Wi-Fi

Southwest Airlines is experimenting with in-flight WiFi. I guess this means that the first 20 passengers to shove and push their way to the front of the line will get the WiFi. Everyone else will be hosed. :-)

Southwest says it isn't allowing cell phone calls on the service, despite the fact that the technology allows VoIP calls. Is it planning to block VoIP? It's not saying.

One question lingers: When will it put electrical outlets on the planes? It's nice to have WiFi, but somewhat useless to do so without a constant feed of electricity to … Read more

AT&T said Wednesday that it will soon offer its broadband subscribers unlimited free Wi-Fi access in its hot spots, as well as a new supercharged 10Mbps tier of service.

Free Wi-Fi will be offered only to AT&T broadband subscribers who subscribe to services with 1.5Mbps downloads or higher. Subscribers who only have the company's wireless service will not be offered free Wi-Fi.

This means that users of the iPhone, which has Wi-Fi built in and is exclusively sold in the U.S. for AT&T's network, will only be able to take … Read more

The moment the Cowon Q5W portable video player hit my desk, I knew I would be in for a long review. After legions of iPod fans called foul when Apple failed to deliver a high-capacity touch-screen video player last fall (a 16GB iPod Touch just won't cut it for some folks) Cowon's long-promised 60GB Q5W seemed like the perfect cure. The Cowon Q5W is no mere PVP, however, considering that Cowon saw fit to infuse it with a treasure trove of coveted features such as Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, composite video output, MSN Messenger, and even GPS navigation.

So why … Read more

Southwest Airlines announced Wednesday that it plans to begin trials of satellite-to-airplane broadband Internet service sometime this summer.

Spokeswoman Marilee McInnis said Wednesday morning that initially Southwest plans to test the service on four planes. But because the airline's planes fly many different routes, she did not anticipate--at least not yet--that travelers would be able to plan to fly on one of those planes.

That means that in the early going at least, the service--which will allow passengers to access the Internet if they have their own Wi-Fi-enabled laptops--will be available at random.

McInnis did not say if Southwest'… Read more

I could write a whole blog about correcting computer articles in newspapers, pointing out mistakes and omissions. Many times I have corrected and expanded on articles in the Wall Street Journal by Walter Mossberg, but I've also griped about mistakes in the other newspaper I read regularly, my hometown New York Times. Back in May, on my previous blog, my comments on an article that David Pogue wrote in the Times about data cartridges for backing up computer files prompted a surprising rebuttal from Mr. Pogue.

Beats me why major newspapers don't hire computer techies to write about … Read more

Given the fascination that gadget makers have always had with the pen, something like this Wi-Fi detector was probably inevitable. After all, we've certainly seen stranger combo writing instruments, including everything from cameras and DVRs to SD card readers and, our personal favorite, aromatherapy.

The latest is a natural progression from the "Auto Detective Pen," which warns when you're in the vicinity of a wireless signal that could be used to operate a spy cam or other surveillance equipment. (Chinavasion makes both devices, but at least the hot-spot-finding version isn't based solely on paranoia.)

Using … Read more

We're living in happy times right now. Happy, because the Internet is no longer restricted to devices with wires. Yes, in 2008 the wireless Web is maturing like the finest cheese. Ready to exploit the growing ubiquity of a Web without wires is Intempo, whose portable Wi-Fi radio is designed to be used on the move, obviously with the intention of being used near Wi-Fi hot spots. All very well in big U.S. cities, but is it too early for the U.K.?

You'll be able to use the new radio--code-named "Daisy"--with about 6,… Read more

Some industrious programmers have found a way to hack the Archos 605 WiFi portable video player to run the Qtopia Linux platform. By the looks of it, the Qtopia hack doesn't add much in the way of extra media features (the Archos does pretty well as-is), but it opens the door to developing the Archos 605 WiFi as a more generally useful and configurable tablet PC. The Qtopia hack appears to work on older models of the Archos players as well, although the Archos fifth-generation players seem to be easier to configure.

Personally, I think the Archos 605 WiFi … Read more