If your device is Bluetooth Smart Ready then it’s compatible with Bluetooth Smart and Bluetooth but if it’s Smart then it’s not compatible with regular Bluetooth. Got that? Good.

The Bluetooth SIG, never content to leave well enough alone, as introduced three new “icons” for their new 4.0 standard. “Best” Bluetooth devices will support both “old” Bluetooth and 4.0 while Smart devices will only support 4.0. In short, Smart Ready devices will support dual modes and work the way with which we are currently familiar in devices like laptops, phones, and PCs, while Smart devices will support ultra low power devices like heart rate monitors and pedometers, allowing Bluetooth to come up against wireless standards like ANT.

Does this effect you in any way? Probably not except that “Smart Ready” phones will be able to connect with your workout gear. Otherwise, this is the same old Bluetooth you know and love except that 4.0 allows for reduced power consumption because the connection “pulses” rather than maintain a constant connection. It’s available now on the 4S and the new MacBooks.

So when you think of Bluetooth, think of “Smart” as “not really Bluetooth, but Nike will support it soon” and “Smart Ready” as “I can connect my heart rate monitor to this and it takes less battery.” Bluetooth is, well, still Bluetooth. You can read a bit more here, but now you know and knowing is, as we all know, half the battle.

Read the rest here…

NTT Docomo not only announced eight new cell phones in their SMART and STYLE series today but also presented nine other models that are part of the so-called PRIME (top row in the picture) and PRO (the three devices on the right in the bottom row) series. Here is the complete rundown of the PRIME and PRO models. Some of the specs are unbelievable.

PRIME series

Fujitsu F-09A

(touch screen with 3.4-inch rotating WVGA display (90 degrees) and 8.1MP CMOS camera)

LG L-06A

(HSUPA cell phone (5.7Mbps maximum) with 3-inch touch screen, 5MP CMOS camera and quick access to various Google services)

NEC N-06A

(Wifi cell phone (IEEE 802.11b/g compatible, 54Mbps maximum) with rotating touch screen and 8MP camera)

NEC N-07A

(designer cell phone with 3-inch WVGA display and pre-installed sports apps)

Panasonic P-07A

(VIERA cell phone with 8.1 CMOS camera, LED flash and 2.1-inch QVGA sub display)

Sharp AQUOS SHOT SH-06A

(AQUOS cell phone with 10MP CCD camera and 3.3-inch touch screen)

HTC HT-03A (aka HTC Magic)

(the first Android phone in Japan, due out in June or July)

Sharp SH-07A

(cell phone with double digital TV tuner, 10MP CCD camera, Bluray recorder support, 2GB of internal memory and rotating 3.3-inch WVGA display)

Toshiba T-01A (aka TG01)

(alleged iPhone competitor with 1Ghz CPU, Windows Mobile and a 4.1-inch touchscreen, due out in Japan in June or July)

Find part 1 of the Docomo summer 2009 line-up here.

Following Softbank, Japan’s biggest cell phone carrier NTT Docomo announced its summer cell phone line-up [JP], consisting of a total of 17 new candy bars. Docomo breaks down the handsets into four series: STYLE (top row in the picture), SMART (the two phones on the left in the bottom row), PRO and PRIME. And some of the models just look awesome (sales begin this month).

Here are the eight cell phones that belong to the STYLE and SMART series.

STYLE series:

Fujitsu F-08

(compact and water-proof cell phone, which is 17.8mm at its thinnest part)

LG L-04A

(slider with 3-inch touch screen)

NEC N08A

(extra-slim (13.9mm) cell phone with 8MP camera and 3-inch WVGA display)

Panasonic P-08A

(slider with 8.1MP CMOS camera)

Panasonic P-010A

(water-proof cell phone with 3.1-inch QVGA display)

Sharp SH-o5A

(water-proof handset with 8MP CCD camera and special map function)

SMART series

Panasonic P-09A

(super slim (12.5mm) cell phone with superior sound quality)

NEC N-09A

(business cell phone with “leather” case, a 3.2-inch WVGA display and a 8.1MP CMOS camera)

The PRO and PRIME models can be found here.

Intersense currently makes NavShoe™, which is geared for firemen or paramedics lost or trapped during disaster situations. Alas, it’s not very accurate. The whizkids at Case Western should be able to improve upon the NavShoe with their “high-resolution, error-correction ground reaction sensor cluster” to make tracking systems suitable for use by Uncle Sam.

Hat tip El Reg.

Japan’s biggest telco NTT DoCoMo today announced 4 new cell phone series (STYLE, PRIME, SMART and PRO ), which are part of the company’s fall/winter product line-up. Docomo will offer a total of 22 new handsets.

As Japanese handset makers have recently vowed to internationalize more agressively, there is a good chance at least some of the new models will become available outside Japan at some point.

Here is the complete line-up.

STYLE series (focus on design)

1)
Fujitsu F-02A (equipped with a pedometer, waterproof, 3-inch VGA display)

2)
NEC N-02A (One-Seg digital TV with 30fps)

3)
NEC N-03A (designed with fruits as themes)

4)
Panasonic P-02A (6,000:1 contrast ratio)

5)
Panasonic P-03A (can be opened horizontally (“W Open Style”))

6)
Sharp-02A (supports specially designed fonts, 3-inch ASV display)

PRIME series (focus on features)

7)
Fujitsu F-01A (waterproof)

8)
Fujitsu F-03A (touch panel)

9)
LG L-01A (touch panel/hard glass)

10)
NEC N-01A (can be opened horizontally or vertically, also features a touch panel)

11)
Panasonic P01-A (“W Open Style”)

12)
Sharp SH-01A (features Dolby Mobile, 3.3 inch-ASV display)

13)
Sharp SH-03A (features a special touchpanel system called “Touch Cruiser”)

SMART series (focus on “productive” handsets for busy people)

14)
Fujitsu-F04A (waterproof)

15)
NEC N04-A (Amadana design)

16)
Panasonic P04-A (9.8 mm thickness)

17)
Panasonic P-05A (no camera!)

PRO series (focus on advanced handsets)

18)
HTC HT-01A (HTC Touch)

19)
HTC HT-02A (HTC Diamond)

20)
SH-04A (full keyboard, touchpanel, 3.5-inch ASV display)

21)
Blackberry Bold (CrunchGear review)

22)
Nokia E71 (CrunchGear review)

Flip-flop. Hopping on the bandwagon. Smart business design. Whatever you wanna call this, we’re down with it. The Las Vegas Dan Towbin Hummer dealership is jump’n ship and has plans to start selling Smart cars along with Vespa scooters instead of the monster SUVs. The car man himself says it’s more of a business decision than anything else as peeps are dumping their gas-guzzle’n rides left and right. Plus, Smart cars are the trendy things now; 10 bucks says that a Smart car gets more attention on the Strip than a Hummer any day.

This just in; kids that go to MIT are really F-ing smart. I just saw seven Android applications that have been developed over the short span of four months — with very little (if any) money — as part of a class called “Building Mobile Applications with Android”. It was a lot like most college presentations, except that HTC, Google, Verizon, Sprint, and the press don’t usually show up.

Hit the jump for a peek at the applications.

loco

Loco is a mobile social network built on top an Android phone’s contact manager, so anyone in your contacts is already your friend, so to speak. You’ll be able to view and track where your friends are located using Google Maps and real-time geolocation.

You can search within the application for, say, “party” and see a bunch of events that have been tagged by your friends with “party,” and what’s even more cool is that you can view real-time photos of the event in progress, assuming the people there are taking photos with their Android phones. So, in essence, you can check out the scene at a few places before you commit to going all the way across town.

I’m done with “scenes” since I’m now married, but this would have been cool for College Doug. He was a pretty awesome dude.

Flare

Flare is a geolocation tracking system aimed at small business owners who want to keep tabs on their employees. The demonstration given was that of a pizza delivery boy who has five pizzas to deliver. If a couple of customers call up to ask why they haven’t gotten their pizza yet, the delivery guy’s manager can use any web-based system to check out the location of his driver.

What’s more, he can give an ID number and PIN code to the customers, which the customers can then use to track the pizza guy themselves. Thankfully, that PIN code can be set to expire after a certain amount of time and/or each customer’s specific tracking privileges can be cut off by the manager or the driver himself.

GeoLife

GeoLife is very, very cool — perfect for a guy like me. It’s basically your to-do list on top of Google Maps. When you get within a certain range of something you need to pick up, it alerts you.

It also works as a traditional to-do list for things that aren’t location-based. The team that put this together is also working on a route-creation system wherein you could pick a few important items from your list and then have a route plotted out for you to follow that day. 

One reporter remarked that a similar idea is being developed by a company on the West Coast but he wouldn’t name names. So this might be a hot area. I’d use it for sure.

RE:Public

Guess what? Kids at MIT are smart and some of them are pretty funny, too. I thought that RE:Public was a brilliantly funny idea.

It’s basically a location-based social networking service for finding new friends once you get tired of your old ones. You connect locally based on a radius that you feed into the program and meet people based on dovetailing interests.

The real brilliance lies in the fact that you can rate and tag each friend and the system automatically updates each friend’s score based on how much time you spend near each other. So after a while, you can see who your “top friends” are.

Tags that are given to people on the network can be voted up and down by other users, so if one person tags me as “jerk”, all my real friends can vote that tag far enough down that it eventually disappears. That, or I’ll find out that my friends actually think I’m a jerk and I can start finding new friends. It’s the circle of life!

Locale (winner of the Android Project – top 50)

Locale actually just finished in the top 50 applications for Google’s Android Project competition, so congratulations to the team. Nice work, indeed.

Locale is a dynamic settings manager. You basically set up different settings for your phone based on time and location. So when you’re at home, you can automatically have all your calls forwarded to your home phone line. When you’re at work, you can have your phone set to silent mode and have your phone’s background screen set to a constantly updating work chart. That kind of stuff.

There’s already an API available for other developers to tap into Locale to set up profiles and settings for events and itineraries. My idea would be to have the phone’s mic take samples of ambient sound and then automatically adjust the phone’s ringer volume based on how loud or quiet your surroundings are. That’s just me, though.

KEI

KEI has been a dream of mine for some time. It’s basically a Bluetooth key for all your stuff. In this early version, it was demonstrated as an automatic car starter and unlocker so you don’t have to try to find your car keys all the time.

It’s built so that multiple people can control the same car and/or multiple cars can be controlled by a single phone. Security is handled via 128-bit encryption and there will be an administrative interface so you can cut your ex-lover’s access off when the two of you break up.

There’s a relatively simple module that gets installed in your car, much like existing remote starter systems work. Future KEI systems would also read diagnostic information from your car as well.

snap

Snap is very cool — I would absolutely use it. It’s kind of like Digg on a map. People can tag certain places and then other users can vote that particular attraction up or down.

So if you’re in a new city, you can pull up your current location and find things around you that other people think are interesting.

If there’s a particular user that’s uploaded a bunch of cool stuff, you can subscribe to his or her stuff. Arrows on the map change color the more popular they get. Very cool.

These things are tiny. Ever seen one? They can parallel park lengthwise. Or widthwise. Whatever. Nose to the curb, is what I’m getting at. I’ve seen them all over Europe and they look like life-sized Micro Machines.

They’ll be sold here in January for just under $12,000 and they’re supposed to get 40 miles to the gallon.

At nine feet long and 1,800 pounds, you’d think that it’d crumple up like a beer can if it got hit by something bigger (which is just about everything) but company officials claim that it’s “basically built like a race car, with the steel cage technology that protects the occupants.” It’s apparently supposed to be able to grab four out of five stars in government crash tests (it’ll be tested once it’s on the market).

I’d like to test drive one just to see if I’d actually fit in it (I’m 6′ 4″) and to check out how it handles. I think $12,000 is kinda steep for half a car, though. On the flip side of that coin is how great it’d be to be able to parallel park my ass off all around the city of Boston. If this thing could break the $10,000 barrier, I think we’d see them all over the place here.

Mini to the max: Will the Smart car grow on U.S. drivers? [CNN]