wi-fi

Today only, Newegg has a killer deal on an 8GB flash drive... (Kidding! Just a little joke for anyone who was following yesterday's comment thread).

In case you missed it, CNET's Dong Ngo recently reported on a new 4G broadband service from NetZero.

I thought I'd revisit this from the Cheapskate perspective, as it's kind of an unprecedented deal. For $99.95, you get the NetZero 4G Hotspot, which can share your 4G connection with up to eight devices. (You can also get a USB stick for $49.95, but I honestly don't see the … Read more

Connecting to Wi-Fi hot spots from your smartphone or tablet might become much easier in the coming years.

The GSM Association, which represents mobile carriers all over the world, along with the Wireless Broadband Alliance today announced a partnership designed to simplify the way in which smartphones and tablets connect to Wi-Fi hot spots. The basis of that initiative will be "technical and commercial frameworks" industry stakeholders will use to achieve the organizations' goal.

"The proliferation of smartphones and tablets around the world, as well as consumers' huge appetite for data means innovative solutions need to be … Read more

The new iPad is attracting more new buyers than owners of the original iPad, at least according to a small survey by investment firm UBS.

A full 46 percent of New York City customers waiting in line for the new iPad last Friday were first timers for Apple's popular tablet. Polling a total of 165 eager buyers on launch day, UBS also found that 38 percent were upgrading from the original iPad. The company didn't specify the responses for the remaining 16 percent of those surveyed.

The survey also found that the 16GB Wi-Fi-only model proved the most … Read more

Owners of Nokia's Lumia 610 can use their phone as a hot spot to provide Wi-Fi coverage for up to five different devices.

Nokia's Lumia 610 Web site specifically lists that feature under the Sharing and Internet category. The feature pages for the Lumia 710 and the 800 don't yet make any mention of hot-spot capability.

But sit tight, Lumia owners. A Nokia spokesman confirmed to CNET that the company will add hot-spot functionality to the 710 and 800 in a future software update.

Nokia's Web site doesn't yet provide details on the Lumia 900, … Read more

AUSTIN, Texas--Darren Kitchen spent this weekend walking around the SXSW festival with an unobtrusive but relatively evil red box attached to his backpack: it impersonated Wi-Fi networks in hopes of convincing laptops, phones, and other wireless devices to connect to it.

Kitchen's hot-spot honeypot worked. During just a few minutes in the lobby of the Omni Hotel here, he disrupted dozens of Wi-Fi connections and rerouted them to his own "network" that replaced all Internet pages with a video of the Nyan Cat kitten flying through space. Someone with malicious intent could have done far worse.

Kitchen, … Read more

AUSTIN, Texas--Some funny things were happening at the South by Southwest conference here today. My virtual private network connection kept getting disabled, and even stranger, on a friend's laptop a window popped up showing an animated cartoon cat flying through the air with a rainbow in its wake.

The image, known as Nyan Cat after a popular 2011 Internet meme, immediately alarmed me because it was used by the hacker group LulzSec on at least one occasion. I joked about being hacked, and my friend quickly turned off his laptop. (See CNET's related story about how to protect your Wi-Fi links, … Read more

iOS users who need to download a beefy app over 3G or 4G now have a better shot.

Apple yesterday bumped up the download limit for content over a cell connection to a healthy 50 megabytes. Previously, iOS users were restricted to downloading items no larger than 20MB unless they did so over Wi-Fi.

The 20 MB limit was a potential pitfall for app developers who worried that apps created for the new iPad's Retina Display wouldn't be accessible via 3G/4G. The new 50MB limit applies to any type of content from the App Store or iTunes, … Read more

The high-resolution "retina display" expected on the next iPad should make users happy--but may present challenges for developers.

As detailed today by The Next Web, the higher resolution display will increase the pixel count and size of graphics used in iPad apps designed for the new screen.

With some apps doubling in size, developers may bump into an Apple-imposed limitation that prevents the download of apps larger than 20 megabytes over 3G. Downloading over a Wi-Fi connection would still be an option, but users who need an app with no Wi-Fi available would be out of luck.… Read more

The iPad 3 will reportedly come in three versions to handle Wi-Fi, 3G, and 4G.

Citing intel from its own sources, 9to5Mac said yesterday that the new iPads will be codenamed J1, J2, and J2a, backing up previous information that it received.

The J1 is likely the Wi-Fi-only model, the blog's Mark Gurman speculates, while the J2 and J2a are probably the cellular versions, offering the necessary mix of GSM, CDMA, and LTE to run on both 3G and 4G networks around the world.

The J1 and J2 codenames have been linked to Retina Display reports, 9to5Mac added, an … Read more