Bluetooth is a technology to connect electronic devices on short distances, usually under 30 feet.

It is seen often in computer-peripherals like mice and keyboards. It’s also used a lot in phones to connect headsets and transfer data from one phone to another or to a computer.

Now, it’s available in digicams, too: for instance the Ricoh 500SE. However, how much use is it? Bluetooth is a simple, well standardized protocol using very little energy from your batteries — but it’s also rather slow, as people with multi-megapixel cameraphones have discovered.

If you are lucky, bluetooth transfers 15 KBytes per second or 1 megabyte per minute. No problem for small pictures, but a large one with high detail can take 5 minutes per image! So yes, it’s cheap, handy and easy, but has it’s restrictions.

Another technology, available for some time already is WiFi, introduced by Nikon in it’s P1 and P2 models. This is a very fast technology, but also more complicated and energy-hungry.

However, this one is going to stay and has in fact a good future if manufacturers start implementing the technology better. Sending a picture to a printer is easy, but WiFi has far more potential.

The easiest technology to start with is a small embedded webserver, so your camera can act like a wireless website sharing pictures with others.