ITS A WIRELESS WORLD.DO YOU FEEL IT??

Connecting cables are usually clumsy and ugly, but they're rapidly becoming a thing of the past, as Jason Mountney reports

They trail over the floor like tangled spaghetti, running the stark, clean lines of the rooms you spent hours poring over interior design magazines to achieve. They also go missing, rendering gadgets useless. For the electronics consumer, wires and cords were are necessary evil. But not anymore. Now, as technology improves and get more affordablr, wireless signals are transforming our homes, sending data through the air.

Most of us had our first taste of wireless local area network (LANs) at cafes-venues installed to get us to slurp and surf. Now, most internet providers offer packages to easily set up our own wireless LANs at home, enabling more than one user to go online, anywhere in the house.

With mobile phones now doubling as everything from cameras to music players, a wireless technology known as Bluetooth is in alot of people's pockets too. This wireless protocol allows us to send photos from our phones to a computer. Most computers are Bluetooth-compatible, but if you had an old model that isn't, ask about a device for your USB drive to provide wireless connectivity.

The technology can also be used to stream music from a phone to a hi-fi unit;gaming consoles, which long ago ditched the cords that connect controllers to the main unit, now use Wi-Fi networks to connect players worldwide, and some radios can connect to wireless LANs, exposing them to worldwide radio stations.

Wireless technology is also appearing in stereos. In Sony's Radio Frequency system, for example, speakers are connected wirelessly to amplifiers, so they can be placed anywhere in a room, the only cord being the plug into the wall. Cord-free electricity is some way off yet, but a wireless world no longer seems like pie in the sky.