Wireless networking meets social networking in WeFi (free). This useful software does double-duty: It helps you find reliable hot spots and then connect to them, and also helps you connect with your friends, and find new ones. Run the program and it shows nearby hot spots, with details about each such as signal strength and whether the network is encrypted. You can also have the program send you to a Web page where you can see all the hot spots mapped out. New to this version of WeFi is its ability to show information about each hot spot such as whether it is a school, coffee shop, restaurant, home, and so on. And a new feature allows you to find hot spots not just in your immediate WiFi range, but beyond it as well, by consulting the WeFit database.
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Posts Tagged ‘network’
The Battle for Your Digital Living Room
Sunday, June 6th, 2010For a number of years, we in the technology community have been talking about the battle for the living room and which devices and service providers will rule the roost and provide the best platform for content delivery. How times have changed. We’ve come a long way since Dad brought home that big bulky tube TV console, plugged it in, raised the rabbit ears and ordered the kids to get up off the couch and switch the channel.
Now, in this so-called battle for the living room, providers of electronic devices, entertainment delivery services and content are competing fiercely for consumer loyalty. At the same time, consumers are trying to come to grips with the range of choices and technologies that have made the digital home much more complicated than a few decades ago, when the TV was often the only appliance in the living room.
Let’s review the players in this scrum. There’s the dean of living room appliances, the TV – easy to use and always reliable, but going through some radical mid-life transformations of late with Internet connectivity and interactive capabilities. Close by is the set-top box, which increasingly over time became the brains behind the TV. The PC, delivering Internet content, multimedia and e-mail, is now part of the living room landscape, as are the game console, the laptop, and newer digital players like Internet movie and entertainment boxes, netbooks, and tablets.
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