Posted by admin on Mar 31, 2009 in
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American Airlines apparently liked its long-running pilot test of Aircell Gogo Internet on 15 planes: The airline is expanding service over two years to 300 mainline craft. American has over 600 planes in its active mainline fleet, but about half those (Boeing 757, 767, and 777 models) spend most of their time over water, the carrier told the Dallas Morning News.
The company is opting for an interesting rollout: 150 MD-80s this year; about the same number in 737-800s in 2010. The first of the MD-80s with Gogo will go into service this week. The firm’s 15 767-200s with Internet service used for cross-country routes will remain available, too.
The strategy is a bit odd: the expectation of service availability will likely be one factor that drives usage. Regular travelers will want to know that they can use Wi-Fi on a flight; otherwise, why would they change traveling preferences for a given flight without that assurance? I expect American might try to guarantee certain routes will have Wi-Fi, but it’s still a bit odd.
Related to that, why stretch this over two years? Cost? I don’t see how the company achieves a real competitive parity with Delta, which expects to have its domestic mainline fleet equipped by third quarter, without meeting Delta’s fleet rollout.
Further Delta has signaled that it plans to announce a schedule later this year for putting Aircell’s offering on domestic craft in the Northwest fleet that the airline acquired.
Delta reported on its blog a few days ago that it’s at 77 planes with Internet service, or about 25 percent.
Posted by admin on Mar 30, 2009 in
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Wi-Fi makes it possible to find a stolen laptop with a pin on a map: Last week, I heard a story of a laptop theft that made me sit up. I talked to the victim (still distraught), who had her laptop stolen when a young man in a group of four in a coffeeshop walked up to her and grabbed it. (She grabbed it back once, and he snatched it again.) The four men scattered, and they weren’t found. She had, apparently, no backups and no way of locating the stolen item.
The trick here, of course, is that once the horse is out of the barn there’s little that you can do. If you plan, you might be able to recover that stolen laptop; reports of recovery are quite encouraging with the right software installed. This dovetails with my interest in Wi-Fi because software makers are starting to pair Skyhook Wireless’s Wi-Fi positioning system and software with recovery software.
The basic idea is that you pay a relatively modest one-time fee or yearly subscription fee to have difficult-to-remove software running on your computer at all times. The computer checks in at frequent intervals to see if it’s been marked as stolen. Once it has, it activates various recording and transmission modes, sending (depending on the package) anything from Web camera snapshots to IP data. A few packages now offer Wi-Fi positioning info, too. (I wrote an article for the Seattle Times that appeared last Saturday that wasn’t focused on the Wi-Fi aspect.)
The assumption lies in most thieves of this kind being technically unsophisticated and having a laptop join a network in order to use it. Some laptops may be set (Windows and Mac OS X have options) to join any available network, too. While this is a security issue when the laptop is in your hands, it’s an advantage when it’s roaming.
Programs that use Wi-Fi location information that I’ve tested or use include Undercover (Mac OS X, $49 one-time fee) and MacTrak (Mac OS X, $24.95 per year); there’s also Laptop Cop ($49.95 per year, Windows XP/Vista). There are plenty of others, too, mostly for Windows, that lack location scanning. Computrace LoJack for Laptops notably has a BIOS agent preinstalled on many major Wintel brand computers that can be activated and not disabled without BIOS being wiped!
Each package has the same fundamental working methodology, but offers different front-end features. Orbicule’s Undercover takes screen shots and Web camera pictures, capturing that along with identifying network data and Wi-Fi scans. If a laptop remains unrecoverable, it goes into a simulated failure mode, and then activates a kind of screaming stolen laptop alarm if the machine is taken into a known Apple repair shop or Apple Store.
GadgetTrak’s MacTrak sends information directly to you via email and/or Flickr, uploading Web camera photos and providing network details, as well as a link with the calculated coordinates.
Laptop Cop has a variety of extra, including remote file deletion, remote file retrieval, and full-on capture of everything a thief is doing, including keystrokes. (These options are available in some other Windows packages, too, but not in Undercover nor MacTrak. GadgetTrak plans to add Wi-Fi positioning to its higher-end Windows product at some point.)
Each of these firms works with your local law enforcement agency to provide data; in the case of MacTrak, GadgetTrak is happy to work with police, but you can also take the information the company’s software sends you to officers directly.
After a rash of thefts among friends and acquaintances, I’ve installed recovery software on each of my computers, as well as arranging both local and remote backups.
Alternatives with no software installed: If you haven’t installed recovery software, you’re not entirely out of luck. Many people now run remote backup software, such as Mozy or CrashPlan, or use synchronized storage like Dropbox, Microsoft Live Sync, or Apple’s iDisk. And many of us have email software that regularly and automatically checks for messages.
In all of those cases, the current IP address of the computer is recorded whenever a request is made. With your account information in hand, you may be able to log in directly to one of the services, and retrieve the IP address. Or, you can call the company or use customer support to get this information as long as you’re the valid account holder. Some firms may require law enforcement to contact them directly.
Police can take an IP address, use that to determine the Internet service provider at which that address is located, and then get the street address that corresponded at that point in time (IP addresses are sometimes reassigned when a modem is rebooted or over time). A warrant may be required.
If you have remote backup software installed, you might get the benefit of having files backed up even if your machine can’t be recovered. My friend David Blatner wrote up his own laptop-theft article after his machine was stolen. He had CrashPlan running, and the thieves reconnected to a network after taking his machine, and this gapped much of the difference between a month-old local backup he had made and what was on the stolen machine.
In an oddball case last year, an Apple Store employee who had the remote access software Back to My Mac installed, which allows remote screen-sharing and file transfer, was able to snap shots of a thief and transfer photos he and a collaborator had put onto her computer. That was a sort of one-in-a-million shot.
Posted by admin on Mar 30, 2009 in
Uncategorized Why should AT&T be excited about Skype for iPhone: Because all of us iPhone users are paying minimum fees for service that we will use less and less in favor of Skype. The free Skype for iPhone application, due out tomorrow, will only work over Wi-Fi. (PC World has a full report including screen captures.)
Skype has 400 million users worldwide, and the voice quality tends to be better than that of the conventional POTS (plain old telephone service) or cellular network when there’s sufficient bandwidth. With a user base that large, with a mobile version of Skype you’re more likely to make Skype-to-Skype calls (which are free).
AT&T enabled the Wi-Fi part of this equation by belatedly offering free Wi-Fi for iPhone users to any of the nearly 20,000 in-network hotspots the company operates. AT&T acquired Wayport, its managed services provider for Wi-Fi hotspots, last year. This puts McDonald’s, Starbucks, a number of hotels, and some chains under one plan, all free to iPhone users. (iPhone users should download and use Easy Wi-Fi for AT&T iPhones, a currently free app from Devicescape for automating your hotspot login.)
Why does this benefit AT&T? Every minute that you use over Skype over Wi-Fi is a minute that AT&T doesn’t have to pay cellular transit costs for. Sure, AT&T makes money from selling you outside-plan minutes at about 25 to 50 cents a minute. But savvy user now buy unlimited plans or have pools large enough or use prepaid plans. I believe the fees from the overage charges are trending into place. Which means that AT&T would prefer you use less minutes, loading its network less.
Skype charges for calling to the public switched telephone network, a couple cents a minute to North America and many other countries or fixed monthly plans, but the margins are very thin there.
Let’s say a billion minutes are siphoned from AT&T cell calls using the iPhone and now are made over Skype. Skype relies on peer-to-peer infrastructure for the most part (with some central authentication) for its Skype-to-Skype calling, so that’s no skin off its nose. For AT&T, that’s a billion minutes it doesn’t have to carry with a commensurate drop in termination fees, carrying costs, and infrastructure buildout. Further, this encourage more use over Wi-Fi instead of over 3G, freeing 3G service by having people seek out Wi-Fi hotspots.
If you’re like my wife and I, we already have the cheapest possible plan from AT&T: a family plan with two lines, the lowest number of minutes, and two iPhones (first generation). This still costs us $130 per month including taxes and we haven’t been able to drop any lower with our current offering.
If we start calling a bunch over Skype for iPhone, then we’re still paying that same $130 to AT&T, and yet we’re using it less and less. It’s all about margins. Skype still requires that someone else operate the network and the broadband, so even while Skype sucks minutes from the telecom infrastructure, it’s hard to see how AT&T loses in this case because of the high fixed cost of obtaining a minimum cellular data plan.
iPod touch reaches out: The mobile Skype application works on the iPod touch, too, bringing such users access to a high-quality worldwide network of existing users and cheap calling. This device needs an external mike or headset (there’s no microphone built in), but Apple revealed recently that 13 million iPod touch models have been sold. That’s a big audience.
iPod touch owners don’t have automatic free Wi-Fi hotspot access, but that’s easy to solve. Hotspot operators and aggregators already offer mobile pricing. Boingo Wireless, for instance, has an $8 per month plan for mobile devices for which the iPod touch already qualifies. Get Boingo’s iPhone/iPod touch application and you get automatic login, too.
Posted by admin on Mar 26, 2009 in
Uncategorized Leaks reported from some reasonably accurate sources say that 802.11n might be built into the next model of iPhone, along with chips to support the 7.2 Mbps HSPA flavor to which AT&T is currently upgrading its 3G network.
Could it be? Sure. But is it useful? Not so much yet.
802.11n was developed as a range and speed booster, employing multiple antennas and two or more radios to work over greater distances (sending a stronger signal, having better receiver sensitivity) and at greater speeds (improved encoding, multiple spatial paths, double-wide channels).
That’s fine for laptops, desktops, and routers, but it’s hard to cram that much radio technology into a battery-powered mobile device without making the time between charges unusably brief.
Meanwhile, chipmakers keep shipping hundreds of millions of commodity 802.11g chips, which they make no real money from, and which they have no interest in improving processes for.
That’s where single-stream 802.11n comes in. With single-stream 802.11n, only a single radio and single antenna are used. This may seem odd to cut out most of the advantages of the standard - lurching its way to a 2010 ratification, by the way - but single stream still offers quite a lot.
Posted by admin on Mar 25, 2009 in
Wifi Updates Asset-tracking software firm Ekahau releases tool to discover, map signal strength of Wi-Fi networks: HeatMapper, a free Windows XP/Vista application, performs the neat trick of letting you walk around your office or home while it continuously scans for Wi-Fi networks. When you stop warwalking and inform the program of such, you’re presented with a heatmap of every network found. This lets you survey interference and see how your network deployment “looks.”
You can start with a raw grid or a digital image of your office or home floorplan. As you walk, you click at key points. The software does the rest.
Hover over an access point on the heatmap–routers are neatly represented by a generic icon from the manufacturer, identified by its MAC address prefix–and you see the corresponding heatmap. (The graphic is a fancy icon; it’s really only a 2D mapping package.)
A list at left shows a live scan of networks and their characteristics.
When I spoke to the program’s product manager a few weeks ago for this article in Ars Technica, he said that the intent was partly to provide an up-to-date scanning package to replace NetStumbler, which has been out of development for years.
Posted by admin on Mar 25, 2009 in
Wifi Updates Asset-tracking software firm Ekehau releases tool to discover, map signal strength of Wi-Fi networks: HeatMapper, a free Windows XP/Vista application, performs the neat trick of letting you walk around your office or home while it continuously scans for Wi-Fi networks. When you stop warwalking and inform the program of such, you’re presented with a heatmap of every network found. This lets you survey interference and see how your network deployment “looks.”
You can start with a raw grid or a digital image of your office or home floorplan. As you walk, you click at key points. The software does the rest.
Hover over an access point on the heatmap–routers are neatly represented by a generic icon from the manufacturer, identified by its MAC address prefix–and you see the corresponding heatmap. (The graphic is a fancy icon; it’s really only a 2D mapping package.)
A list at left shows a live scan of networks and their characteristics.
When I spoke to the program’s product manager a few weeks ago for this article in Ars Technica, he said that the intent was partly to provide an up-to-date scanning package to replace NetStumbler, which has been out of development for years.
Posted by admin on Mar 20, 2009 in
Uncategorized 
It seems like a no-brainer, putting Internet service on commuter and long-distance trains: But there are plenty of difficulties in making this happen. Frequent Seattle-to-Portland Cascade Talgo rider Vaughn Aldredge alerted the Seattlest to his experience, and shared some technical detail with me; that led me to Vickie Sheehan, the Washington State Department of Transportation (WSDOT) spokesperson for rail and marine issues.
Sheehan explained that a trial is underway for the high-speed Seattle-to-Portland Amtrak run in which the WSDOT and Talgo, the manufacturer of the fleet trains, are collaborating. Sheehan said the current trial replaces a previous effort in which continuity of service was problem along the approximately 180-mile route. “We don’t want to put someting out there that’s inferior and would have spotty coverage,” she said.
The service will likely be free, an amenity to encourage more riders on the line that takes 4 four hours to traverse the route, which can be under 3 by car. Sheehan said that stimulus funds coupled with an effort in the state legislature could provide the money to complete further track upgrades, move to 8 instead of 6 round trips a day, and drop the trip to below 3 hours.
Aldredge’s experience with the trial was that the service was slow and intermittent, but he said there was no way to be sure another user wasn’t engaged in a high-bandwidth activity, like downloading a video. (That’s about the first thing everyone does these days when they encounter Wi-Fi in odd locations.) Sheehan said that in generally comment cards were coming back with positive responses.
The trial service is backed by a cellular connection, which works reasonably well as the route parallels I-5, the major north/south highway between Seattle and Portland.
There have been rumors for five years that Amtrak was considering testing systems on its trains, and there’s apparently a public request for proposals out there, but I can’t find it, and an Amtrak spokesperson didn’t answer the question as to where to find it.
Amtrak’s fiscal 2009 business plan notes only, “Eticketing and the addition of Wi-Fi technology on trains, on-board point of sale and credit card automation sales are a few important projects planned to either start in FY09 or continue a multi-year effort.”
One could imagine that with the additional funds allotted to Amtrak nationwide by the Obama Administration, that the train operator might be able to work harder to find private contractors to build a service.
Trains are a particular problem for providing Internet access. In some commuter lines, you might have a straight shot along existing rights of way with no tunnels and can simply use existing 3G cellular infrastructure, with an eye to the upcoming 4G rollouts of WiMax and LTE. That’s a good 5-year plan, right?
But for Amtrak, there are now high-speed trains on certain routes for which standard cell technology might not be appropriate (Cascades with Talgo in the Northwest, Acela Express in the Northeast); extremely complicated terrain with tunnels, mountains obstructions, and so forth; and a varied ridership that might not provide the consistent revenue needed. A combination of satellite and cellular could work, except that getting satellite line of site to, say, Ku-band (way down in geostationary orbit over the equator) could be just as difficult as reaching a cell tower.
Likely, some combination of relay towers in difficult spots and varied backhaul would be needed to ensure consistent access.
Tests a few years ago on the Capitol Corridor line down in California that runs from around Sacramento to the south bay produced decidedly mixed results. Of four finalists who were supposed to test networks, not much got off the ground (as it were), and the tests produced no conclusive results. Amtrak and the CCJPA (CC Joint Powers Authority) have a shared interest in the CC line, and more work is absolutely planned there.
Finally, as with a lot of Wi-Fi being installed now in the air, across cities, and elsewhere, the combination of operational utility (remote surveillance, homeland security, communications, logistics, remote train operation, and telemetry) with public access often makes the budget work were a little bit of back office combined with a little passenger use doesn’t sell the offering.
Posted by admin on Mar 19, 2009 in
Uncategorized Cadillac gets in-car hotspot option: General Motors will offer a dealer-installable version of Autonet Mobile’s cellular gateway for its CTS line of cars under the Cadillac WiFi by Autonet Mobile label. The $500 device offers Wi-Fi access to a $30-$60/month cellular backhaul (1 GB or 5 GB). Most of the reporting is quoting a $30/month for service, omitting the 1 GB limit.
The new model is a little slicker than what Autonet has previously offered: it’s smaller, which is great, but it’s designed to dock making it transportable among cars. It’s unclear whether there’s a proprietary charger or dock in place; if it’s truly mobile with an AC adapter, then this becomes a far better deal for a business traveler than Autonet’s apparent current family market.
Security might be an issue: Autonet Mobile’s FAQ says the device supports only WEP encryption, which no one should be seriously relying on since 2004. I don’t suspect a legion of cracker-drivers, scanning for Autonet systems to penetrate, but WEP provides no level of reliable security, and shouldn’t have been engineered into any device designed after 2003.
I do question the utility of this for folks other than road warriors, but Autonet Mobile has said (and I have heard through other sources and other articles) that families apparently are so Internet-bound that paying $500 plus $360 or $720 per year for continuous access is a worthwhile household expense.
Posted by admin on Mar 18, 2009 in
Uncategorized A hilarious exegesis of the trouble with wires: From Christoph Niemann in the New York Times. Oddly, I just received an iPod shuffle for review (the new, tiny model), and the earbuds that come with it are nearly impossible to tangle–I tried. A special coating plus a sliding wire untangler that’s built in seems to defeat the monster.
Posted by admin on Mar 18, 2009 in
Uncategorized 
If you need more proof that AT&T gets Wi-Fi, just read this quote: “You can think of Wi-Fi as a giant offload point for wireless data traffic. Look at the growth in smartphones and data traffic, and it’s pretty clear that Wi-Fi can be a real plus to AT&T.” That’s from Greg Williams, a VP at AT&T who was brought over from his role as COO at Wayport when that firm was acquired. Williams was at Wayport since 2003 during which time it had explosive native and managed location growth. None of the other carriers understands this simple statement that Williams made.
iPhone 3.0 software: Apple showed off features in its iPhone 3.0 software, due out this summer as a free update for all iPhone owners of any vintage phone. Two features related to wireless include the ability for developers to embed map interaction into their applications, including the use of Wi-Fi positioning for location finding; and an auto-login option for Wi-Fi hotspots, not explained in any fashion. One colleague suggests wISPr, a somewhat de facto and erratic standard for a hotspot publishing its login characteristics, will be employed. As long experience with aggregators has revealed, Apple is 100-percent naive if it thinks that will work in isolation. It might be a tool to automate logins for AT&T and other iPhone carriers’ Wi-Fi networks. Another colleague noted that EAP-SIM appeared in small print on one slide Apple showed today; that EAP flavor is used to allow a phone’s SIM authentication card to perform a network login. Nokia was testing a kind of EAP-SIM long, long, long ago as a way to avoid hotspot login typing.
A hacker (the good kind) figured out how to use an Eye-Fi card with his own server: Eye-Fi transmits data back to a computer or the Eye-Fi servers (from whence it goes to photo-sharing and other sites you’ve chosen), using a computer-hosted Web server to manage a card’s settings. Jeff Tchang wrote a python server script to allow substituting a different software package for the Eye-Fi Manager. Not sure if this violates the company’s terms of service, but it’s always neat to see constructive and unintended extensions of useful technology.
