It’s no secret that Japan is the country of vending machines (they even have models like this one now), but this is new: Tokyo-based beverage company Asahi Soft Drinks took the wraps off a vending machine [JP] that not only offers drinks but also sends out Wi-Fi signals within a 50m radius.

The Wi-Fi will be available for free, is accessible with multiple devices, without registration, and for anyone to use (meaning users won’t have to buy any drinks to go online through the machine). It’s possible to use the web for about 30 minutes before the machine cuts you off (re-connecting is possible, however).

After logging in, users will see various location-specific information on the home screen, for example on local stores, or sightseeing spots.

Starting in 2012, Asahi will set up 1,000 of the vending machines in five different regions in Japan (Tokyo, Sendai, Chubu, Kinki, and Fukuoka) in the first year. The plan is to roll out a total of 10,000 units in the next five years.

Asahi is currently operating 250,000 vending machines all over Japan.

Remember Connectify? The downloadable software that turns PCs into Wi-Fi hotspots in just a few minutes? It looks like the company now has a new investor: In-Q-Tel (IQT), which just so happens to be the strategic investment firm that seeks out new technologies for the U.S. Intelligence Community, including the CIA.

The new funding will help Connectify move beyond simple Wi-Fi hotspot creation, a decidedly consumer-facing service, in order to focus on VPNs (virtual private networks). Using similar easy-to-install software, Connectify will soon enable users to spontaneously create self-forming VPNs without dialing into a central location. The VPNs will also leverage the combined throughput and reliability of all the available Internet connections, the company says.

The additional security and feature set will be integrated into both Connectify’s current product line-up as well as into its upcoming and yet-to-announced products.

Connectify informs us that it can’t disclose the amount of funding IQT provided due to the organization’s sensitive mission involving bringing technology to the U.S. intelligence community.

Still, it’s easy to envision potential use cases for the technology, especially in situations where authoritarian government regimes watch over their citizens’ Internet communications far too closely. But the enhanced security will benefit stateside consumers too, by offering a safer way to share your Internet access with those around you.

And here we were thinking Windows PC software was boring…consider our interest piqued.

New software, called SleepWell, puts the device to sleep while it’s waiting its turn, essentially allowing devices to grab everything they want at once and then hand off the download to the next device. Designed by grad student Justin Manweiler and his advisor, Romit Roy Choudhury, the system can add hours to the average battery.

Manweiler described the system by analogy: “Big cities face heavy rush hours as workers come and leave their jobs at similar times. If work schedules were more flexible, different companies could stagger their office hours to reduce the rush. With less of a rush, there would be more free time for all, and yet, the total number of working hours would remain the same.”

“The same is true of mobile devices trying to access the Internet at the same time,” Manweiler said. “The SleepWell-enabled WiFi access points can stagger their activity cycles to minimally overlap with others, ultimately resulting in promising energy gains with negligible loss of performance.”

The technology is in its early stages right now but some mobile manufacturers, including Nokia, are looking into implementing it.

The hotspots, labelled “attwifi,” will appear in Battery Park, Joyce Kilmer Park, and Thomas Jefferson park right now. Then AT&T will launch in other locations including good old Central, Astoria, the High Line, and Fort Greene. You can look for coverage maps here but your best bet is just to hit your park and check it out.

Sadly, all of this park wi-fi won’t drown out the endless caterwauls of the damned that howl from the Reservoir as I pound along the jogging path wearing a mumu, viking helmet, and Crocs. I will be able to get my email sent straight to my fillings, though.

via Electronista pic via BrookylnPaper.

Japan-based Ubiquitous has developed [JP] a power strip with a built-in Wi-Fi module. Dubbed iRemoTap, the strip allows you to do two things: you can track which of the connected devices consumes how much energy on a PC or cell phone in real-time, and you can turn on or off each of these devices remotely.

If energy consumption of a connected device in your household exceeds a pre-set level, the iRemoTap can automatically send out an email or tweet so you can take action. It works a little like the Energy Literacy Platform, which is also made by a Japanese company (we reported in December).

The iRemoTap is just a prototype at this point – but an early sign that the Internet of Things is upon us.

This video (in English, shot by Diginfonews in Tokyo) shows the iRemoTap in action:

A recent breakthrough means we could be looking at double-quick Wi-Fi in the coming years. How? Scientists at Stanford University have discovered a way to simultaneously transmit and receive data over the same radio frequency. Very exciting.

Stanford scientists likened the ability of Wi-Fi networks to both send and receive data to the way people are able to parse different voices in a loaned conversation. Who’s talking here? Oh, I am. And another thing!

The double Wi-Fi would be implemented by putting two transmitters at each of the Wi-Fi network.

I know I said “in the coming years,” but given how long it took 802.11n to get off the ground, well, we’ll see.

A recent poll, conducted by Wakefield Research, suggests that 32 percent of folks out there have admitted to trying to access a Wi-Fi network that belongs to someone else. That low?

The numbers have increased from previous polls. Back in December 2008, 18 percent of of folks had admitted to trying to access other people’s Wi-Fi networks.

The Wi-Fi Alliance, an industry group whose goal consists of “driving adoption of a single worldwide standard for high-speed wireless local area networking,” has used the opportunity to remind people of the obvious.

•If at all possible don’t use WEP (which can be cracked in only a few minutes, and I’m speaking from experience here)

• Don’t use simple passwords that could be easily attacked with a dictionary attack (“password,” “password123,” etc.)

And here’s one more tip: don’t use public Wi-Fi networks to do any “serious” Internetting. All it takes is one wise guy running a man-in-the-middle attack to steal your private information.

Kudos to O2, the Telefónica-owned mobile operator, for planning a country-wide free Wi-Fi network. That country just so happens to be the UK, the home of “dark forces.” Hmm. The network should be fully operational by 2013.

The Wi-Fi network will be free to both O2 subscribers and non-O2 subscribers, which is to say that it’ll be free to everyone. (You’ll still have to sign up to tap into the network, however.) It’ll be present in O2-owned locations before expanding to other, hipper establishments, like bars and restaurants.

One prominent analyst called the move a “step in the right direction.”

What’s perhaps most interesting about this is that widely available Wi-Fi isn’t nearly as compelling in 2011 (and certainly won’t be come 2013) as it may have been in say, 2003. We all have (at least) 3G, right? And provided you’re not in the absolute middle of nowhere you should be able to tweet to your heart’s content—killing your humanity in the process!—no Wi-Fi required.

All of this sorta reminds me of when President Obama said last night that South Korea has faster Internet access than the us here in the mighty U.S. It probably helps that South Korea is a relatively small, densely populated, and highly urbanized society, but that’s not to say we can’t do a better job here. Services like Steam and Netflix most certainly depend upon that.

Flickr’d

Texas Instruments will be adding Wi-Fi, via a new adapter, to its TI-Nspire CX Navigator graphing calculator. Wi-Fi! Is there a Cydia-like repository for TI applications?

The adapter, the TI-Nspire CX Navigator, has just gone through the FCC rigamarole. It connects to the bottom of the Nspire line of graphing calculators, granting them instant Wi-Fi capability.

Trying to browse the Internet using one of those calculators is probably no buys, but like I said a minute ago, this could open up the possibility of an easy-to-use repository of applications. Back in my day, using a TI-89 (which was later destroyed in a basement flood!) you had to buy a USB transfer cable then go to some esoteric Web site to download applications. And then you needed a special program to transfer the data to the calculator! But after all that effort: Mario (and various academic programs, like automated physics equations solvers) on your graphing calculator. Mighty fine indeed.

Huge deal? No, but at least you’ll be able to Facetime from Times Square while your family from Wisconsin ogles at the baked goods and sandwiches in the window of the Roxy’s Deli and then, inevitably, walks over to McDonalds because its the only place you all can agree on.

via AP

Google has taken the very brave decision to delete all the Wi-Fi data it had accidentally collected in the UK. The move signals the end to the long-running feud between Google and the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland.

The BBC notes that not all people will be happy with the decision, particularly those who wanted to see Google punished for collecting the data. Maybe a fine, maybe something more than this public embarrassment. But no, Google essentially gets off clean as a whistle, excepting the possible damage to its public image. You’ll recall that Google has maintained since the very beginning that the data was collected accidentally.

What’s sorta funny is that the UK has no real public body whose responsibility it is to investigate data interception, such as what happened here with Google. This was kinda an ad-hoc investigation; the Home Office (sorta the UK equivalent of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security) is looking into how it can better help investigate these matters in the future.

So, yeah. Google will delete the data. I’m not sure if that will satisfy everyone, but what are you going to do?

Last week’s airplane terror incident has raised new concerns over how much sense it makes to have Wi-Fi and the ability to use mobile phones on aircraft. While the companies that provides these entertainment options have said there’s nothing to worry about (well, besides them worrying about losing money), other security experts argue otherwise.

You’ll recall that authorities last week found packages containing explosives, explosives that were connected mobile phones. The fear is, terrorists could have activated the explosives by calling the phone, thus taking the airplane down.

So, what might happen if you give the bad guys the option to not only make mobile calls, but also give them the ability to use voice-over-IP calls? Now they won’t have to rely on a flimsy phone signal, but can instead tap into the airplane’s own on-board Wi-Fi to hatch their plots.

Those are the concerns of at least one consultant in the UK, one Roland Alfort of Alford Technologies.

The question now is whether or not transportation authorities will take these concerns to heart when going over what went wrong.

Then again, this could all just be a work under the guise of making us safe. A work from Alford Technologies’ perspective, that is. “Let’s scare people into think our Hollywood scenarios are plausible, the lend ourselves a fat consulting contracting with a government agency.”

Or, more innocently, it could be much ado about nothing. Misplaced fear, in other words. One manufacturer of in-flight entertainment says:

There are many ways of coordinating an attack without using a mobile phoneThe position of our security experts is that the use of mobile phones on planes does not constitute any additional security threat.

Meanwhile, airlines themselves are hoping that there’s not a giant overreaction to the incident. If nothing else, the event showed how current security measures do work.

The explosives were found, after all, and didn’t go off. Surely that counts for something when examining the calculus here?

The London Underground, commonly known as the Tube, will be getting Wi-Fi. There will be a six-month trial period beginning on November 1 at the Charing Cross station.

Why, all of a sudden, is the Tube getting Wi-Fi? It’s BT’s move to try to get mobile phones working underground. On the surface that sounds awful, I imagine most people will merely use it browse the Web or send text messages or whatever.

Besides, who uses their phone as a phone anymore? Certainly not young people.

Wi-Fi access will be free to all BT customers.

The overall hope is to make London something of a Wi-Fi hotspot in time for the 2012 Olympics.

2012 Olympics! Jeez!

Yeah, today is Apple Day, but we still have a few hours till the big announcements. How to fill the time? Let’s start with this bit of news: Starbucks has launched something called the Starbucks Digital Network. It’s a collaboration with Yahoo, and it will “[serve] up a collection of hand-picked premium news, entertainment and lifestyle content along with local insights and events.”

You can access the SDN whenever you’re connected to a Starbucks Wi-Fi connection (remember: Wi-Fi is free), and it’s been designed to work well on both mobiles phones and laptops. It’s not a laptop service squeezed into your iPhone.

Starbucks hooked up with a bunch of different content providers, such as iTunes, the New York Times, the Weather Channel, and Foursquare, to bring you news from “their neighborhoods and around the globe.”

More likely, you’ll be in line waiting for a Pumpkin Spice Latte reading Dave Meltzer’s latest Yahoo column.

So, it’s probably not something that’s going to change your life, but I can definitely see myself saying, while in the store, “Oh, wait, don’t they have that Wi-Fi thing now? Let me see…”

Which is probably all they could ask for.

The City of New York giveth, and it taketh away. On this fine morning when we discover that there’s a proposal to ban smoking from all city parks and beaches we also discover that city parks will be gaining Wi-Fi access points, courtesy of Time Warner and Cablevision, the two big local cable companies. Well, not really “courtesy of,” since there’s a whole bunch of caveats attached to the deal. First thought: we’re about five years past the point where municipal Wi-Fi could be considered “neat.”

The big catch is that Wi-Fi access, while available to the public free of charge, will only be usable for up to 30 minutes per person. (That’s up to three, 10-minute sessions.) It’s almost like, gee, thanks for nothing.

Oh, sure, you can use the access point past that 30-minute mark, but it’ll cost you 99 cents a day after that.

Then again, the value of such a Wi-Fi system is somewhat less than it would have been in, say, 2004 or 2005. You have to figure that a good portion of the people out there have phones with Internet access. No need to walk up to Central Park (or wherever) just to check your Twitter feed.

Darn interesting tale in the Los Angeles Times that tells the story of the DOWNFALL~! of the Wi-Fi café. It seems freeloaders have ruined all of the fun. You know, the lone guy who sits down at a table for four, then camps for three hours having ordered a single medium coffee. Way to go, guy.

Several cafés are fighting back. They’re banning Wi-Fi altogether from the premises, and are finding a new crowd in the process: the anti-Wi-Fi crowd. Not everyone wants to go to a café where they’re surrounded by MacBook Pros wearing annoying stickers. Maybe it’d be nice to go to a café and have a live conversation with a fellow human being without having to put up with some person clacking away on their laptop, or Skyping at the top of their lungs?

It goes beyond the inconveniences of having laptops strewn all over the place. One person sitting at a table for four, hovering over a single cup of coffee, does not generate nearly the same amount of money for the café as a party of five ordering lunch.

Why would the café owner want the single person when he or she can have a whole group of people?

And let’s not forget that the party of five isn’t sucking down electricity with a laptop, which also adds to the price of hosting the laptop user.

I remember when I used to regularly write from a café, I would go out of my way to order lots and lots of food simply to offset my being there. Granted, I’m a Panicky Pete, but I always felt like my mere presence with a laptop was putting the owner in the poor house.

So, in conclusion: when using a laptop at a café, don’t be a jerk about it.

Google has been cleared of any wrongdoing relating to Wi-Fi snooping in the UK. Well, partially cleared. The country’s Information Commissioner’s Office, whose job is to “uphold information rights in the public interest, promoting openness by public bodies and data privacy for individuals,” has said that “it is unlikely that Google will have captured significant amounts of personal data” during its Street View mappings.

The report added that there’s also no evidence—yet—that any of the data Google collected “has caused or could cause any individual detriment.”

In essence, all the hubbub that was stirred up by various privacy groups and concerned individuals seems to have been overstated.

Well, according to this one UK office.

Google isn’t free and clear quite yet. It’s still under investigation in various European countries, including France and Germany, and there’s still a class-action lawsuit pending against it here in the U.S.

But if one prominent office says that it found no wrongdoing, what are the odds that another office will throw the book at Mountain View?

This, of course, doesn’t mean you should still feel comfortable with Google cars driving about your neighborhood, perhaps obtaining the name of your Wi-Fi access point, but there doesn’t appear to be any “real” reason to be too upset.

This will complement the free above-ground Wi-Fi that will appear in the city for the 2012 Olympics.

via Cellular News

You know, I’m somewhat conflicted when it comes to this Google story. Yesterday it emerged that France had discovered that Google’s Street View cars had surreptitiously collected private citizens’ passwords and other sensitive data. Today we’ve learned that several states here in the U.S., led by Connecticut, plan to investigate Google over this whole Wi-Fi fiasco. Normally you don’t want giant corporations driving around the countryside collecting private information on unsuspecting citizens, right? But does anyone really think that Google is “up to no good” here?

The story today is that the U.S. investigation will focus on a few things, namely who at Google gave the OK to collect the Wi-Fi data. (Google says it was an accident, and the work of a lone engineer.) It also wants to know when Google realized it was collecting Wi-Fi data, and why it didn’t do anything to stop the collection.

The investigation, led by Connecticut attorney general (and candidate for U.S. Sentate—he’s running against Linda McMahon, of WWE fame) Richard Blumenthal, basically wants Google to “come clean,” and wants it to explain why it thought it could get away with this “deeply disturbing invasion of personal privacy.”

Obviously you don’t want Google thinking it can get away with this type of thing, even if it was an accident. (Though I don’t know how packet-sniffing software can “accidentally” be set up to log every single packet of data from every single access point it comes across.) So in that sense I understand the concerns of the states and the various countries who have questioned Google.

But let’s assume this wasn’t an accident: how does it benefit Google to have a fleet of cars that goes around sniffing personal data? Google isn’t some 17-year-old war-driver looking for a cheap thrill—awesome, I have this guy’s Facebook password!

I’m just not sure I understand the Doomsday Scenario here.

That said, yeah, if Google went around collecting data, purposely or not, it should probably be given a stern talking to, however that manifests itself.

The ministry argues that Israel’s regulations in that area are more similar to the ones used in Europe and that the iPad, in its current form, is just compatible with American Wi-Fi standards (it’s on sale in the US only at this point). Those standards permit broadcasting at lower power, apparently making approval in Israel impossible.

Engineers in the ministry refused to check whether the current version of the iPad is compatible with national regulations, too. At least, they have already asked Apple’s Israeli distributor iDigital [HB] to provide more technical information on the device, which means the ban might get lifted soon.

But if you’re currently planning to get some iPads from the US for your friends in Israel, forget it: it looks like all devices will be confiscated at the air port. One guy who tried yesterday was told by authorities to send back the iPad he brought home from the US. That iPad was only one of ten that were confiscated yesterday at the Ben Gurion International Airport in Tel Aviv (apparently, declaring or paying taxes doesn’t help either).

Via Haaretz