You've heard about all the other hot wireless technologies such as Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, WiMax, and wireless USB (all of which are plentiful at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas). But have you ever heard of ZigBee? Here at the show, I caught up with the ZigBee Alliance's VP of marketing and business development Brent Hodges, who pointed out that ZigBee radios already are in tens of millions of devices and that by the year 2010, that statistic will rise to hundreds of millions.

So what exactly is ZigBee and where does it fit in, given all the other wireless technologies on the market? Unlike Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, WiMax, and other wireless technologies where the goal seems to be to pump the most amount of data through the air in different scenarios (e.g., Wi-Fi being wider range than Bluetooth), ZigBee is all about low data rate applications. Low data rate applications require less power than the radios used for Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and the other technologies. Therefore, it makes sense to have a different radio technology designed just for those apps.

At the ZigBee Alliance's pavilion at CES, some of those applications were being demonstrated. In the video, Hodges shows me an application where the electric meter outside a home can wirelessly communicate with and throttle a thermostat inside the house. That actual application is in use right now in several power districts around the nation where the local power utility is offering rebates to customers who allow the electric company to throttle their thermostats up or down in an effort to control the load on power plants. In such situations, customers can override the electric company's "settings." But doing so could end up voiding the rebate.

The way Hodges describes it, it may not be ideal to have the electric company taking control of your thermostats. But if the only alternative to that is brown-outs or black-outs, then it doesn't sound like such a bad idea. Especially if it involves a rebate.

Issuing such commands wirelessly is exactly the sort of low-data rate application that's suited to the ZigBee technology. Bluetooth and Wi-Fi would be overkill. According to Hodges, there's an entire range of applications for ZigBee -- everything from entertainment center control to health or home security system monitoring.