Not sure where to put this... but
Here's my thought, take a room full of people, tablets, phones, etc, but where's the connectivity? eg, let's suppose you wanted to communicate on some level to all the other devices.
For security purposes, we can eliminate most of the security features of Bluetooth, for example with bluetooth, if you wanted to send a picture or transfer a file, that's simply not going
to be possible, the chip would only allow up to 255 characters and anyone listening will get the packet, the idea is some kind of low power, low cost module which allows you to send a broadcast
message (along with a unique identifier, like a MAC) to anyone listening...
*Low Power
*Low Bandwidth 255 byte packets, ASCII.
*No authentication
If it took off, think of it like an old style pager system, you simply "grab" anything intended for your MAC address or read all the data, simple servers could be hosted on the device to broadcast
alerts, eg "dinner ready" "3 drinks for the price of 2" which are broadcast out to anyone listening, you could even reply back "table 12 please"
Shops, could use it.
People could use it to socialize with others (Anyone want?)
I could think of a thousand uses given enough time, Bluetooth almost fits the job except it's too sophisticated, eg, too much security 255 byte UDP style packets
EG (facebook tells you about a promotion 2 for 1 at some pub)... but you're NOT actually at the pub, with this system, they'd know you are an offer accordingly.. some kind of filtering system could be put in place..
I think the NRF24L01 has potential to do such a job, but i'm not sure maybe something new has to be invented.