I had tried NetStumbler before on my Vista laptop and not met with much success. So when I read on MetaGeek's web site that their inSSIDer was designed to do the same job with native Vista APIs, I was intrigued.

If you're a road warrior, this is a great utility to keep at the ready. inSSIDer's scanner makes it a snap to identify available access points, quickly displaying available SSIDs and their channel, signal strength, speed, and encryption type.

Click the edit menu, and you can copy discovered AP data or the chart pane to the clipboard.

It does an admirable job of locating wireless signals, usually picking up at least one that Windows doesn't report. Not that it's very useful, as it's always turned out to be the weakest signal for me. Still, I like to know my surroundings.

inSSIDer is free, open source, and will run on 32 and 64-bit Vista or Windows XP (with the .NET 2.0 runtimes installed).

Widgets are cool, especially when they do something useful - and even cooler when they look quasi-military.

Xirrus Wifi Monitor is available as a Yahoo Widget (for Mac, too) and a Vista Sidebar Gadget. It sits at the side of your screen scanning at your specified interval and updating its tiny radar screen with new hits. In our testing, it did a very good job at plotting the physical location of nearby APs. To our dismay the widget doesn't actually animate sweeps - too bad, because that would be pretty sweet.

Don't think it's just eye-candy. Wifi Monitor also provides you a ton of statistcal data about your access point's capabilities, your wireless connection, even a glossary of wireless terms. The details screen also allows you to disable your wireless adapter and to connect/disconnect (forwards you to your OS's wireless connection manager).

Well worth the download - if not for functionality, at least for its good looks!

The Mac users at Download Squad love the built-in Airport cards in our Macbooks, but sometimes we wish the software were a little bit ... smarter. The menu-bar interface for Airport doesn't really give a lot of information about the available networks, and sometimes it automatically joins one you know you don't want to use. If you want to disconnect from a network without connection to another one, you have to turn your Airport off and back on. Frankly, it's annoying, and we're glad there's an app called AirRadar that makes things easier!

AirRadar color-codes the available networks, so you can quickly see which ones are open or protected, and what their signal strengths are. You can tinker with colors, view a signal-noise graph, and add networks to your favorites (there's a color for that, too.) Just as importantly, you can disconnect from a network without toggling your Airport off and on. It also fixes those auto-join problems by letting you set more specfic parameters for when it should get you onto a network.

There are few job titles as misleading as that of the "Penetration Tester." Sure, saying professional computer hacker would be more direct, but have you ever noticed how hackers seem to have a dirty mind? Why else would they want to go phreaking through backdoors?

Anyway, in order for hackers to umm...maximize their penetration; they need the right tools for the job. BackTrack is a bootable Linux CD that is the swiss-army knife of computer hacking tools. Need to crack a password or break into a wifi connection? Backtrack has the tools already configured and ready to go.

As a matter of fact, with over 250 tools to choose from, your problem will be finding the right tool for the job. We recommend a quick YouTube search for common hacking scenarios.

Backtrack is open-source, as are all the included tools. The program is completely free to download and use. Unfortunately, as with most open source software, it may be hard to find support should you experience any problems.

Now that you have the tools, be sure to use them wisely. We are sure your neighbors wouldn't appreciate being brute forced. I am talking about their WiFi, sheesh!

Over the past few days there has been increasing furor over a claim made by some "electro-sensitive" folks in Santa Fe that wifi in public buildings violates the Americans with Disabilities Act. Because these people are electro-sensitive (and this sensitivity can be to all sorts of electromagnetic fields, in things like cell phones, or microwaves, or, we'd imagine, things like transformer stations and circuit boxes), they can't enter public buildings due to the horrible health effects they experience. These health effects range from chest pains, to leg numbness, to shortness of breath, and headaches.

Is wifi dangerous? Are cell phones dangerous? There is some debate about various cancers that may or may not result from having a cell phone pasted to your ear and your laptop constantly humming on your lap, but most cancers don't immediately cause things like, oh, chest pain, leg numbness, or shortness of breath. The verdict is still out on long term effects at this point anyway, and we take the stance that something is eventually going to kill us. Life is too short to live in constant fear, or without an internet connection.

Panic attacks cause the above symptoms. Generalized anxiety does as well. An "allergic" reaction to wifi? Eh.

We look at it this way. Right now, we're sitting in a residential area about eight miles outside of a major city. Turning on our wireless connection and sniffing around reveals eleven wifi networks in the area. Eleven that we could in theory connect with successfully, if they are unsecured. Eleven that are not blocked by things like walls, or doors, or tinfoil hats. We are not in a business district in a city.

Can you imagine the rogue wifi signals that are shooting around Santa Fe? Do the electro-sensitive people believe that wifi respects physical boundaries, and that walking by a coffee shop or public building with wifi is different than walking into one? If so, would they walk by a coffee shop with wifi while the door was open? Would the wireless, ahem, rush out the open door? Is there any place in the US where you can be in a city, or moderately populated town, and not be in range of some wireless signal?

WeFi is a free utility for Mac or PC laptop users who want an easy to use WiFi connection manager/hotspot finder that also lets you know if your friends are connected to hotspots near you. If you're working at a coffee shop down the street from your friend, WeFi will tell you so that you can seek your friends out or run the other way, depending on how much money you owe them.

We first covered WeFi last year, but the company recently launched a Windows Mobile client. The free software works on Windows Mobile 5.0 and 6 phones and PDAs, and is a whole lot simpler to use than the WiFi connection managers that come with most mobile devices.

WeFi for Pocket PC gives you one easy interface for monitoring your signal, and managing your hotspots. The software apparently also "constantly monitors your surroundings" even when you're not connected so that you can connect to a hotspot pretty much instantly when you're ready to go online. We imagine this featue only works if you haven't turned off the WiFi on your device to save battery power.

What WeFi for Pcoket PC lacks are the social features that make the desktop application interesting.

[via My Today Screen]

A lot of highly-caffeinated people were made very happy yesterday, when Starbucks announced it would be partnering with AT&T to provide free WiFi. About 7,000 locations nationwide will carry the new service. Now we can finally take our laptops into Starbucks without feeling like we're stepping through a time portal to the 90's.

There's a slight catch to the free WiFi deal: you get two hours free, but only if you buy coffee with a Starbucks card. This doesn't sound like a total scam to us, though: just put your coffee money on a gift card instead of handing it over directly. After the first two hours, you can get additional hours at a rate of $3.99 for two, and the unlimited monthly plan is $20. If you're already an AT&T customer, you can log in and use the new Starbucks hotspots for free.

T-Mobile, the current wireless provider for Starbucks, looks like the big loser in this deal. If you already bought a T-Mobile plan, though, you're not out in the cold: AT&T is allowing existing customers to use their accounts on the new hotspots. Welcome to the 21st century, Starbucks!


[Via Switched]

Truphone, the UK-outfit that puts bread on the table by allowing cell-phones to make VoIP calls while saving cell service subscribers access charges, has just announced a partnership with WiFi network provider Quiconnect. This means that Truphone users will be able to hop onto WiFi hotspots all around the world, as long as those hotspots participate in Quiconnect's network.

While there still aren't enough hotspots to replace your cell provider (WiMax, anybody?), this is a step in the right direction, especially for those of us who do a lot of international roaming. The old "call me when your plane lands" reminder has been the trigger of millions of one-minute-long, six-dollar phone calls over the years, so we're glad Truphone is helping us save our money. This announcement also represents the first significant push into commercial WiFi access for iPhone users by a service provider, as TruPhone, just a few weeks ago, became the first to offer VoIP calling on the iPhone.

A recent trip to a coffee house had us thinking--why isn't WiFi everywhere yet? Well, at loss for the answer to that one (though opinions explaining WiFi's utter lack of ubiquity differ widely), we decided to ask another one--how can the wireless road warrior equip himself for navigating the mostly-uncharted seas of WiFi?

The first tool for your wireless toolbelt is NetStumbler, a Windows app for discovering and probing WiFi access points. There's also a Windows CE/Mobile version of NetStumbler that you can fire up on your Windows Mobile cell phone, if you're really packing light. Mac users will want to try out JiWire, available in compact widget version for OS X, shown here. If none of those options do you any good, visit WiFinder, a site that's sort of a MapQuest for WiFi hotspots. Though our initial test didn't reveal a number of local spots we're sure are actually there, we did uncover a few we never noticed before. WiFinder even knows where a few spots are in the Vatican.

Now if it's hardware that really turns you on, take a look inside your cell phone. Dual-mode cell phones like our Nokia N95 can detect and browse WiFi hotspots, too.

Of course, if the hotspots you detect are WEP-encrypted to prevent unauthorized access, you'll have a hard time getting to the Net. Not much you can do about that without getting yourself in trouble. But if you like living on the edge, have a peek at AirCrack NG. Just don't do anything illegal--you don't want to end up like this poor dude from Michigan who was arrested for stealing WiFi (from an open access point).

McDonald's, effervescing with beefy, trans-fat-free goodness in every bite, has just given British iPhone users one more reason to mack a double-cheese: free WiFi. The move is designed to take a chomp out of rival chains which offer WiFi for a fee throughout the kingdom and is timed to coincide with the UK release of Apple's tremendously successful iPhone, a move somewhat contradictory to Apple's recent Starbucks/iTunes maneuver.

Of course, with revision 2 iPhone firmware now able to purchase and download music via any WiFi hotspot, it seems you'll be able to rock those downloads over a basket of greasy fries and not just a latte. It all seems to point to ubiquitous WiFi's impetus living in the realm of companies pushing content, whether it be Apple or Google, and not in the realm of the taxpayer. Just don't get your multi-touch display greasy, OK?

In previous experiments, in-flight WiFi Internet access failed to capture much attention, either because consumers thought it was to expensive or because it wasn't ubiquitous. Ie. if it's not on every aircraft, it's hard to plan your travel time around being productive, sleeping, or watching a movie on your iPod. For those of us who typically only travel on business, in-flight WiFi is a huge productivity enhancer, if only because it saves us from suffering through the naked feeling of offline e-mail.

Virgin says they'll have the service deployed by mid-'08, and while they haven't talked much about pricing, we're guessing this will be a premium service, since the airline has invested a new in-flight portal called "Red" that will allow passengers to surf and chat even if they don't have their own laptops on board. Red will offer access to Skype and Google Talk, too. Very handy indeed.

But this stuff needs to become ubiquitous. Show us a major domestic airline that offers always-on, zero-premium WiFi access and we'll show you an airline that takes a bite out of business traveler market share.

It's been a year since the folks at Google successfully knocked off WiFi in Mountain View California. Transmitting all those great 802.11 b/g signals to the grateful residents, businesses and visitors at absolutely no charge at all. They are still trucking along on the San Francisco wireless deal with EarthLink and the city to give all residents free connections to the internet, but who knows when that will all be resolved.

Nevertheless, Google is on a mission to provide top notch WiFi networks, but what exactly does it take? Well, in Mountain View there are over 400 mesh routers that cover 12 square miles and 25,000 homes, with 15,000 unique users per month. Traffic over this free network has risen 10% every month and handles 300 gigabytes of data each day and 95% of the routers are being used every single day.

Here's to hoping that Google someday manages to blanket San Francisco, and a few other cities with WiFi.

WiMax is a long-range WiFI replacement. It lets service providers put out (really) fast network access using radio antennas. In fact, if you're using Cingular Edge or similar data service with your cell phone, WiMax is set to make your current speed limit look downright tortoise-like.

Of course, nobody will benefit from the speed and range enhancements of WiMax until the network gets built (right now, you can't really get WiMax service in 99.9% of the world). And the people who build the networks (that would be your friendly phone company) aren't going to build WiMax networks until some devices that support WiMax start showing up in the marketplace.

Good old Nokia, who was among the first to offer cell phones with VoIP built-in and seems always to be ahead of the curve, has let it slip that their nifty Linux-based N800 Internet Tablet (pictured) is going to be getting WiMax capability some time next year. This is something I could see Apple following suit on with their laptops, especially if cozy partner AT&T rolls out a WiMax network of their own. For some more deets on the N800, check out this video.

Free municipal wi-fi is popping up all over the place, well, except in the United States. In Argentina, an innovative municipal wi-fi project is using free and open source software, "from the access points to the main head-end router"

Available in a small segment of Rosario, a city of around 1 million people, the network is expected to be expanded to a much wider area with additional municipal funding. Why don't we see more projects like this in the US? Telecommunications companies don't want them, as they cut into the ability to sell wireless service.

If you have been one of the patiently waiting San Francisco residents to hear the outcomes of the wireless city network, you might have to wait a little longer.

Earthlink seems to be having doubts about building a wireless network in the city causing the municipal WiFi proposal in San Francisco to get delayed until at least August. With a vote by officials now scheduled for September 11th. The original proposal for city wireless signals to be sent through the air was put together in 2004 and saw Earthlink being the supplier for the paid service, and Google chipping in to offer a special free service to residents and travelers in the area. The plan did see some snags including quality, privacy and health concerns.

San Francisco isn't the only place that Earthlink has held back plans, they have completely scaled back nationwide amidst doubts that the company can make enough money in the municipal sector.