The solution was the , a $50 Bluetooth receiver that implements the , a streaming protocol that can connect mono or stereo audio sent from one device (such as a computer, smartphone, or an "i" device) to an output device.
The A2DP spec is now widely implemented so you'll find support in all sorts of proprietary devices and a number of operating systems, including 1.5+ devices, Apple iOS 3.0+, OS X 10.5+, and 7.
You plug the audio output from the Music Receiver into your stereo, plug the supplied wall wart in, and the Music Receiver temporarily goes into pairing mode. Use your sending device's Bluetooth controls to search for the Music Receiver, , and that's it. On the sending device choose the Belkin Music Receiver, and voilà!
You can pair up to eight devices but only one at a time can be connected to the Music Receiver. This means you have to explicitly disconnect, say, your iPod before you connect your iPad, otherwise the iPad connection will fail and, it must be said, fail rather inelegantly. Let's hope future renditions simplify the task of changing A2DP connections to a true consumer level of simplicity.
The Belkin Music Receiver works flawlessly with my iPad and my Droid Incredible (still my favorite cell phone so far), but when I touch the device to the back side of my iPod Touch while it's playing I get "dropouts" ... I suspect the Bluetooth antenna is located there so my high-tech solution? Don't put my fingers there. Yes, it's less than satisfactory on the part of Apple, but otherwise the setup works great.
The other wireless enhancement that's got me excited is the Eye-Fi Pro X2, an 8GB storage card that includes an 802.11n transceiver. Put one of these into one of the and you can automatically have your photos (in both JPEG and RAW formats) and videos uploaded to content sharing services including Flickr, Facebook, Picasa, MobileMe and YouTube, as well as directly to a PC over an ad hoc wireless connection.
The Pro X2 operates at transfer speeds of up to 6MBps () making it fast enough for most consumer and "prosumer" cameras, can work with (one free year of service is included with the Pro X2), and supports geo-tagging (the automatic addition of geographical coordinates) using the (the Pro X2 includes lifetime WPS service).
I tested the Pro X2 with a and a Mac G4 running OS X 10.5 (Windows is also supported) and my only problem was during installation; the Eye-Fi Center application installed, asked if I wanted to update, declared the update a failure and just quit and wouldn't work at all! The solution was to re-install, but really?
Anyway, once the Eye-Fi Center was properly installed, the card (which comes with a USB card reader) configured, and the online sharing services linked to, the entire system worked perfectly! It is astounding to snap a few pictures or a video and see them appear online as soon as a Wi-Fi connection is available.
The Pro X2 also provides an "endless memory" mode which, after uploading, deletes a user-definable percentage of images so you never have to think about running out of storage (at least, as long as you've got a wireless service).
I love the Eye-Fi Pro X2! It's a fantastic wireless enhancement and, at $150, it's great value. The Eye-Fi Pro X2 gets a rating of 4.5 out of five.
Gibbs is without wires in Ventura, California. Cross the aether to .
in Network World's Software section.