Tag: WIFI

The hopes and fears of all New Yorkers will at once come true, thanks to yesterday's announcement that the city's plan to outfit subway stations with Wi-Fi and cell service are, once again, moving forward. We all knew it would happen eventually; three years ago, the MTA and Transit Wireless struck a deal that would outfit stations, but not tunnels, with wireless access. Still, some of us had hoped ...

Some of the Switched team take to two wheels for the daily commute, and, although the streets of New York are hardly the safest place to be biking, we're usually more concerned about bike theft than we are swerving taxi drivers. Most of us use the low-tech approach of riding a cheap-o road bike, and lugging around a heavy chain to lock it up, but we're now considering the Halo bike lock concept. ...

Although a number a major airlines have gone to great pains in offering Wi-Fi connectivity on their flights, few passengers are buying. USA Today says that "some analysts" estimate that on-board Wi-Fi adoption tops out at around 10-percent of a given plane's passengers. We at Switched rely on the Internet to make our coffee, pump our blood and give our poor lives some meaning, so we have no idea ...

Latte-sipping techies rejoice! Today is the day that Starbucks changes forever. No, a cup of Starbucks brew will still taste like cigarettes. And, yes, you'll still pay exorbitant prices for it. But from now on, at least, you can do so while surfing the Web for free. As promised, the ubiquitous chain will tear down its Wi-Fi pay wall today, effectively paving the way for millions of fair trade ...

There's no fury like a blogger unable to access a working Wi-Fi connection. But a new personal device could make it easier to get connected. According to The New York Times, Virgin Mobile USA released the MiFi 2200 wireless Internet hub on Monday. Personal hot spots are nothing new, but Virgin here has taken a different approach to how users pay for said technology. Rather than purchase an extra ...

Of all the people to be threatened via e-mail, high-ranking politicians should be at the bottom of your list -- unless, of course, you have delusions of grandeur. Such delusions are likely what spurred Minnesota native Barry Vincent Ardolf to hack into his neighbor's Wi-Fi network -- unless Ardolf was just aiming for the coveted title of "Weirdest Neighbor Ever." According to Information Week, ...

Finally, free Internet access will be available at Starbucks stores across these United States. According to Tech Crunch, chief executive Howard Schultz announced Monday in New York that, starting July 1st, customers can access AT&T W-Fi networks for free while they sip their coffee. Before this move, Starbucks customers could only use AT&T Wi-Fi for two hours with a registered ...

A few weeks ago Google admitted that it had inadvertently collected personal data being sent over Wi-Fi networks as its Street View cars made their way around the globe. Google collected certain data to identify networks and locations for later processing of the images it captured, however the company sucked up some extra data. Google simply wanted to erase the data and move on, but European ...

Highlights from this morning's other big tech headlines.... Apple may have to mount a wholesale offensive against Vietnam if developmental gadgets keep surreptitiously appearing in the Asian nation. An iPhone 4G recently surfaced, and now an iPod Touch with a 2-megapixel camera has materialized, as well. This begs just one important question: When can we get one? [From: Engadget] Google ...

Chevy Chase may not have been a big enough man to admit to his own wrongdoing in 'Fletch Lives,' but Google, apparently, is. On Friday, Google engineering chief Alan Eustace admitted that, for the past three years, his company has been unknowingly collecting personal data sent over open Wi-Fi networks. The admission, as the New York Times reports, came as a response to a recent inquiry from a ...

After making millions with the travel site Kayak, Paul English has turned his gaze from building Web start-ups to being a bit of a philanthropist. Okay, that's underselling a smidgen... English has taken on one of the more ambitious projects we've ever seen. His new hybrid non-profit/for-profit company, JoinAfrica, has a stated goal of blanketing the entire continent in free and low-cost Wi-Fi. ...

Wi-Fi is not the most secure method of transmitting data. Like any other wireless transmission system, it's relatively simple for a hacker to detect and intercept your data as it literally flies through the air. Cracking encryption systems, like WEP and WPA, which are meant to keep out uninvited Web surfers and data thieves, has proven elementary for those with moderate hacking skills. Now, the ...

There's a load of great tech news happening out there every day, and, unfortunately, we just can't cover it all. Here are a few of the other noteworthy things we saw today on our never-ending journey through the wild, wild Web. Just when we thought the ChatRoulette mashup well had gone dry, Paz Bernstein recorded himself painting ChatRoulette users and posted the result, 'ChatRoulette Speed ...

According to The Register, Google Street View cars in Germany have been scanning Wi-Fi networks and recording users' Media Access Control (MAC) address, which are unique identifiers assigned to networks, without permission. The country's Federal Commissioner for Data Protection Peter Schaar isn't happy about it, either. "I am appalled... I call upon Google to delete previously unlawfully ...

We're all more or less aware that we exist in a world that is largely invisible to the human eye. The machinations of physiology are too small to perceive, and the vast majority of the electromagnetic spectrum simply doesn't register with our peepers. But we're quite literally surrounded by electromagnetic waves, with radiation emitted by the sun and naturally-occurring radioactive particles from ...