Are you allergic to WiFi? Some residents of Sante Fe, NM certainly think they are and they want to take away municipal WiFi to sate their delusions.
posted on Jun 17, 2008 - View this thread

Wi-fi Routers: Silent blinking death. Via badscience.net, where it was posted in response to what sounds like a truly awful show. Electrosensitivity previously discussed here.
posted on May 25, 2007 - View this thread

"Is Wi-Fi going to turn out to be the tobacco, asbestos or Thalidomide of the 21st century? It's looking that way." Woman choses to live in a Faraday cage to ameliorate the symptoms caused by electrosmog. It's funny that she looks so much like a beekeeper in her fancy hat, given the recent kerfuffle (from another UK paper) about mobile phones wiping out the bees. Coming soon: faraday undies. [via]
posted on Apr 27, 2007 - View this thread

They'll never piggyback on your wireless again Your router makes the computer look funny. (via MeTa)
posted on Aug 10, 2006 - View this thread

AirPower Wiki looks like its just getting off the ground, but if you travel much, you know the hassle of finding a power outlet in an airport. Hopefully it grows fast and furiously.
posted on Jul 26, 2006 - View this thread

Another wifi-related arrest was publicized today. In the past, the only case readily available to researchers involved additional seedy activities that are what really drew the arrest. The coffeeshop and other open hotspots show up on several sites such as jiwire and wifinder which are devoted to helping people find wireless hotspots.

In this case, a coffeeshop noticed someone leeching their WiFi parked in his truck -- over the course of 3 months, without ever entering the coffeehouse and making a purchase. While not yet convicted of anything, he has been arrested for "theft of services," and this could mean the first precedent set for whether or not "wireless piggybacking" is illegal. The case becomes especially interesting for both sides of the ethical debate on "borrowing" wireless. One one side of the judge's opinion will be the fact that the coffeehouse is a public place, not a private home. On the other side, it turns out the man who was arrested just so happens to be a registered sex offender, though this coincidental fact is not technically relevant to the case.
posted on Jun 22, 2006 - View this thread

Have extra Indian food around your house? Trade it once a month for free Wi-Fi access. Sharing WiFi via Google Maps [via mefi projects] If you've got WiFi and are willing to share it - or you can can 'see' someone else's WiFi and would like to use it - you're in the right place.
posted on Jan 16, 2006 - View this thread

New Orleans becomes the first US city with free citywide wifi.
posted on Nov 30, 2005 - View this thread

Newsfilter: Mountain View plans WiFi city. The Mountain View, CA City Council has approved an offer from Google to rent the city's street lamps for $12,600/year to install city-wide wireless internet. Some residents are concerned about privacy and health issues, but the city council says that's beyond their scope, and chooses to take the free lunch. (Disclaimer: I live here.)
posted on Nov 16, 2005 - View this thread

"They use my lines for free -- and that's bull." The CEO of SBC Communications Inc. Ed Whitacre launched this criticism at the likes of Vonage, Google,Yahoo and MSN. Meanwhile Google is seeking some alternative paths to the Internet.Perhaps SBC should head the old adage from John Gilmore "the net treats censorship as a defect and routes around it”Or perhaps these companies need to pay the proverbial Internet plumbers; myself, I prefer more competition;my phone bill has never been lower!
posted on Oct 31, 2005 - View this thread

Googlenet. What if Google wanted to give Wi-Fi access to everyone in America? And what if it had technology capable of targeting advertising to a user’s precise location? The gatekeeper of the world’s information could become one of the globe’s biggest Internet providers and one of its most powerful ad sellers, basically supplanting telecoms in one fell swoop. What was speculation this last month, now seems to be getting closer. However, it looks like it's raising hackles, similar to the ugly memories of google web accelerator beta which was cancelled just a few days after release
posted on Sep 20, 2005 - View this thread

"More than 10-million U.S. homes are equipped with [wi-fi] routers that transmit high-speed Internet to computers using radio signals. The signals can extend 200 feet or more." And Benjamin Smith was just arrested for going online through an unsecured one that didn't belong to him.

It begs the Doonesbury question: Isn't it still a free country?
posted on Jul 7, 2005 - View this thread

Wi-Fi Thank You is a place where you can send a thank you message to anyone who provides a free Wi-Fi hotspot.
posted on Jun 22, 2005 - View this thread

Republican Congressman Pete Sessions from Texas introduced a bill that would make all free, public, municipal WiFi illegal. Sessions, as it turns out, is a big fat recipient of SBC funds. Why stop there? Should we privatize highways as well? How about subways? Glad the liberal media is all over this one. Here are a couple of links: Original post on DailyKos, An informative editorial from the Fort Wayne paper
posted on Jun 9, 2005 - View this thread

Endangered Gizmos via the EFF (warning, they do want your money to continue fighting "to defend our rights to think, speak, and share our ideas, thoughts, and needs using new technologies, such as the Internet and the World Wide Web.")
Lawsuits have driven some excellent consumer products into extinction, like the ReplayTV 4000, DVD X Copy and the lamented wild and crazy Napster 1.0 including what drove them into extinction. They also list endangered gizmos like the HD TV PCI Card, Morpheus and Generic FireWire, open Wifi hot spots and CD burners.
Among the "saved" gizmos is the Skylink garage door opener which had been attacked under the DMCA.
posted on Feb 8, 2005 - View this thread

FutureIsNowFilter "TengoInternet and the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department announced a pilot program to offer wireless Internet service at five Texas state parks... The wireless service will allow park guests while visiting the park to access the Internet to gain park information, send e-mail or pictures, or just surf the Web, without cords having to physically plug into a network."
Shouldn't be camping be more about nature than technology?
posted on Dec 16, 2004 - View this thread

A nice article on some of the engineering and economics aspects of WiFi, and the history of frequency regulation in the USA.
posted on Aug 16, 2004 - View this thread

USB adaptors & a Spider Skimmer = Poor Man's Wifi!
posted on May 16, 2004 - View this thread

WiFi Against Bush is an interesting twist on viral marketing aimed at our neighborhoods and the occassional warchalker — let everyone in within range of your router know what you _really_ think of the President.

Via the venerable Shifted Librarian.
posted on May 12, 2004 - View this thread

Catch some waves... for free! Wi-Fi Freespot will help. Via my roommate's co-workers, who keep sending this round e-mail circuits. I don't know why they include me. I hate technology.
posted on Feb 5, 2004 - View this thread

WiFi-SM is "a Wi-Fi-capable patch you stick on your body so you can feel painful shocks whenever news stories are published containing keywords that you enter into the software". (via Mikes List) Who needs this when we have MetaFilter?...
posted on Oct 8, 2003 - View this thread

McD Wireless Beginning today, many McDonald’s restaurants around the Bay area will provide Wi-Fi with a side of fries... Previously discussed in March.
posted on Jul 9, 2003 - View this thread

Would you queue for the iLoo? [More inside]
posted on May 7, 2003 - View this thread

With Tungsten C - it's most powerful handheld ever (according to themselves) Palm is making some aggressive moves to turn its business around and brings wireless 802.11b-based connectivity to the Palm family of devices. Microsoft, on the other hand, is to use FM radio waves for news, weather and traffic, etc - on your watch. Is this a race or PDA technology diversity at its best? ...and here I'm sitting around with my stone age Visor.
posted on Apr 25, 2003 - View this thread

IM just for Wifi - Trepia has developed a new method for wifi users to connect to each other. Imagine turning on your laptop and seeing the other wifi users near your physical location and being able to chat with them.

There's only a Windows client at this time. I asked where the Mac & linux clients were and the CEO told me they were coming in the future once the Windows version takes off. I'm betting that if enough people ask, they'll accelerate their plans.
posted on Apr 15, 2003 - View this thread

Lee Felsenstein, saving the world with wifi and a bike. This old school computer hacker built a human powered wireless internet station named as one of the best inventions of 2002. Now he needs to raise $25,000 to wire five villages of farmers to the web (to obtain weather info, pricing data) and to each other. This is another story that reminds me not all of this technology is for gadget geeks. It really can help improve peoples' lives, as shown by the varied projects coming out of the Tech Museum grant winners and groups like this.
posted on Jan 2, 2003 - View this thread

The ever popular WiFi systems are the latest threat to National Security according to this story.
posted on Dec 17, 2002 - View this thread

802.11b Survey Map of NYC Following the NYC Bloggers Map, what else should mapped in NYC, smoking rooms?
posted on Dec 12, 2002 - View this thread

Attention, Wi-Fi users: The Department of Homeland Security sees wireless networking technology as a terrorist threat. That was the message from experts who participated in working groups under federal cybersecurity czar Richard Clarke and shared what they learned at this week's 802.11 Planet conference. Wi-Fi manufacturers, as well as home and office users, face a clear choice, they said: Secure yourselves or be regulated. Is this reasonable? Is this really a threat to security? (via boingboing )
posted on Dec 6, 2002 - View this thread

Starbucks announces wireless Internet access in stores and plans to charge customers for it: $29.99/month for access in one store, or $49.99/month for access in all equipped stores nationwide. Seems a little pricey to me. And besides, don't cool coffeehouses offer free wireless Internet access? They're sure getting lots of coverage of the announcement in any case.
posted on Aug 22, 2002 - View this thread

WarFlying
Well it had to happen eventually didn't it? Have you ever gone on a hunt for wireless networks in your neck of the woods? Find anything you shouldn't have? And have you ever actually seen a WarChalk yet?
posted on Aug 19, 2002 - View this thread

Don't let child pornographers share your connection! Now that sharing your Wi-Fi connection with the unwashed masses has become so popular - the BigCo's are trying to shut it down. We've talked about this here and here but I was blown away by this marketing speak from a AOL Time Warner VP


"By having an open transmission, it leaves you really vulnerable," Digeso said. "If you have a Wi-Fi connection in a public park, what would stop, God forbid, a child pornographer or, God forbid, a terrorist using that network?"

Are terroists using your Wi-Fi connection?
posted on Jul 9, 2002 - View this thread

Warchalking Collaboratively creating a hobo-language for free wireless networking. Here is the first draft of a warchalking symbol card. [via Boing Boing]
posted on Jun 24, 2002 - View this thread

Etherlinx, plans to offer high-speed wireless access to the Internet at inexpensive prices. (NYT) Without venture capital backing, in a garage just six blocks from the garage where Steven P. Jobs and Stephen Wozniak launched Apple Computer 26 years ago, Mr. Holt is making his clever and inexpensive radio repeater by modifying inexpensive Wi-Fi cards, the circuitry that sends and receives the signals. Their ambitious target: the cable and phone companies that currently hold a near-monopoly on high-speed access for the "last mile" between the Internet and the home.
posted on Jun 10, 2002 - View this thread

The crypto used in 802.11 wireless networking has been cracked. The crack is devastating; it's fast and passive. Simply by listening, the 40-bit key can be cracked in 15 minutes. Worse, the crack scales linearly with the number of bits in the key, so raising the key length to 128 bits would raise the crack time to about an hour. 802.11 is used in such products as the Linksys Etherfast Wireless and the Apple Airport. From now on those products should be considered to be completely insecure.
posted on Aug 3, 2001 - View this thread

Microsoft bans use of Open Source with its wireless internet tools. Will this be a huge PR blunder, or will people accept MS' hardline stance against this so-called "potentially viral" software?
posted on Jul 2, 2001 - View this thread

SF Gate article states, "with a wireless ethernet card, a laptop and some basic software savvy," people walking around downtown San Francisco could just point their antenna at a building and be privy to private, unprotected coporate networks.
posted on Mar 22, 2001 - View this thread

Apple is going to have to rename it's AirPort for the Japanese market because of a previous trademark already issued for the name. They're going to call it AirMac instead. Hmmm... Seems to me they could have put a bit more oomph into it, like AirThang or AirConnector. Must have been pressed for time to get the thing launched.
posted on Jan 28, 2000 - View this thread

Is it wrong to love a machine? I'm writing this from my employer's new Toshiba ultra portable laptop which also happens to be using the wireless LAN. There's nothing quite like wandering around with a 4 pound, 1 inch thick pentium II 366 that's network enabled.
posted on Jul 29, 1999 - View this thread

Of course, I want one of these, but more exciting than that is the new wireless LAN. At work, we have a 1Mbps wireless than that cost thousands, but this looks 10x faster at 1/5 the cost.
posted on Jul 21, 1999 - View this thread