July 23, 2006
A Tough Call: Invisible Phone Or Invisible Friend
A fun article from the Washington Post on people walking around and talking to themselves - no phone apparent, thanks to bluetooth headsets.
"Last year, a scant 2 percent of Americans were "extremely familiar" with Bluetooth, this technology enabling the wireless headsets. This year, that number is 50 percent, a statistical skyrocket dubbed by market analyst Brian O'Rourke as "really shocking."
And there's more: In 2005, 33 million wireless earpieces were shipped worldwide, he says. This year's predicted number: 55 million.
This is the future.
There's just this final glitch to work out: Discerning when, during conversations, a headsetted or earplugged someone is talking to you, or talking on the phone. This gets especially confusing because the contraption doesn't necessarily ring, and you can answer with your voice -- mumble, mumble, no fumbling with a phone required. So how do you tell when the conversational tides have shifted?
Further complicating matters is this: There is no receiver to move back and forth, pulling it back toward the neck when they're talking to you, and perching it by their mouth when they're talking on the phone."
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