My hometown of New York City has announced a plan to replace thousands of payphones with wi-fi hotspots. The Link(as it is called) will provide free public wifi, free phone calls anywhere in the U.S., a touchscreen interface to city services and directions, easy 311/911 access, free charging for mobile, and digital displays for advertising and PSAs.
The wi-fi will be encrypted, which is not common in public hotspots, and some locations will be gigabit.
On a practical level, this modernizes the payphone. It still has the important aspects…the ability to call for emergency services, make telephone calls when needed, etc. But it adds in the services that we desire in the modern age.
I am a bit concerned about a few things. One, this is a ten-foot tall spire with ads on the side. The ads are by necessity. That’s what is going to fund this. But I worry about the intrusiveness of these things. But it will likely be no more intrusive than other ads. Also, imagine a group of digital nomads clustered around this spire with its internet and charging station.
A ten foot tall device actually could blanket a wider area than just immediately around the device. It is tall enough to theoretically stretch down the street. It could change a lot.
Yesterday, we quickly wrote up a few stories reporting the important details of the Amazon Kindle announcement. A day later, it is time to reflect.
Amazon has said it is about content. And they are. They started out as a bookseller, and despite being very technically adept, they’ve always used hardware as a way to move along their various content ecosystems. But we don’t quite believe them they aren’t being shrewd about the hardware too.
The base Kindle is now $69 with offers. We had thought it might go as low between $30 and $50, but at $69 it is still in the impulse buying range. It is almost disposable.
The Kindle Paperwhite is $119 with offers. It incorporates Amazon’s latest screen improvements, including a new lit design that allows for night reading as well as better contrast during the day, and still with amazing battery life. (8 hours). The 3G version is $179 with offers.
In the case of all three, to disable the offers is an additional $20.
So, let’s talk about a few things in the e-reader family before moving on to the Fires. Text to speech, a formerly touted feature, is gone on all Kindles(the Keyboard is still being sold, but that is legacy).
This appears to be because they will be offering Audible/Kindle book bundles in the future. To be honest, an e-reader really doesn’t need audio capability, and few people wanted to hear a book read using text to speech. More would prefer a human. So we’d imagine there wasn’t much interest in the feature, although vision impaired individuals are likely trying to figure out what they will do.
The Kindle DX is dead. No surprise there. A larger e-ink screen has its place, but there wasn’t sufficient interest.
Moving on to the Fire Line.
Kindle Fire(2nd generation) – $159. This is basically the same as the old Fire, but boosts the performance, memory, and battery life, also adds stereo speakers.
Kindle Fire HD – $199/(16GB), $249(32GB) 1280×800 resolution compared to the Fires 1024×600, Dolby Audio Speakers, dual-band/antenna wi-fi, bigger battery and more sensitive touchscreen.
Kindle Fire HD 8.9 – $299(16GB), $369 (32GB) – 1920×1200 display with anti-glare technology, faster processor
Kindle Fire HD 8.9 4G – $499(32GB), $599(64GB), adds 4G LTE and the option of a $50 a year 250MB data plan.
A lot of the features that Amazon focused on were improvements to their content.
Whispersync for Voice, and between Audible books and Kindle books…this is just smart marketing. You can sell people the book twice by bundling them together and allowing them to switch back and forth.
X-Ray for Movies – They do own IMDB, and this allows them to use that data to make it easy for people to find more content…which they can now sell to you.
Kindle Serials – a serialized model for selling stories. A good move for a different product they can offer individuals as part of the book market.
Kindle FreeTime – Custom Profiles for users to restrict usage…an upgraded parental control
Whispersync for Games – Allowing you to sync your game data across platforms. Developers will have to build this in, but an API is likely out or will be.
There’s a lot there, but we can’t believe Amazon’s insistence that they want to be everywhere. The Kindle Fire has been out for a year, and yet there is still no native Android app for Amazon Video, and the Amazon Mobile app is not even tablet compatible. If Amazon wants hardware to advance content, they also have to release their software. The Kindle app, in varying qualities, is on everything. They should innovate features so that every device has access to the full range as soon as possible.
Then, they can truly be the indispensable source for content.
More on this in the future…but…who is going to order one of these?
RADIO FREQUENCY ENVIRONMENT AREA (Photo credit: elycefeliz)
Wireless-G has been the established standard for the last few years. We remember when we started playing with Wireless-B. It was only recently we jumped to Wireless-N. We didn’t need the speed jump.
With the increasing crowding of wireless spectrum, gigabit wired networks, where possible, are probably a good move.
We jumped this past month to dual band Wireless-N because of of the 5GHz frequency it offered. Wi-fi usually operates at 2.4GHz, but N supports two different frequency ranges.
Very few devices take advantage of the 5GHz band, which means that there will be little interference. Living in a city, there are at least 16 2.4GHz wireless networks in range of our test device.
Dual Band routers offer antennas for both frequencies, which means that you can have the devices that do not support 5GHz still operate.
After much consideration, we overbuilt and purchased the WNDR4500 when it was on sale.
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The router offers speed and reliability for the price, as well as multiple simultaneous full speed connections, guest networking, file sharing, and more. We needed the extra speed after we upgraded to wideband. The router had to keep up with the increased throughput.
This isn’t a router review. It is the most expensive router we have ever purchased. But if house networking is important to you, your router should be too. And if you are concerned about interference from other access points, upgrading to the 5GHz band is a viable option.
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The cost of a new Intel wireless mini-pci card is not prohibitive either. Most of these cards are easily accessible on a laptop, making it a simple upgrade.
But what do you think? Is less interference worth it? Do you care about the possible 450mbps throughput? What would be your rationale for going with a high-end router?
Crunchgear reports today that researchers have developed an attack against WPA Encryption when using the TKIP protocol.
If you haven’t already, change your wireless access point security settings to the AES Protocol, or switch to WPA2 to stay one step ahead of them. Or, if you are out and about, and cannot do so, consider using SSH Tunneling or VPN to encrypt your connection a second time.
Early on, wireless networks were encrypted using WEP encryption, until it was discovered even the FBI could crack that in a minute.
Then came WPA, which was supposedly much more secure. However, researchers have figured out a way to break the TKIP key in about 12 to 15 minutes. Experts had known that a brute force dictionary attack could eventually break such a key, however, it was not efficient.
Researchers discovered a way to trick a router into sending them larger amounts of data. More data allows them to break the key much more easily using new mathematical techniques. The technique has already been incorporated into popular Wireless sniffer program Aircrack-ng. The newer WPA2 is considered safe from this attack.
That is the simplest way to increase security. If your router has a WPA2 capability, update to it from WPA. If it doesn’t, check to see if there is an upgraded firmware, or consider switching to a custom firmware if one is available to you that may have it. We like DD-WRT, which has ports for many routers(List of supported devices). When you set WPA2, switch from TKIP encryption to AES only. It hasn’t yet been cracked.
WPA and WPA2 for home use use a passphrase to access the network. Recommendations are that this passphrase be at least 13 characters and not consist of any dictionary word. Too many people, both in securing their networks and other passwords, use weak passwords. Remember, you don’t have to remember the thing. Your computer can do that. You can keep it in a secure file, or a password vault such as KeePass.
Do not set your wireless SSID to anything commonly used. A list of the top 1000 most commonly used ones can be found here. Top ones to avoid: linksys, default, NETGEAR, Belkin54g, Wireless, hpsetup, WLAN, Actiontec, smc, Dlink…All of these give unnecessary information about what type of router you have, as many of these are default ssids. It also tells a malicious individual you may be vulnerable.
There is also MAC filtering, which is touted as a security measure as well. A MAC address is unique to a specific piece of hardware. But since they can be spoofed, this is more of a deterrent than anything else.
Other useful features include AP Isolation. This is a feature available on many routers that disables connections from the wireless device to any devices on the network. It would ensure that a wireless computer could access only the internet, not the internal network. However, if you want to access your internal network, this is not as useful.
If you want to go to Enterprise-level WPA2, you can certainly do so. But it is usually overly complex for a simple home installation and requires an external RADIUS server, which you would have to run. If you have an always-on computer around, this might be an option.
As a final measure, you can always just give up. Bruce Schneier, security guru, runs an open wireless network, and outlines his reasons why, and links to much commentary on the subject in this post. The question of whether or not one should have open wireless is a different one than security. We will say that you can always run a secure network independently of your insecure one, and run security independently of your wireless, or if you are technically proficient, have a gateway portal the way hotels do, that secures your connection.
For example, you can use VPN to connect to your private network for security and route all communications through it. Thus it is encrypted before it leaves your computer for the network. Many businesses use this technique for individuals accessing their files remotely.
My hometown of New York City has announced a plan to replace thousands of payphones with wi-fi hotspots. The Link(as it is called) will provide free public wifi, free phone calls anywhere in the U.S., a touchscreen interface to city services and directions, easy 311/911 access, free charging for mobile, and digital displays for advertising and PSAs.
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