Up to Speed? Wireless could be just what the lagging tech market needs to get moving again.

Ever since the Internet boom became an Internet bust a few yearsago, the world of technology has looked a bit pallid. Amid anoverall slow economy, tech spending is down, and tech innovationhas scaled back. But that doesn't mean it's dead. We spokewith several BIZ Experiencess and experts to see where the brightlights in technology are shining. And right now, the spotlightlooks like it's reserved for Wireless with a capital"W."

David Arfin, co-founder and CEO of GLOOLABS, a wirelessnetworking software start-up in Palo Alto, California, says:"Wireless will play a substantial role. Wireless and uses ofwireless will drive a lot of innovation." The two bright areasin this space are mobile phone technologies and Wi-Fi.

According to Isaac Ro, senior wireless analyst for research firmAberdeenGroup, the mobile phone handset market is staying fairlyhealthy. We won't, however, see the effects of the much-hyped3G rollouts for another couple of years.

That leaves Wi-Fi as the big mover and shaker of the moment.Will the popularity of Wi-Fi help bring about a larger technologyrevival? "Wi-Fi is something that will really enable a lot ofother IT spending," says Sandeep Singhal, co-founder and CTOof Fort Lee, New Jersey-based ReefEdge Inc., a wireless LAN systems builder.Some interesting developments surrounding Wi-Fi include voice overIP applications, which are starting to catch on with growingbusinesses, and new mobile technologies that let mobile phones roamfrom cellular networks to Wi-Fi networks.

With Wi-Fi growing as a backbone technology, it can potentiallydrag a variety of hardware sales along with it. "Eventhroughout the economic slump, Wi-Fi has represented one of thebright, shining lights of spending," says Singhal. Wirelessprinters, wireless projectors and wireless adapters for just aboutany piece of business hardware are working their way out into themarketplace. And the introduction of faster and more securestandards like 802.11g is continuing to drive growth.

With large-scale research and development projects cooling offat the enterprise level, BIZ Experiencess will be a driving forcebehind new technology innovations. Arfin also sees the open-sourcesoftware development community contributing in a big way. Soinnovation isn't necessarily floundering; it's just becomemore small-scale and is cloaked in more practical packaging when itdoes reach the market.

As an example, ReefEdge puts out all-in-one "boxes"that allow businesses to deploy and manage secure Wi-Fi solutionseasily, from the small-business to the enterprise level. GLOOLABSis developing a way for consumers to send multimedia from computersto home electronics systems using Wi-Fi. While these projects maynot have the glitz of an Internet IPO or the hype of the Segwayscooter, they have practical appeal and are designed to solvereal-world problems.

Trying to predict the next big thing in technology is as hard asit would have been to predict in 1989 what today's incarnationof the Internet would look like and how far it would reach."We're at a point in wireless where the next big thing isstill unknown," says Ro. Whatever happens, a tech revivalwon't look at all like the boom of the late '90s."We're not going to return to the growth we had in 1998and 1999. But it's not going to be dismal, and wireless iscertainly going to be one of the tent poles," says Ro.

Innovation hasn't gone away, and the role of technology inour businesses and our lives has not diminished. It's justgotten a little harder to recognize its face. The tech revivalwon't look like a jampacked dotcom launch party; it will lookmore like the GLOOLABS office-several guys with laptops, discountstore tables and an Internet connection in the middle of acavernous 20,000-square-foot space in Silicon Valley.