World Cup CountdownBe friend first before pairing

With only a few hours left from the first kick-off, it's party time in Germany. Since football (soccer) fans from around the world will be flocking the twelve wonderful stadia, this is certainly "a time to make friends". Whichever team you are supporting doesn't matter, in the end there must be only one team lifting the World Cup.

This time around, Bluetooth will play a part in this festival. It will be in the hands of millions football fans. In many gadgets particularly mobile phones, Buetooth transmission is limited in range of up to 10 meters. So it's safe to share cool pic's of magnificent goals, salto, free kicks, corners, penalties via Bluetooth. However the thousands people packing each stadium poses a possibility of things like virus and spam spreading from hand to hand. To prevent such things from infecting your Bluetooth device, these simple precautionary tips might help:

- Turn off Bluetooth when not in use (this is also useful to save battery)
- Assign a unique name to each Bluetooth device, to easily identify one another.
- When active, only make it discoverable when you agree with someone else to exchange some goodies.
- Pair with your friends' devices before entering the stadium, it will be safer and take shorter time.
- Don't accept a connection request from unknown devices. While it is nice to have new friends, this is not the right way to do it. It may be a virus spreading scheme. Know the person first, and then ask about his/her Bluetooth device name. After that, you can pair your device with his/her and start a connection.

Happy 2006 FIFA World Cup. Winning or losing is number two because this is "a time to make friends".