Aug 20

Google Wireless Transcoder: How have I not seen this before?

Google, Tech, Wireless 39 Comments »

So many sites look like utter crud on my Blackberry.

How have I not seen the Google Wireless Transcoder, which can take a site and strip it down to hopefully be readable.

It isn’t perfect, as people can do a lot of bad HTML coding, but it does a much better job than my Blackberry does itself for many sites out there.

gwt.png

Mar 05

Wireless Networks at Conferences

Tech, Wireless No Comments »

When you are at a conference it is often really tough to have a smooth ride wrt wireless.

One of the key factors in my experience has been, that top notch stable networks are:

Sponsored by Nortel (or Linksys, or insert other company)

rather than:

Sponsored by [A non networking company]

James Duncun Davidson was talking about the challenges of setting up a conference WiFi setup.

There are issues such as how multicast on a WiFi network becomes N unicast messages. DHCP itself is multicast, so you can easily get into network storms if you are unlucky. You probably shouldn’t give leases for 2 years out to the nodes either…

Also, 802.11b screws up things, so a lot of places try to have two seperate networks for b and g.

Interesting challenges. WiFi is the #1 thing I look for at a conference (I don’t care about the food, or the back-pack!). Hopefully next TSSS will have a less frustrating situation ;)

Feb 14

Watching TiVo shows on my laptop on a plane

Tech, TiVo, Travel, Wireless 2 Comments »

Lufthanza is offering wireless internet on their planes. I am sure others will follow.

This gets me more excited about flying across the pond than before. Mainly, because I can get online and waste the hours away.

Also, I can combine this with the box that you can plug your TiVo into which broadcasts it online.

Now, I can be sitting at 30k feet, watching my TiVo. That is cool :)

NOTE: there is a primer on the new TiVo To Go setup in TiVo 7.1

Jan 06

Harder to find power than WiFi

Tech, Wireless No Comments »

CP talks about the problem finding power for your laptop, not wireless.

Slashdot reported on this and it is spot on.

This was particularly telling for me when I was in europe. I didn’t have all of the power adapters that I should so I had to chain them together at one point. For example:

US plug -> US/UK adapter -> UK/Euro adapter

One of the adapters was so bad that I had to wrig up something so it kinda tied itself to the plug, and wouldn’t just fall off when I plugged in my iPod charger. What a pallava!

I even have one of the iGo systems which lets you interchange ends.

Back to power for mobile. I thought I read somewhere a year about, that companies are working on wireless power. How cool would that be :)

Sep 01

Perl / Apple / Wireless use: I wanted a boy, but now I will have a daughter?

Apple, Perl, Tech, Wireless 1 Comment »

My wife wants to have a daughter. I would love a son.

However it has been proclaimed that you can predict the sex of your child based on computer usage:

Men who use Apple iBooks/Powerbooks with wireless cards have a very high probability [>85%] of having female offspring that is far greater than the statistical average.

I am trying to do the math based on the fact that I only use Perl a little now, and use both PC and Mac.

(Really, we would be happy with anything)

Jul 06

Steeling wireless in the mountains

Tech, Wireless No Comments »

Time to drive up to Breckenridge…. 2 hours

Price for a condo in the mountains…. $200/night

Beer for the party with friends…. $100

Steeling wireless and working on the deck with the lake/mountain view…. priceless

Feb 28

Wireless Media Router: WiFi + USB

Tech, Wireless No Comments »

I found a link to a new type of Wireless router… the NetGear WGT634U Wireless Media Router. Now you have a 801.11b/g 108mbps router, with a port to plugin a USB device.

I was just about to get a nice USB hard drive, as they are getting cheaper and the storage space is massive. Now I can plug it into a wireless device such as the NetGear, and I don’t need a file server!

In addition, the integration of a USB 2.0-compliant interface makes the WGT634U the industry’s first home networking product to enable the connection of an external storage device, such as a high-capacity disk drive or other USB memory device, for centralized network backup or storage and sharing of files and multimedia content.

Links:

NetGear WGT634U Wireless Media Router

NETGEAR Unveils CES ‘Best of Innovations’ Award Winning Wireless Media Router With Application-Level Shared Storage, Remote Home Portal Access, and Super Wireless Range and Speeds

PDF data sheet

Feb 19

Find Wi-Fi locations with Google

Google, Tech, Wireless No Comments »

I have used EZ Goal Wi-Fi Hotspots in the past to find a wi-fi location nearby.

Now Google is in the act, and you can query via the new “Search by Location” service that is in beta in the Google labs.

http://labs.google.com/location?q=wi-fi&near=02140

Aug 21

Wireless Networks in all Hiltons

Tech, Wireless No Comments »

James Duncan Davidson talks about running into a wireless network at a DoubleTree (which is a Hilton chain).

They are putting in wireless networks in every Hilton. When I talked to someone at a DoubleTree in Cambridge,MA, they told me that they hadn’t worked out the “how to charge” people yet (don’t know why it is hard…), so for now it is free!

So if you are in a Hilton (or sub-hilton chain), find the hhonors SSID :)