Wireless at Work

Computerworld - Mention wireless technology, and most folks think of BlackBerries retrieving e-mail or stock quotes, or those hyped wireless access points at Starbucks and airport lounges. But these days, wireless technology is expanding its job description to include some grittier applications.
Lately, wireless has rolled up its sleeves and joined the working class.
Service technicians now use it in their trucks to call up repair information while at a customer's house. Bulldozer operators use it to get information on where to build the next road. Police officers use it to catch crooks by monitoring mug shots, maps and graphical data sent out from headquarters.
Wireless technology has even made its way into some everyday places, as pioneering industries take core wireless capabilities to new levels. Bring a garment into an RFID-enabled dressing room, and the color options and fabric information are displayed on a plasma screen. Or visit a wireless-enabled emergency room, where your doctor can call up your medical history on a PDA from the hospital's data repository.
These new applications bring with them exciting new possibilities that many of you are eager to explore. Our reader poll showed that 64% of respondents consider wireless technology important to their business goals.
In the pages that follow, we take a look at cutting-edge wireless uses and hear from industry observers about which wireless vendors are making the grade for corporate IT. You'll find answers to frequently asked questions about wireless LAN setups and read about new advances that the top wireless vendors expect to introduce this year. We hope that, armed with this information, you can put wireless to work in your own company.
Ellen Fanning is special projects editor at Computerworld. Contact her at ellen_fanning@computerworld.com.

Read more about Mobile and Wireless in Computerworld's Mobile and Wireless Topic Center.