency Hopping (AFH) capability was explicitly designed to reduce interference between wireless technologies sharing the 2.4 GHz spectrum. AFH works within the spectrum to take advantage of the available frequency. This is done by detecting other devices in the spectrum and avoiding the frequencies they are using. This 'adaptive hopping' allows for more efficient
transmission within the spectrum, thereby providing the user with greater performance, even if using other technologies along with the Bluetooth wireless technology.

Range
Class 2 radios – most commonly found in mobile devices – have a range of 10 meters or 30 feet
Class 1 radios – used primarily in industrial use cases – have a range of 100 meters or 300 feet

Power
The most commonly used radio (class 2) uses 1mW of power; Bluetooth wireless technology is designed to have very low power consumption; the specification reinforces this by allowing radios to be powered down when they are not active.

Data Rate
3Mbps

BBC: Why the future is in your hands

Last Updated: Monday, 18 February 2008, 11:21 GMT
E-mail this to a friend Printable version
Why the future is in your hands
By Darren Waters
Technology editor, BBC News website

GPS=enabled handset- Lluis Gene (AFP/Getty)
GPS is starting to appear on more handsets

Sales of smartphones are expected to overtake those of laptops in the next 12 to 18 months as the mobile phone completes its transition from voice communications device to multimedia computer.

Convergence has been the Holy Grail for mobile phone makers, software and hardware partners, as well as consumers, for more than a decade.

And for the first time the rhetoric of companies like Nokia, Samsung and Motorola, who have boasted of putting a multimedia computer in your pocket, no longer seems far fetched.

"Converged devices are always with you and always connected," said Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo, Nokia chief executive at last week's Mobile World Congress in Barcelona.

Last year Nokia sold almost 200m camera phones and about 146m music phones, making it the world's biggest seller of digital cameras and MP3 players.

In the coming year the firm predicts it will sell 35 million GPS-enabled phones as personal navigation becomes the latest feature to be assimilated into the mobile phone.

Form and function

Nigel Clifford, chief executive of Symbian, said: "All of those single use devices - MP3 players, digital camera, GPS - are collapsing onto the phone."

"We are going past the point where this was a phone with a few other things," he said.

Symbian's operating system shipped on 188 million phones last year and a third of those came with GPS.

"We see mobile phones evolving into multi-functional devices that now support consumer electronics, multimedia entertainment and mobile professional enterprise applications; all converging," said Luis Pineda, from mobile phone chip firm Qualcomm.

Man taking photo with phone, Roslan Rahman AFP/Getty
More and more people are snapping shots with a handset
Convergence is being driven by a combination of software, services and hardware.

The first phones powered by a chip running at 1Ghz will hit the market later this year, seven years after the first desktop chip broke the gigahertz barrier.

Qualcomm's 1Ghz Snapdragon chipset will debut inside a number of handsets, including some from Samsung and HTC

"It's a first in the industry for a wireless chipset," said Mr Pineda.

As well as raw horsepower Snapdragon also features a dedicated application processor, as well as the ability to handle 12 megapixel digital photos and up to 720p high definition video imaging.

Mr Clifford from Symbian said the mobile industry had to deliver multi-function devices which did not compromise.

He said: "When we look at what is collapsing on to these devices and people's expectations with their experiences on single-use specialized devices there is going to be rising expectations."

Chip shop

More than 90% of the world's mobile phones are powered by technology created by British firm Arm. It designs chip architectures that it licenses to semiconductors makers such as Qualcomm and Broadcom.

Ian Drew from Arm said future mobile phones demanded ever more processing power.

But building chips with greater processing was not a straightforward, he said.


The future of the internet and computing applications is not going to be in the home or at the office; it's going to be mobile
Nigel Clifford, Symbian
"If you look at a typical phone the first thing you have got to do is get within the half a watt envelope.

"It needs to get into your pocket. And there's no fan. It needs to work for days rather than hours."

He added: "When you start adding multi media experiences - such as 3D graphics, video, and games - there are two ways to do that: you can get bigger and bigger processors or you have multi core where you can switch off a processor when you don't need it."

Arm is demonstrating a chip architecture, called Coretex A9, that will offer four cores, or processors, on a single chip.

Symbian has been working with Arm on future uses for multi-core mobile phones.

"You can use massive amounts of processing if you need it. But if you don't you can power down the cores that aren't required," said Mr Clifford.

Symmetrical Multi Processing will drive the next generation of applications on a phone, he added.

"Silicon vendors are looking very seriously at how they integrate SMP."

Mr Clifford added: "The future of the internet and computing applications is not going to be in the home or at the office; it's going to be mobile."

Quake III screenshot, Activision
The gaming abilities of handsets are rapidly improving
He said gaming would be the next feature to collapse into phones.

"That is one of the next single usage devices that will start feeling the pressure from the mobile device," he said.

3D graphics acceleration is becoming standard on many of today's mobile phones and specialists like Nvidia have joined the market.

Mr Clifford said today's most powerful mobile phones, such as Nokia's N96 and NTTDoCoMo's 905 series have the same power as a laptop from 2000.

Nvidia's APX 2500 chip has enough 3D graphics acceleration to handle Quake 3, a PC game from 1999, on a mobile phone.

Handset owners were also beginning to expect the same online experience they have on their desktop PCs on their mobile phones.

"Web 2.0, social networking and video sharing; that's a real driver of horsepower," said Mr Drew from Arm.

He added: "But you need to be able to get data in. The next generation of mobile phones need high performance radios - they will have high data rates that will enable this content to be streamed to you."

Symbian is working on technology called Freeway to give phones the ability to move seamlessly between wireless networks, like wi-fi and cell networks like 3G and 4G.

"We don't want people to feel the mobile web is a second class experience."

Networking Bluetooth Zones together.

In order to maximise throughput and downloads in a geographical venue such as a subway or a shopping mall, Bluetooth proximity marketing Zones can be networked together creating one larger logical Zone. Suppliers such as Huetouch enable this grouping of Zones through a simple management interface. When grouped together Bluetooth servers will act as one, ensuring that an end user whom has received a download previously does not get asked by another server within the location again, equally an end user rejecting the request to download will not be asked repeatedly by other servers.

Bluetooth servers can be networked in many ways, Huetouch provide Bluetooth Marketing Zones which can be networked using:

3G or GPRS across cellular networks.
WIFI groups.
IP Networked devices within a subnet.

Each of the various networks have their own strengths and drawbacks, usually based around download amounts and security.

Not only do larger Zones enable more thorough downloading of information but they also are able to measure footfall in a given location showing the movement of people though a geographical zone.

Huetouch offers White Label solution for marketing companies

Huetouch now offers marketing, advertising, ambient media or creative agency a fully white label solution set which they can sell as their own, benefits include:

• Re-branded best of breed hardware solutions
• Rebranded customer portal with your brand, colours and data feeds
• Re-packaging
• Software and portal only option (non-UK)
• URL marking and logon from your own website
• Rebranded proximity marketing software products for PC and XDA
• Second line support and training for your organisation
• Legal protection and confidentiality for you and your end users.

How effective is Bluetooth Marketing ?

Like any technology and marketing solution result vary based on a number of factors:

* Effective deployment of "zone" using the most appropriate products
* Visual assets promoting the Zone
* An incentive for phone owners to want to accept the download
* Capacity and footfall planning
* Appropriate files size based on Zone dynamics.

A good company like Huetouch, or Bloo2.com will help you with the above, using formulas for calculate capacity and assisting with visual, audible and sensory assets to encourage download.

Results of Bluetooth Marketing can be anywhere from 1% of all unique phones receiving a download to 35%+ of all phones receiving a download (this excluded very niche applications where upt to 100% of people receive, I.E a university lecture theatre or art gallery, include of the an on demand solution such as the Touch-2000 trigger from Huetouch will also improve download rates.

Huetouch and other Bluetooth Proximity Marketing companies have developed sophisticated algorithms which enable brands to know (based on budget) what the appropriate deployment solution should look like, based on the objectives of the customer as to what percentage of footfall should receive a download request from the Bluetooth server.

Benefits of Proximity Marketing

Given the rapid growth in Mobile Marketing and Bluetooth adoption, Bluetooth Proximity Marketing has many benefits:

• It is free for handset owners to receive downloads.

• It is quicker to download than MMS and other cellular solutions.

• It does not require the use of Cell / Mobile networks - thus incurs no transactional costs.

• It is standards based and legal (it operates in the unlicensed, 2.4 GHz ISM band).

• It is measurable and can show clear Return on Investment (RoI) for Mobile campaigns.

• It can be targeted to a specific location, group or event at any time.

• It is low cost, requiring only capital outlay from transmitters and software.

• It does not capture mobile numbers or access data on handsets thus is secure.
It offers opt-in and opt-out of messages as part of the standard.