If the computing experience is to get better, doing away with those pesky wires is a good step. Cut up another cable with the advent of wireless USB.
There's a line in U.S. comedy show, Big Bang Theory along the track of "Everything is better with Bluetooth!" Which is, unfortunately, rubbish. Bluetooth is over-complicated, slow and plain annoying, on PCs at any rate. Also on the horizon, hoping to consign USB 2.0 to history will be the forthcoming USB 3.0 standard, but in the mean time Japanese company KDDI is getting ready to spring wireless USB 2.0 on us.
Using an infra-red converter, data is freed from the wires and can be sent up to 1 gigabit per second, fast enough for phones, music and video players, and other gadgets, presumably within a short range. A converter will be needed for existing devices to complete the other end of the loop but it is hoped that future devices will have that built-in to do away with the need for a converter.
Of course, Intel has an official standard for wireless USB, but it uses ultrawideband radio frequency, and the regulatory approvals needed in each country (not to mention the fact that each country uses slightly different radio frequencies) has effectively stalled industry adoption of this standard.
With
USB 3.0 heading our way in 2010, its 400 megabytes per second practical speed means wired data transfer is about to shoot along. However, it'll still require the dreaded cabling and, to be honest, most files that go through a USB are only a few megabytes in size so it seems wireless USB 2.0 may fill a popular niche.
With wireless power charging also starting to hit the market, we could soon see a bit less spaghetti behind the typical home or office desk. There is some further detail at
Tech-On.