The Hall effect as a concept is quite old. Until very recently it has been restricted to usage as a laboratory tool. Recently progress in materials research reached a point where the Hall effect could be used in limited applications such as gaussmeters. Most recently the Hall effect has been incorporated in an integrated circuit. This new type of Hall effect device has opened the possibility of broad new areas of applications. This paper discusses some of the areas where digital Hall effect IC's have been used and discusses some preliminary work and potential applications for a linear Hall effect integrated circuit.