NEWS: Sony Develops New Close Proximity Wireless Transfer Technology "TransferJet"

In message , John Navas writes

It's the next big thing, short-range high-speed wireless data transfer in consumer electronics. You'll see quite a few manufacturers releasing press blurbs like this over the next year or two. They're all going to be vapourware, or at best locked-in proprietary designs (Sony MemoryStick anyone?)

There's a working party currently trying to nail down a standard for wireless USB connection, a high-speed data transfer system that can reach about 3 metres or so between devices. This will replace Bluetooth eventually for a lot of applications, being a lot faster and smarter too wrt addressing, power consumption etc. Like existing USB it's really meant for permanent or semi-permanent connections between devices (computer --> keyboard, for example).

Another sort of new wireless app is the close-proximity data transfer system of the sort that Sony has announced, where the devices are only a few centimetres apart, and connection/disconnection is triggered by proximity -- move the device close to its "partner" and they automatically handshake to make the data connection (camera --> printer, for example). This is further away than wireless USB and still in the BetaMax-style proprietary stage of development. Take any press releases about this particular sort of technology with a pinch of salt until you see a real industry-wide standard being announced.

Yup. Here's the slashdot thread on the topic:

Can you say, "Sony never saw a standard that they didn't think they could do better in a proprietary way?" I thought you could.

Paul Allen