Naquada

Netgear US have introduced the WGR101 a pocket-sized wireless travel router.

The device allows you to ‘wireless’ your hotel room internet access with ease. The device at only 0.7 x 2.3 x 3.4 inches (17.8 x 58.4 x 86.4 mm) is tiny (and weighs only 80 grams). Theres a switch to allow single user or multiple user access stopping others piggy backing on your wireless as well

It supports both 802.11g and 802.11b devices, Double firewall - stateful packet inspection and nat translation, and more importantly supports IPSec and PPTP pass though, add 128 bit WEP and SSID broadcast on and off and you’re laughing..

obviously it seems to only be available in the USA but hey… next shopping trip ??

crackberry n. A BlackBerry handheld computer, particularly one used obsessively; a person who uses such a computer obsessively This term combines crack (short for crack cocaine, a highly addictive narcotic) and BlackBerry.

associated terms;
Berry Pimping. The action of overly showing your blackberry, or making excessing reference to it without need.

Citations;
In Washington and elsewhere, the devices are referred to as “CrackBerries” because of their addictive quality. Philippe Reines, a 34-year-old Democrat who works on Capitol Hill (and who coined the term “blirting,” for BlackBerry flirting), said he went through severe withdrawal after finding that Martha’s Vineyard lacked BlackBerry reception. Mr. Reines wandered around the Vineyard for days looking for spots of coverage before begging an airline employee to take his BlackBerry on a round trip to the mainland, where it could send and receive messages. He got 129 new messages, many of them social.

The BBC are finally dramatising Douglas Adams

Pocket PC Passion have an article on the 7230 Blackberry and how it really compares to other solutions such as Windows Mobile Product.

The blackberry is a great idea, email and appointments always there, java based so you can add additional applications like IM etc, but is it really that great? or is it a poor substitute for ‘real’ email.

Our company uses Blackberrys, but they havent filtered down the food chain to the likes of the Sales Engineers (like me). In the US the blackberry devices have started to be known as ‘Crackberrys’ due to their additive nature!!

Since I dont have a crackberry (or a blackberry for that matter!) I use a 2210 Ipaq with GPRS through to the leederbyshire’s PDA version of exchanges OWA client

Which works just great, and the only downside is thats its a connect to, as opposed to the blackberry’s push type architecture.. The new version of leederby also supports attachments which is dead handy as well..

Seems the its till really only Lufthansa is offering hi speed wireless on flights. and non of those have dropped out of the sky yet, so maybe its time other operators followed? Apple put up a page showing that iChat, Isight, a PowerBook G4 and an Airbus are indeed compatible hardware. In what might have been the first in-air commercial videoconference, Apple product manager Kurt Knight, on the ground in Cupertino, hooked up over iChat AV with product line manager Eric Zelenka, returning to San Francisco from Munich, using Lufthansa

Well it seems the guys at Trillian came through again and managed to patch Trillian to get round evil Yahoo again…

So I’m back online again… expect a few more outages over the coming week or two as Yahoo waste development time trying to block Trillian again…

Beginning at about 6 p.m. Wednesday, Yahoo changed its instant messaging language to prevent third-party services, such as Trillian, from accessing its service. Like previous statements, the company said the block is meant as a pre-emptive measure against spammers from its Yahoo Messenger service.

“Spammers are being aided by entities that are abusing our systems, where they effortlessly gain knowledge of pathways and back-alley access to send spam,” Yahoo spokeswoman Mary Osako said.

Cheers Yahoo… I have many contacts on all the message systems which means that I use a decent IM tool like trillian to get to them all at once… it woudl be nice to stop spam using coded work rounds, not real applications like trillian…

So sorry to all my Yahoo buddies… the number you are calling is temporarily out of service…

source: ZDNET

Companies and private owners willing to set up mobile phone antenna masts on their property can get good money for their cooperation, as well as becoming public enemy number one for putting up a ‘pole of doom and gloom’

Mobile and Cell masts are typically unwanted in neighborhoods, either because of fears that they can damage your health or due to their ugly appearance.
The network operators are coming up with, lets say ‘interesting’ ways to try and get round at least one of those problems, simply dress the masts up as trees, chimneys, or even crucifixes.

“Different authorities always request ways to make the masts look nicer,” said Josef Skuk, manager of the Austrian company Industrieanlageabau. So Skuk’s company started disguising their masts to look like full-grown trees.

“Pine needle or trees with leaves, we have both on offer,” Skuk said.

A growing number of companies across Europe provide similar services. Kaal in Holland and the British company, Francis & Lewis, offer trees that can be “built in a day” and look real, even down to the bark.

Jesus diguised as a phone mast hasnt been their best seller.. “The churches actually don’t like it so much,” said Susanne Satzer-Spree, a Vodafone spokeswoman.

Mobile phone companies are careful to emphasize that the camouflage is not supposed to actually hide mast construction from community residents, but Hans Ultich-Raithel of Munich’s Environmental Institute is not too sure. “Mobile phone masts are hidden often in chimneys because of protests from residents,” he said.

Sometimes I think the Japanese are just there to taunt us, bragging about all the things they have that we dont.. one more kick in the teeth for us ‘normal’ people;

a massive digital video recorder called the Type X with more than 1 terabyte of storage.

Now the SKY+ system is kinda cool in that it has 2 TV tuners, but this little baby has not one, not two, and not even three TV tuners, but SEVEN TV tuners. That gives you the ability to record up to seven different shows at the same time. Ok so it may be difficult to find seven simulataneous TV shows worth recording, but hey its the fact that you can!!

Ok the downside is that this one looks like it might not hit stores for a while, and thats only going to be in Japan, and yes we’ll probably never see it, but hey you can dream…

A while back I posted some thoughts on a ‘disccusion’ I had with BMG music around their ‘copy protection’.

Whilst I fully understand why companies want to stop people mass copying CD’s its also hurting those that play by the rules, and mearly want to listen to CD’s on the move. BMG’s arguement of buying a digital copy of the CD was flawed in the fact they couldnt provide a MP3 version from my Ipod, only a WMA version..

It seems now that Amazon are prewarning customers about CD’s with the copy protection system on them;

They correctly list that the Faithless Album - No Roots has Midbar protection, but miss listing that the Outkast CD - Speakerboxx / The Love Below has the Midbar protection on it..

Guess its still pot luck on if you can play your Cd’s on so called ‘unofficial’ Hi-Fi’s