Update from Bluetooth Congress 2000

Michael Lunsford, who led the Palm V project, gave a speech in which he discussed Palm's plans for Bluetooth. His company sees the Palm at the centre of a 'personal connectivity bubble', used to control a variety of appliances with Bluetooth, and serving as the access point for internet content. Palm plans to provide the same internet capabilities for its Bluetooth Palm Vs as it does for the Palm VII, including access to Palm.Net. Palm has decided to disable access to Bluetooth Palms from unknown devices - only devices which know the identity of the Palm they are trying to access will be allowed to query the unit. This will satisfy privacy concerns and avoid draining the battery.

3Com is hinting that Palm may be announcing a GSM modem for the Palm V by the end of the year.

Tactel is demonstrating a prototype of a small Bluetooth module which clips onto the serial port of a Palm V. It fully supports Palm's dial-up networking and, with it, a Palm handheld is able to use a Bluetooth-enabled mobile phone for Internet access.