Tag: wi-fi
A lick of paint could stop Wi-Fi leeching neighbours
Home decoration and technology doesn’t usually sit well together, but here’s an idea from boffins at the University of Tokyo who have come up with an aluminium-iron oxide paint that can absorb the electromagnetic waves at frequencies typically used by Wi-Fi.
In other words, painting your walls with this stuff could stop your wireless signal from leaking into neighbouring houses.
Interesting concept, but surely it would be much simpler to install some basic security on the wireless router?…
WeFi online wireless hotspot directory now available
WeFi has announced a couple of new services to help mobile users locate free and pay-for Wi-Fi hotspots worldwide.
First up is the online directory that, given an address, will show where the nearest spots are — well, it will if you download a piece of software first. A phone or laptop with GPS enabled can also be used to located new hotspots automatically…
Graphics cards are much better than CPUs at cracking Wi-Fi passwords
There’s a lot of software out there for cracking wireless passwords, and most of it’s legal. Why? Because it’s sold as a way for network administrators to ‘test’ their network’s security. Of course, there’s nothing to stop you ‘testing’ a network that you don’t own, in a coffee shop or airport, for example.
Most cracking programs use your PC’s CPU to do the hardcore number-crunching, but it turns out that the graphics card is actually far better at doing the kinds of calculations necessary. How good? Well, an above average quad-core CPU, the Intel Q6600 can only accomplish 1,100 passwords per second, whereas a similarly above-average ATI HD4870 graphics card can smash through 15,750 passwords per seconds.
Who woulda thunk it? Luckily, we might be seeing some of this power hit regular programs too, with Nvidia’s CUDA, ATI’s Stream, and Apple’s OpenCL frameworks. The graphics card isn’t best at every type of calculation, but if a program can intelligently route calculations to their fastest solver, then we could see blazing program speed increases in the near future.
(via HotHardware)
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CES 2009: iRiver's space-age product lineup
After Dan covered the Wave-Home multimedia communicator the other day, I did a little more digging, and found a bunch of other matching products that iRiver unveiled at CES.
I’ve always quietly been a fan of iRiver’s design work. Their latest MP3 players look incredible, and these sleek new gadgets wouldn’t be out of place in a documentary called “The home of 2100”. Click the Wave-Home below to view the gallery.
iRiver (via Akihabaranews)
CES 2009: Sony Cybershot G3 – Wi-Fi camera with built-in browser
Gosh, this is rather nifty. Sony’s new Cybershot G3 camera has an inbuilt web browser! Eat that, Eye-Fi. You can log on to a wireless hotspot, and surf the web to your heart’s content. Disclaimer – depending on the sites your heart wants to render, it may not end up 100% content.
Sony provides a “Easy Upload” homepage, with quick links to Shutterfly, Picasa, Dailymotion, Photobucket and YouTube (no Flickr?). It’ll store your login information, too, so you don’t have to type it in on the 3.5″ touchscreen every time. But what about the camera itself? It’s got a 10 megapixel sensor, 4x optical zoom and Face Detection, along with 4GB of internal storage. Available right now, for $500 (£330).
(via Gizmodo)
For more CES stories, click here.
MiFi – a pocket-sized wireless hotspot from Novatel Wireless
You’d be amazed at how many conferences lack something that I consider to be akin to running water and oxygen – internet access. Just as you’ve got comfortable in your seat near the back of the room, you open up your laptop, wait a few seconds for Linux to resume, and then utterly fail to find any open wireless hotspots.
Rather than fiddling with trying to use your phone as a modem, just connect to the MiFi. It uses high-speed HSDPA to connect to access the net via cell networks, meaning that you won’t get much signal in the wilds of Norfolk, but given that there are very few conferences in the wilds of Norfolk, you should be okay.
The internal rechargeable battery in this thing will support up to 40 hours of standby time and 4 hours of actual use without power. It’ll be available in the States in early 2009 via broadband carriers, so we might see someone like Three distribute thing alongside its existing D100 plug-in model.
Novatel Wireless (via PC World)
Related posts: 3 launches D100 wireless router for dongles | New Netgear routers, promise routing, will probably deliver
Can you really turn your iPod touch into an iPhone with Truphone?
Truphone, ever keen to promote its free and low-cost phone services, is appealing to those who want the Apple goodness of an iPhone but don’t want to pay large upfront bills or sign up to an extortionate monthly contract.
The “solution” is to buy an iPod touch, which is considerably cheaper than an iPhone (but still more expensive than a lot of mobile phones of course) and use Truphone’s application to make free calls over Wi-Fi to other Truphone or Google Talk users.
There are three fundamental problems with this if you’re hoping for an always on, out-of-the-box solution (don’t you love those kind of phrases?)…
Nokia developing Home Control Centre technology
Betting that within a few years every appliance we own will be hooked up to the internet, Nokia has announced plans for something called Home Control Centre. It’s basically software that will let you control everything in your home from your mobile device, from the heating to the toaster.
I know, we’ve all been there – gone out with some toast in the toaster, and forgotten that you actually wanted it on browning level three, rather than browning level five.
More seriously, though, this also has energy saving implications. You’ll be able to monitor energy usage from your mobile, and switch off anything that you don’t need remotely. Plus there’s a big convenience factor – preheat your oven 15 minutes before you arrive home, so you can just stick dinner straight in.
The only definite that Nokia has announced is some carbon footprint monitoring technology, from European energy firm RWE. That will use Wi-Fi enabled thermostats on each radiator. Nokia are promising to show this off in December at its annual Nokia World Conference. I wouldn’t be surprised if we heard a fair bit more about the broader too then, too.
(via Reg Hardware)
Related posts: How green is your kettle? | Ecobee – a Wi-Fi thermostat
Nimbuzz mobile IM/VoIP client makes it to the iPhone
Good news for iPhone users who have been waiting to use the Nimbuzz mobile instant messaging and VoIP client — it’s finally available to download for free.
It offers free voice calling over a Wi-Fi connection to users on Skype, Yahoo! Messenger, Windows Live Messenger and Google Talk, among others, as well as instant messaging to a whole host of other services…
WPA Wi-Fi security gets cracked
There are several ways to crack a wireless network’s security. The weakest, WEP, can be easily cracked using customized Linux software, but until today, Wi-Fi Protected Access (or WPA) had been considered secure. Not any more. Researchers have announced that they’ve developed a way to partially crack the encryption standard, but I warn you, it’s not easy.
The researchers, Erik Tews and Martin Beck, have found a way to break the Temporary Key Integrity Protocol (or TKIP) in as little as 15-12 minutes. They have not yet, however, managed to crack the encryption keys used to secure the data that travels from the PC to the router.
