No, it’s not a new type of pet disposal system, it’s a wireless whole house audio delivery system. Rocketfish takes the audio output from your device, and the transmits it to the strategically placed speakers throughout your home. → Read More
Wireless has always been the new exciting thing in consumer electronics. Remote controls, game console controllers, Sony’s <a href="http://www.crunchgear.com/2009/10/05/sony-develops-cord-free-power-transfer-system-for-home-electronics/"wireless power transfer, and now Bose is taking another foray into the action. Their second wireless-capable device, The Wave Music System – SoundLink allows you to stream audio to the unit from your computer. → Read More
Take it from me: a good, inexpensive, small travel router is hard to find. This $80 pocket-sized wireless N-compatible router may be just what the doctor ordered, assuming your doctor is progressive enough to write you prescriptions for computer peripherals. → Read More
Bluetooth is a really versatile technology, and despite the fact that it has been out for years, we’re still seeing new stuff come out that uses it. That’s where this latest example comes in from TENQA. → Read More
Toshiba announced a new wireless docking port station. It’s designed to provide a connection to a full size keyboard, mouse, and monitor, docking stations previously required users to physically place their laptop or notebook computer on a connection. → Read More
Researchers in Japan have developed an attack against WiFi Protected Access when using the Temporal Key Integrity Protocol (TKIP) that can successfully break the encryption in less than a minute. If you’re using WPA with TKIP, switch to AES, or step up to WPA2. → Read More
If you have a swimming pool then you, my friend, need this little waterproof floating wireless speaker that looks like the thing that pops up out of the muck in the trash compactor in Star Wars. This one doesn’t have a cool robotic eye, though, just “Rich sounding bass. Crisp treble. And no wires.” → Read More
Do you see that USB port right there? You know, the one on the back of my D-Link DIR-825 802.11n router? Well apparently Mac users can now use that port to share things like USB thumb drives, printers, etc, using D-Link’s SharePort software. . (Windows users have been able to do this for some time.) Well, theoretically Mac users can now use Share Port, seeing as though the installer refuses to work on my pre-unibody MacBook. Why would it be easy, right? → Read More
There are quite a few mini PC mouses coming out of Japan, but now Tokyo-based TEC is saying their Lingo, a wireless device, is the smallest of them all [JP]. The Lingo weighs only 23g and is sized at 27.5 × 60 × 19mm so the claim doesn’t sound too outrageous. → Read More
You kids with your fancy Bluetooth headsets and your fancy satellite radio and your portable music players magically transmitting stuff to other devices without any wires. You think you’re all so special. Well I got news for you, bub: wireless headphones were available on a Sony Walkman — you know, the kind that used cassette tapes — in 1988! Stick that in your pipe and smoke it, hotshot! → Read More
That $99 Aspire One deal we covered late last year – Aspire One + two-year AT&T DataConnect plan – has both RadioShack and AT&T in hot water after a lady signed up for the deal and tallied up more than $5000 in overage charges within her first month. → Read More
Mobile satellite phone service provider Iridium found one of its orbiting satellites knocked offline when it collided with a non-working Russian satellite 500 miles above Siberia on Tuesday. According to NASA, debris from the accident is potentially dangerous although it’s “very small and within acceptable limits.” The debris will be tracked by scientists. → Read More
Garmin makes great fitness watches – the GPS line is just incredible. Now they’re moving towards less GPS oriented models with the FR60, a sports watch that uses external devices like foot pods and heartrate monitors rather than bulky internal sensors. A GPS unit is also available An ANT+ dongle will automatically connect the watch to your PC. → Read More
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
Popular Mechanics has a cool article in their January 2009 issue about a new binocular technology for the U.S. military. Called LightSpeed, these binoculars have high-power infrared LEDs that allow them to transfer data and voice at up to 1 megabit per second and 32 kilobits per second respectively. There is a receiver in the left eyepiece and a transmitter in the right, which can emit an undetectable beam up to 1.8 miles. So to transmit information to another person, you just have to look at them. Unlike similar systems that use lasers that can be harmful, this system is eye-friendly. Now if you just combine this with a TV-B-Gone, think of all the mischief you could make (shame on you). via Popular Mechanics → Read More
Novatel might be on to something with its MiFi device. It’s basically a rechargeable, portable wireless router that ingests mobile data signals and spits them back out as standard Wi-Fi. The company is calling the technology an “Intelligent Mobile Hotspot,” in case you were longing for some industry jargon. The idea certainly isn’t new, but this version may very well be the most portable. Initial devices will be good for four hours of active usage or 40 hours of standby time and they’ll be available in the first half of next year, although specific carriers and prices haven’t been mentioned. Also, nobody seems to want to talk about the 5GB data limit imposed by all the major US wireless companies. Seems that if you shared a data connection between enough users, you’d blow through that limit pretty quickly. Full release after the jump… → Read More
The majority (51 percent) of wireless access points in New York City are completely insecure, either using no security whatsoever or relying on WEP, which is all but useless. That number excludes publicly accessible hotspots you’d find at a café or park, meaning that a majority of those blue little routers sitting in the corner of every New York City apartment can be broken into with little to no effort. The above video shows how easily it is to crack WEP. Note that WPA can also be cracked, but that requires a little more effort (though just barely—this stuff moves fast, as you can imagine.) Those are some of the findings of the most recent Wireless Security Survey, which is conducted by RSA. Other tidbits of information—that London has the most wireless access points of any city on Earth (12,276 of them, which is some 3,000 more than New York has); Paris has seen 543 percent jump in the number of wireless access points—pepper the report but aren’t nearly as interesting. Again, I feel like I say this every other day, but you really ought to secure your Wi-Fi router, especially if you live in a densely populated area, like, say, an apartment building. That means WPA or greater, because all it takes is one kid with a few minutes of free time and the will to do some damage to get you into hot water. via Slashdot → Read More
I’ve just attended the keynote address given by Dr. Martin Cooper. Never heard of him? You know him indirectly, as he’s the inventor of something most everyone uses every day: the mobile phone. At the Embedded Systems Conference in Boston, Cooper presented an interesting look at the current state of the wireless industry, identifying a handful of problems and how he thinks they could be fixed. → Read More
