Zigbee Stardust

Mike Masnick, writing for techdirt catches two new stories out on Zigbee. First is a a good general article on the technology by Paul Korzenlowski of TechNewsWorld. Wondering what this whole Zigbee thing is anyway? Check out Paul's article.

Consumer devices, such as entertainment systems and home security products, are gaining intelligence and becoming more PC-like. As this occurs, users want to connect them to home local area networks and automate processes, such as moving music files from PCs to stereos or turning lights on and off. Because standard network protocols are needed to deliver such functionality, home security system suppliers formed the ZigBee Alliance and created the IEEE 802.15.4 standard, which is a low cost, low bandwidth technique for transmitting information.

Mike Masnick also points out an article in Australia's Electronic News announcing the first commercially available Zigbee chipset, from ATMEL Corporation.
How big will Zigbee be? The FocalPoint Group, a San Francisco market research company has just issued a report on just the healthcare implications of wireless (Zigbee included) -- "The study projects that more than $7 billion will be spent on wireless data applications in the United States by 2010."