Virgin America, my favorite domestic airline, is launching service to and from Boston today with three daily routes from LA and two daily routes from San Francisco. This is important for those traveling between Boston and California because all flights to and from Boston are equipped with Aircell’s Gogo in-flight Wi-Fi service.
Update: We’ve got a list of all Wi-Fi-enabled VA flights after the jump. → Read More
I don’t know about you guys, but $109 for a flight from NYC to the west coast is dirt-cheap. Sure, airline flights are neither gadget-y nor gear-y, but VA has Wi-Fi-enabled flights and Doom on-board. Just book your transcon flight by February 17th and fly by April 1st. Virgin America flies from NYC’s JFK to Las Vegas, San Diego, Las Angeles, San Francisco and Seattle.
For those traveling between LAX and JFK, you’ll be happy to know that VA is offering flights between June 17th and July 22nd for only $105 each way. Score!
You may soon be able stop your packet sniffing, WEP cracking neighbors from stealing your precious internet with Wi-Fi blocking paint. That’s right. Nothing complicated, just paint. → Read More
Sony’s DSC-G3 point-and-shoot digital camera not only has built-in Wi-Fi, but it also has its own Web browser. Guess that makes uploading your photos to the Internet a little easier. → Read More
How great is this: the FCC meeting that was scheduled to take place this week where they’d discuss the plans for free nationwide Wi-Fi isn’t even going to happen. The meeting, which was supposed to occur on the Dec. 18, was killed because a bunch of congressman objected to any “controversial” items emerging from the FCC during the last day’s of George W. Bush’s presidency. Better to let the new congress and Obama-influenced FCC tackle the matter. Kevin Martin, the FCC chair, wants the nationwide Wi-Fi network to be be pornography-free (yeah, that’ll happen; the Internet is for porn), dontcha know? In any event, it’s best to look at this latest development as merely a postponement and not an outright killing of the plan. Next year, then. via Boy Genius Report → Read More
Everyone hates President Bush for their own reason, but now us techies have a reason of our own: he refuses to endorse the FCC’s plan for free national Wi-Fi. Instead, Bush says that a government-mandated Wi-Fi scheme is a bad idea, and it’s one that goes against our “free market” thingamabob. Unfortunately, as Fast Company points out, there’s a reason why the “free market” has left so much of America’s citizenry without access to broadband: they can’t make any money off it. So, instead of relying upon the “market,” the government says, “Hey, company who won all that white space, you need to set aside a certain percentage of that for public Wi-Fi. Remember, the spectrum you just won is publicly owned; you do as we say or we’ll give it to someone else.” And so on. Kevin Martin, the head of the FCC, will be part of a hearing on December 18 that decides whether or not the proposal for free Wi-Fi goes through. Fingers crossed! → Read More
Warcarting is “wardriving on a budget.” (Good news, what with the recession and all.) It’s also probably, like, 27 years old, it’s new to us! The shopping cart is equipped with all the items you’ll need to steal your neighbor’s Internet access. There’s a bunch of laptops, several antennae, two turtle doves, etc. → Read More
So it looks like Wi-Fi Protected Access, known to the cool kids as WPA, has been partially cracked. Even better, the methodology was recently incorporated into Aircrack-ng, which is one of the most popular “security” tools out there. Expect script kiddie attacks sooner rather than later. The actual method will be discussed at an upcoming security conference, PacSec, in Tokyo. From start to finish, the attack takes between 12-15 minutes to complete. Should the attack evolve—and there’s no reason to think it won’t now—the usefulness of WPA pretty much evaporates. Maybe it doesn’t so much matter to your Linksys router, but enterprise-level folk will be none too pleased, now that they have to make the transition to WPA2. Good thing most hardware out there supports both. → Read More
Our buds over at Jaunted just gave us the heads up that Virgin America will begin rolling out Aircell‘s Gogo service, which we reviewed back in August, on November 22. The “beta” flight will take off from SFO, VA’s HQ, to JFK. Virgin plans to roll out the in-flight broadband service on one plane per week with a full rollout scheduled by March 2009. Oh, and they won’t be filtering the service either. The RED system will eventually be wired in as well, but we won’t see that happen until later on in 2009. → Read More
Why is it that the BlackBerry Storm doesn’t have Wi-Fi? If you believe BoyGenius—and how could you not!—it’s because Verizon Wireless doesn’t want it to have Wi-Fi. That’s a fine conspiracy theory, yes, but consider the following: • Name one CDMA BlackBerry with built-in Wi-Fi. You can’t. • Doesn’t VZW require you to have a BlackBerry data plan? So it’s not like having built-in Wi-Fi prevents VZW from making money Now, whether or not VZW was concerned with battery life and/or performance is another matter, but to imply that VZW is some James Bond villain hoarding all the Wi-Fi is silly, I think. → Read More
After months of giving and taking back free Wi-Fi to iPhone users, AT&T announced that all BlackBerry users will be privy to the “nation’s largest Wi-Fi network” if you have an unlimited data plan. Other Wi-Fi-enabled devices will receive the same treatment in the future. Free Wi-Fi is also being offered to those with AT&T small business broadband plans, AT&T High Speed Internet plans and with qualified AT&T LaptopConnect plans. AT&T is also offering Wi-Fi subscriptions for $20 a month. “AT&T is committed to providing its customers with the best connectivity at the best value,” said David Christopher, chief marketing officer of AT&T’s mobility business unit. “We have the industry’s leading lineup of smartphones, along with the nation’s largest Wi-Fi network. It only makes sense for us to bring these unique capabilities together for our customers.” → Read More
While Delta initially said it had no plans to filter Web sites from its in-flight broadband offerings, complaints have caused the airline to change its mind. When the service launches later this, Delta will block inappropriate Web sites, thus saving humanity from itself. A Delta spokesperson says the filtering will be limited in scope, he didn’t elaborate as to what exactly constitutes “inappropriate.” Porn, fine; if you can’t stay away from Bang Bus for a few hours while in the air perhaps you should seek help. But what about other things? Does Delta consider something like What.cd to be inappropriate, even if I’m just visiting the forums? What about sites with bad words in them, like, say, ours? Who will guard the guardians, to borrow a tired phrase. → Read More
The problem with radio waves is that they just can’t seem to pass through things. That’s why I maintain a direct line of sight to my wireless router at all times — even when I’m not using it! And with this range extender for my Airport Express, now I can make my router higher up and more visible in the room — because that’s why I bought a wireless networking solution: to make my cabling and backend electronics more prominent! Do you think wireless devices need to be high up in the air in order to transmit effectively over distances of 10 or 20 feet? Do you believe dinosaurs walked the young Earth with mankind? Then have I got a product for you, Sarah Palin! [via BBG and UberGizmo] → Read More
Canadian travelers will soon be able to emulate their favorite CrunchGear blogger, Peter Ha, as they glom on to Aircell’s Gogo wireless internet service aboard their next international Air Canada flight. You’ll recall that Sweet Pete recently blogged from 37,000 feet using Gogo service aboard American Airlines. What fun we all had! You’ll have to wait until at least spring of 2009, as that’s when Air Canada hopes to start rolling out the service on its fleet of Airbus A319 airplanes that fly between Canada and the United States. → Read More
Raise your hand if you like paying $10 or so for 24 hours of airport Internet access that you’re only going to use for 15 minutes. While I certainly wouldn’t suggest that you use this trick for endless, free web surfing on a for-pay wireless network, maybe your conscience would allow you to just quickly jump on to grab your e-mail or some music for your MP3 player before you board. Debuggable Ltd has the full story, but the basic gist is that when you open up your web browser in most airports that charge for wireless access, you’re re-routed to the service’s sign-up and payment page. The trick is to enter the web address you’d like to visit and add “?.jpg” to the end of the URL. So you would go to http://www.crunchgear.com/?.jpg for instance. Apparently these for-pay networks don’t block image files (yet), so you’re able to slip through the cracks this way. The guy who discovered this even used a Greasemonkey script for Firefox to automatically append “?.jpg” to every URL he visited. Clever, no? [Debuggable Ltd via Digg] → Read More
The BlackBerry 8320 will be available on AT&T later this month. It’s being marketed as the “Global BlackBerry plus Wi-Fi,” so traveling CrackBerry (get it?) addicts would do well to look into this one. Unlike the T-Mobile version, AT&T’s comes in a sapphire blue color that looks a little better than that center-of-the-earth crimson T-Mo is pushing. Same old specs: built-in Wi-Fi, 2-megapixel camera (photo and video), and so on. That little chart, courtesy of you-know-who, pretty much explains it all. Look for it at the end of the month. → Read More
San Francisco, CA
