The Ovation iX has a touchscreen, speakers, and Wi-Fi built in. It shows commercials, but can also transfer music files to equipment in a car that’s appropriately configured. Microsoft’s Automotive Business Unit was involved in the development. Of course, I totally want to be waiting for gas while somebody fiddles with settings to buy music from a pump. Pump rage could be 2008’s road rage.
This is preventing the kind of growth predicted a few years ago as newer devices that use home electrical wiring as a network media were to hit the market. With specs like that of the HomePlug Alliance offering speeds of 200 Mbps, you’d have expected something to coalesce around a dominant flavor. Instead, you have chipmakers each pushing their own solution. This year’s CES doesn’t seem to offer clarity. Nancy Gohring reports for
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The article includes comments from several researchers, all of which agree that the signals from wireless LANs fall well below any minimum level of concern based on decades of research, and that specific projects used to measure electromagnetic radiation confirm Wi-Fi’s small role in an overall hum of background noise.
EarthLink this week finally fulfilled the first phase in their buildout of Philadelphia, the largest urban deployment currently underway in the the U.S. While other networks are larger in scale, and larger urban networks are planned, Phila. is the one to watch because of its prominent political role in the development of arguments for and against municipally authorized or built Wi-Fi networks.
EarthLink committed from the beginning of its negotiations
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The “picture frames” can show JPEGs and a several movie formats. The frames will ship in March for $280 and $220, respectively. An 8-inch version with USB and a card reader but no Wi-Fi is $180, and a 7-inch unconnected version $130. Several frame plates are available for variety’s sake, including a wipe-off whiteboard version.
The former-computer company—renamed from Apple Computer to just Apple today—has gone Draft N happy. Their version will have no new, special name, and support both 2.4 GHz (802.11b/g/n) and 5 GHz (802.11a/n). Computers shipped to date with Intel Core 2 Duo chips (with the exception of a single iM
ac model) can be upgraded to add Draft N capability through a firmware
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Interesting synergy, because it’s a wholesaler-retailer relationship, not exactly a strategic partnership, because EarthLink is generally constrained to offer non-disriminatory wholesale access to all its metro-scale networks by contract with the cities it is working with. While EarthLink has its own VoIP service it’s been selling, and is looking to expand, Vonage is a great reseller of this kind of service, as they will be able to leverage
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The Wi-Fi Alliance has rolled out its long-expected and openly discussed WPS system for its members to choose to implement and have certified as a component of their Wi-Fi devices. With WPS, a router can provide strong WPA/WPA2 encryption keys to client devices with the push of a button or the entry of a 4- or 8-digit personal identification number (PIN). The PIN can be generated by software or preprogrammed into a client device and printed on an
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Most surprising to me—perhaps I’ve been missing this detail—is EarthLink’s agreement to pay a five-percent franchise fee to the city for access to rights of way (ROW). These fees have rarely appeared in other agreements, in which yearly pole fees or other arrangements have provided a different method of taxation. EarthLink will pay $600,000 in advance against ROW fees.
Google is not mentioned by name in this agreement. They
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An impressive effort in a mainstream publication to explain why cities have rushed in to build or find partners for city-wide Wi-Fi. The writer did an admirable job in providing opinions across a gamut without including, frankly, stupid or uninformed ideas. If you read my site, you already know everything that’s in this article.
Time addresses an increasing point of contention that was first raised in 2004, but mostly papered over since:
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