Wi-fi

There's something to be said about streaming content from your PC on the TV. The question is how do you get that content from the PC - and now tablets and phones - to your TV. The latest option from Philips is the Soundbar CSS5123, an Android-powered surround sound speaker that lets you stream content from any DLNA-enabled device. Read More

One of the nice things about having a WiFi network in your home is the fact that you can enjoy online music anywhere in the house ... through a computer or mobile device. Now, however, you have the choice of instead placing Altec Lansing’s new LIVE 5000 Wi-Fi speaker wherever you wish, and listening to that same music through it. You can also wirelessly link together a string of the speakers in different rooms, and use them to either distribute the same music throughout the house, or play different music in different rooms. Read More

Now you don't necessarily need to own a “Smart TV” in order to get Android apps on your television. Always Innovating will be showing off its HDMI dongle at CES this week, a compact device that can turn any HDTV into a Smart TV. Essentially Always Innovating's HDMI Dongle is a portable version of a set-top box. The device is based on the Texas Instruments Cortex-A9 OMAP 4 ,which can run from 1GHz to 1.8GHz depending of the configuration, and offers 1GB of RAM as well as a micro SD card for local storage. Read More

Samsung has unveiled its latest DualView compact camera. The range, which kicked-off in 2009 with the release of the TL225 and TL220 models, packs front and rear LCD displays so photographers can get themselves in the picture without the hit and miss framing that results from holding the camera at arm's length. The new DV300F is the first in the DualView line to include Wi-Fi connectivity to allow users to cut out the middleman and email shots or upload them to their social media site of choice directly from the camera. Read More

Free Wi-Fi is on its way to some Japanese vending machines. Working much like a mobile hotspot at your local coffee shop, people located near the machines would be able to connect to the internet for 30 minutes at a time and surf the web. The vending machines are for the drink company Asahi. Connecting to the web using a machine can be done without any kind of log-in, and if your initial 30-minute connection to the network expires, you can connect again and keep on surfing. The service is available to anyone, to use with any smartphone, tablet, or computer and does not require the purchase of a drink from the machine. Read More

Femtocell and picocell manufacturer ip.access unveiled its fully functioning 'Advanced Femtocell Concept' (AFC) at the no doubt riotous Femtocells Americas 2011 conference in San Diego on Monday. A relatively new technology, femtocells essentially provide mobile phone network access via a local broadband connection. It's a technology that might interest homes and businesses in signal-blocking buildings, remote areas, or anywhere where cellular signals are patchy. But how is the AFC different? In a word: portability. Read More

Amazon today unveiled its new 7-inch, color touchscreen tablet - the Kindle Fire. The new tablet's display has been chemically strengthened to be 20 times stiffer and 30 times harder than plastic, features iPad-like IPS (in-plane switching) technology for wide viewing angles, and delivers 16 million colors in high resolution. Amazon's huge digital content coffers are available to users and the Wi-Fi-only, sub-$200 tablet also includes a browser that shares some of the processing power needed to deliver complex web pages with Amazon's Cloud servers. Read More

The IEEE (Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers) has announced the completion of the IEEE 802.22 wireless network standard, which has been in the works since 2004. Utilizing unused white spaces between channels in the TV frequency spectrum, the 802.22 standard will serve Wireless Regional Area Networks (WRANs), which are meant to bring broadband access to sparsely populated rural areas, as well as to developing countries. Read More

Although the number of Wi-Fi hotspots has increased dramatically in most places over the past few years, the explosion in the number of smartphones and laptops attempting to make use of such connections means that getting decent download speeds is as difficult as it always was. Not only is this frustrating, it can also be a major drain on the batteries of mobile devices. In an effort to address one of these problems, a Duke University graduate student has developed software called SleepWell that allows mobile devices to take a nap to save power while they wait for their turn to download. Read More