Wi-Fi On Radar

Here’s a wireless utility with a difference. The Xirrus Wi-Fi Monitor generates a radar-like display to show all of the wireless networks in range of your laptop. By translating relative signal strength into range it shows, in a rather eye-catching way, which ones are likely to give you the best connection. For obvious reasons – unless you have a rotating and highly directional Wi-Fi antenna on your PC the display cannot tell you which direction the access point actually is, but it looks great. Versions of Wi-Fi monitor are available for Windows Mac and Linux, and the only catch is the XP version requires that you install Yahoo Widget Framework, which adds another 15Mb to the download, (the Vista version installs as a sidebar Gadget)

Clever Camera Card

Ho-hum, another 2Gb SD card, but hang on a minute, this one is different. The Eye-Fi Explore is a Wi-FI memory card. So what, you might be asking, SD Wi-Fi cards are nothing new, the one in my PDA must be at least 3 years old, but there is more. This is a fully self-contained wireless device, so it can be used in any SD compatible camera, and used to beam images across a network to a PC, printer or uploaded to the Internet. In other words the camera doesn’t need to be a special wireless-capable model. All you have to do is pop the card into your PC to activate and configure it then put it into the camera and while it is on it automatically sends image to any wi-fi device in range (around 3 – 5 metres). There’s an added bonus, it uses a system called Geotagging to label or identify where the picture was taken. Read More »

Zune 3.0 Is Here

The fall 2008 update for Zune takes Microsoft’s iPod killer at version 3.0. The Redmond company is preparing to release a new lineup of devices, including a new 120 GB model for $249.99, but also variants of 80 GB for $229.99, 16 GB for $199; 8 GB - $149.99 and 4 GB - $129.99. But the new devices are only a part of the Zune 3.0 evolution. According to the software giant, the new models will be accompanied by the introduction of fresh color schemes: blue-on-silver and sleek all-black. And as the new Microsoft digital media players will hit the shelves, consumers will be able to enjoy new features and upgraded firmware.

“Digital music services really come alive when they help people find not only the music they know they like, but the music they didn’t know they would love. With the combination of subscription, wireless access to millions of tracks, and powerful discovery features like personal recommendations and the ability to buy music from FM radio, Zune is taking the digital music experience to the next level,” explained Chris Stephenson, general manager of Global Marketing for Zune at Microsoft. Read More »

Who is on Your Network?

As soon as you set up a computer network you are opening up a great big can of worms. Cabled networks are pretty secure but wi-fi can create problems. Providing you take sensible precautions and enable encryption you should be okay. Nevertheless, you still might like to keep an eye on who is using it and connecting to the Internet  especially if you have kids in the house – in which case this little utility, called LookatLan puts you back in control. It generates a lot of infomration, most of which probably won’t be of much interest to you, but the main window tells you what you need to know, about who is connected to your network, and what they are up to.

Wi-Fi Internet Solution from Google

Google, along with its partners, is supporting an initiative that is supposed to bring wireless high-speed Internet to every home, for an affordable price. The method is somewhat unusual, although the search giant has been promoting it for five months now, and it consists of allowing Internet providers to use the white spaces between the frequencies that are already employed by TV and satellite microphone providers.

“Our nation typically uses only about five percent of one of our most precious resources. Unlike other natural resources, there is no benefit to allowing this spectrum to lie fallow. The airwaves can provide huge economic and social gains if used more efficiently, as seen today with the relatively tiny slices utilized by mobile phones and WiFi services.” said the company in a plan filed to the Federal Communications Commission. Read More »

Eee PC Does it…

As you may know I’m a huge fan of the Asus Eee PC 700 and dashed out and bought one, with my own money I hasten to add, the moment they went on sale, late last year. This titchy laptop has become my constant travelling companion, it does everything I need when I’m out and about and the price, at around £200, set a new benchmark for pocket notebooks and spawned a rash of clones and copies.

So now we have the Eee PC 1000, which follows hard on the heels of the first Eee PC upgrade (Eee PC 900) launched just a few weeks ago. The key feature of the 1000 is a 10-inch screen, (the 900’s screen is 8.9 inches) and like the 900 it has a 1.6GHz Intel Atom processor. Read More »

Wi-Fi Detector Shirt

Booting up your laptop only to find there are no Wi-Fi networks nearby is a pain. Thankfully, geeks everywhere can now find a signal for surfing by simply looking down at their apparel.

The Wi-Fi Detector Shirt has a basestation design on its front with signal waves emanating from it that apparently glow according to the intensity of a nearby network’s strength. For example, a weak signal may only light up a couple of bars on your shirt, while a stronger signal could illuminate all of them. Read More »

Laptops Aloud

It’s not long until the holiday season begins and with the widespread availability of Wi-Fi in hotels and airports, and Wireless Hotspots all over the place I’m guessing that a lot of you will be taking your laptop with you on your travels this year. The only trouble is they’re so nickable, all it takes is a momentary distraction, and it’s gone. Well, this little freeware utility isn’t going to stop you doing something daft, but if might just alert you to the fact that someone is interfering with it, and if it does get pinched, they won’t be able get at the data stored on it, at least not easily. Read More »

New Eee PC from May

As you may know I’m a huge fan of the tiny Linux-based Asus Eee PC and went out and bought one with my own money I hasten to add the minute they were available, last year. It’s been a very happy partnership and this cute little PC has been all over the place with me on numerous press and family jaunts, and it has never let me down. The Wi-Fi always latches on first time, it has all of the applications I need, 3 USB ports, an SD card slot and an MS compatible office suite. A few tweaks here and there, install the KDE desktop and you have a near perfect travelling companion. But now the Eee 900 hoves into view. Read More »

Watch Out Windows

Radio, phone, GPS, MP3 player, TV, camera… been there done that, but just when you thought there wasn’t anything else that could be shoehorned into a wristwatch, think again. A company called Epoq has managed to fit a copy of Windows Mobile onto one, which you drive using a 1.4-inch OLED touch screen, and just for good measure the EGP-98B has built in 1.3MP camera, wi-fi, Bluetooth and a 4-band GSM phone. Now, it might all be a wind-up (pun intended) because details and availability are all very sketchy, and good images are also hard to find. Read More »