Calling all techies
January 28, 2009
Are you a fiend for your iPhone?
Floored over flat-screens? Wowed by WiFi?
The Courier-Post is looking for gizmos and gadgets junkies.
If going to Best Buy has become a weekly venture, if the TV in your living room looks (and sounds) better than anything at the multiplex, the C-P would like to hear from you.
Send an e-mail to machimento@camden.gannett.com if you’d like to participate in an upcoming Courier-Post story.
Intel My WiFi Tech Set To Make Connectivity Simple
January 28, 2009
Don’t be surprised when college students, business travelers, and people who simply have a lot of tech at home suddenly become a lot more fond of Intel. The company has introduced something called My WiFi that aims make wireless communication between devices a lot simpler.
The new Intel My WiFi technology will, in short, allow users to connect up to eight different WiFi-enabled devices without the need for an access point. The only catch is that they’ll have to own a Centrino 2-based laptop with Windows Vista, and then it just fills that role.
The end result is that a person can transfer data between printers, televisions, digital picture frames, webcams, cell phones, and various other stuff without a need for wires or having to jump through hoops. Intel My WiFi is supposed to take care of all the connection details.
The data should move pretty easily between devices, too, since Intel My WiFi (which uses 802.11b and 802.11g Wi-Fi tech) matches conventional Wi-Fi networks in terms of range and speed.
The technology sounds like a real winner, all in all, and Intel’s released a short pocket guide and demo so far if you want more information.
Spotlight Gadget - Beetle BANG Wi-Fi Optimizer
January 28, 2009
I’m not quite sure who came up with the name of this device but ummm… yay them! The Beetle BANG is a handheld WiFi Optimizer that verifies, sweeps, measures and optimizes all popular 802.11 Wi-Fi network standards including 802.11b/g (2.4 GHz), 802.11a (5 GHz) and even 802.11n. It can be yours for the low low price of $3500. I’ll take two please…
Carrier touts $6.50 Windows Mobile phone
January 27, 2009
T-Mobile announced that it will offer a Windows Mobile 6.1 smartphone next month for just five Euros (about $6.50). The “MDA Basic” includes a 2.8-inch touchscreen display with 320 x 240 resolution, four way navigation controls, WiFi, Bluetooth 2.0, and quad-band (850/900/1800/1900MHz) GSM/GPRS/EDGE connectivity, says T-Mobile.
HTC Touch Viva
T-Mobile has a long-standing relationship with HTC, so it comes as no surprise to learn that the MDA Basic is actually a renamed HTC device. In this case, the carrier has based its new phone on the previously released Touch Viva, pictured at right.
When the Touch Viva launched in September of last year, we speculated that carriers might be able to offer the device for as little as $100. (Little did we know.) The entry-level phone actually offers all of the features of HTC’s original, ground-breaking Touch, including its TouchFLO user interface, and it has been upgraded to Windows Mobile 6.1. In addition, the device reportedly includes the finger-friendly Opera Mobile 9.5 web browser.
Like the original Touch, which was criticized by some for its sluggishness at running TouchFLO, the Touch Viva/MDA Basic makes do with a 201MHz TI OMAP850 processor. However, the device does come with 128MB of RAM, rather than the 64MB the Touch offered. The phone also has 256MB of flash storage, plus a microSD slot for up to 4GB of memory expansion, says T-Mobile.
In terms of cellular capabilities, the MDA Basic is not a 3G device, but it doe…
iBiquity’s Struble Talks Future Of Radio Comp
January 27, 2009
The Consumer Electronics Show (CES) was held earlier this month and iBiquity President/CEO Bob Struble recently filed a report on radio’s future via his online column. Struble, who is also on the Consumer Electronics Association Board of Industry Leaders, wrote that at the CES, he could see that “AM/FM’s competition is increasing [and] in my view, this trend will not stop and likely intensify.”
Some notable competitors Struble mentioned included mobile digital video in cars and Internet radio devices “which look and act like regular radios, but use WiFi networks to tune in thousands of Internet stations.” Struble wrote that “all of the automakers are working on new entertainment and information sources for cars, including in-vehicle Internet, and fully integrated iPod/MP3 functionality” and that “a truly mobile Internet, using a variety of existing and planned high speed networks and devices is being worked on by major carriers and handset, PC and receiver manufacturers.”
Struble notes that none of these new innovations “spell the death of AM/FM…But they do continue a long term trend which has seen radio go from being the sole source of mobile information and entertainment to being one of dozens of choices. We certainly saw that on the show floor.”
He adds that “AM/FM tuners are not being included in as many devices as they have been in the past…I even saw one car stereo without AM/FM: it just had CD and MP3/iPod capability.” Struble believes that “radio broadc…
Configuring the Ralink RT2860 card
January 27, 2009
This is how I set up my Zepto Znote 6024W (using the Ralink RT2860 wifi card) with my D-Link DI-524 router. It is a really crappy router, and I have had lots of problems with it, but today I seem to have found a solution to my problems. It still seems to disconnect a lot, but if I dhclient it again, it usually reconnects. This is how I set it up.
Go to Ralink’s website at http://web.ralinktech.com/ralink/Home/Support/Linux.html. The latest drivers when writing this is 1.8.0. Download them and untar them somewhere.
I really recommend you to read the README_STA that comes with the drivers. It tells you how to configure the drivers for your setup, even if they do leave a lot to wish for. The information that I’m sharing here is a mix between that file, as well as the info that can be found in the manpages for wpa_supplicant, wpa_cli, wpa_supplicant.conf and ifup.
First we change the config for the build so the card is being controlled by wext and network manager. Open the file os/linux/config.mk and set:
‘HAS_WPA_SUPPLICANT=y’ and “HAS_NATIVE_WPA_SUPPLICANT_SUPPORT=y’.
Save the file, we now move on to configuring the more detailed stuff. The settings for the drivers are entered into the RT2860STA.dat file in the base directory of the drivers. This is then copied to /etc/Wireless/RT2860STA/ when we compile the source and run ‘make install’.
Edit the settings that interests you. I don’t see why we need to enter our psk (preshared key) both here and in the wpa setting…
MSI gets official with GT627 gaming laptop
January 27, 2009
MSI briefly mentioned its GT627 gaming laptop amongst hordes of other machines at CES, but now the outfit is playing favorites by officially unveiling its latest 15.4-incher. Said rig features a pixel-packed 1,680 x 1,050 resolution display, a six-cell battery, 802.11b/g/n WiFi, an optional Blu-ray drive and a Core 2 Duo CPU. It’s also the first MSI laptop to feature the 1GB NVIDIA GeForce 9800M GS GPU, and there’s even a 320GB HDD, 4-in-1 multicard reader, twin USB 2.0 ports, HDMI / VGA outputs, gigabit Ethernet, a two megapixel webcam and an ExpressCard slot to round things out. All told, the machine weighs in at 5.8 pounds, but it’s your best guess as to how much it’ll retail for. Full release is after the break.
MSI Announces New GT627 Gaming Notebook Featuring NVIDIA GeForce 9800M GS
GT627 features MSI’s Turbo Drive Technology, Blu-ray Player, and Intel Core 2 Duo Processor
CITY OF INDUSTRY, CA – January 26, 2009 – MSI Computer, a leading manufacturer of computer hardware products and solutions, is pleased to announce the newest addition to its Gaming Notebook Series – GT627. The new GT627 is the first in the MSI Gaming Notebook series to feature the NVIDIA GeForce 9800M GS graphics processing unit (GPU). This revolutionary GPU delivers blazing-fast mobile gaming and supports NVIDIA CUDA™ technology enabling MSI customers to experience the wide range of CUDA-based applications-such as heart-stopping GPU-accelerated game physics and video conversion. The …