IcyPole: using Bluetooth to sample other people's music collections

If you've been waiting for yet another clever use for Bluetooth that'll require a virtually unattainable critical mass before it'll be truly useful, you're in luck. There's a new software application for Bluetooth-enabled cellphones and PDAs called IcyPole which is supposed to alert you whenever somebody else with music you might be interested in is in the general vicinity. That is, assuming they also have a Bluetooth-enabled cellphone or PDA with IcyPole running on it, which is going to be a dicey prospect even under the likeliest of circumstances. We're not opposed to music lovers using wireless technologies to find each other or sample each other's collections while out in public, but it's just that very few people walk around with MP3s on their cellphones (this is still a few years away from being commonplace)
and even fewer people are likely to have IcyPole installed. The only way we'd really see something like this working would be if Apple put Bluetooth or WiFi into the iPod, and then built-in the necessary software for people to browse other people's collections (there are already a few proof-of-concept applications out there that do this).

Anyway, there seems to be this problem with people coming up with clever applications for Bluetooth faster than the general public (most of whom have never even heard of Bluetooth) can take advantage of them. And it doesn't help that getting two Bluetooth gadgets to actually work together is still way more of a headache than it needs to be—something which positions Bluetooth to be the 21st century equivalent of programming a VCR.