Yay! Finally, I’ll be able to… wait. No, I can’t. The Rover Puck (running on Clear’s service) isn’t working for me, and their customer service is nothing short of a joke.

I don’t know why, but I seem to be having the worst luck with technology lately. For some odd reason, everything I touch seems to stop working near-immediately. And you know me – I’m about as gentle as they come!

You can’t always count on having access wherever you go in the world. I plucked down some serious dough to buy the Rover Puck to make sure I’d have an access point with me. This device promises to keep up to eight devices connected to a 4G network. However, I am pretty disappointed in the Puck. During the first 24 hours of the 48 hour free grace period, I wasn’t able to get online at all… no matter what I tried.

The Rover company is actually Clear – in Rover clothing. Clear is one of the worst consumer electronics companies on the planet in terms of their dastardly customer service options. Clear makes it nearly impossible to cancel any type of service with them – and charges you an arm and a leg to do so. Rover claims to have a month-to-month contract, which seems nice on the surface… IF you can even make it work.

I can’t recommend this product, folks. I just can’t do it. Not only are they a Clear company, they’re using a proprietary cable. That’s another rant in and of itself, as you know. Setting aside the fact that the product won’t work, I cannot in good conscious tell you to try something out that has such horrible support behind it. In order to give the Puck a fair chance at doing what it should, I hopped into a chat with these people. That was a painful experience.

Well, so much for the idea of connecting to a 4G / WiMax network.

Connecting an Android device (by way of hot spot) to an iPad is an excellent solution if you don’t want to use the built-in 3G connection. One caller to the live stream recently asked if I felt it would be faster to stop using his Android device, and simply connect to the Internet using the 3G provided on the iPad. There’s honestly no cut-and-dried answer to this.

Either solution will work, of course, and both will depend on how strong of a connection/signal you can find. When my Dad was deciding whether to get his new iPhone, he was also considering an Android device. He wasn’t sure what type of connection would be the best.

As long as you’re already paying for the service on the Android device, why not stick with that? When what you have is working, there’s nothing to fix or change. I think it’s an excellent option to have a mobile device that can be used as a hot spot.

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DISCLAIMER: I thought the first Apple TV was relatively useless.

Today, Apple announced significant changes to Apple TV at the press event held in San Francisco (which, by the way, was streamed LIVE for the world to watch). The new Apple TV, available by the beginning of October, comes in at 1/4 the size of the original. It’s smaller than a sandwich. You can use a Tupperware container as your carrying case now – provided you’ve cleaned it first.

But there are tastier details to sink your teeth into!

There’s no media to keep track of anymore (through klutzy synching processes and whatnot) – everything will stream live into the tiny slice of digital heaven through either a network cable or WiFi (802.11n). As someone who hates storing media, this change is most welcomed. There’s a reason I use and love both Pandora and Rhapsody for my music, and why I’ve taken to Hulu for available TV show viewing. And on that note…

Once you’ve set up your new Apple TV, you’ll be able to “choose from the largest online selection of HD movies to rent, including first run movies for just $4.99, and the largest online selection of HD TV show episodes to rent from ABC, ABC Family, Fox, Disney Channel and BBC America for just 99 cents.” That’s quite a competitive price for legally-attainable media in conjunction with a convenient interface and service. Not sure I’ll take advantage of this part of the Apple TV, though; I’m not into à la carte media consumption.

Netflix subscribers (like myself) have access to the entire streaming library of Netflix videos. If the video is in your instant queue, you’re just a few clicks away from watching it with Apple TV. You can also view streaming media from YouTube and Flickr – plus watch your favorite podcasts (like a certain someone’s) and access streaming media and images on the computers in your home.

Job(s) well done.

Oh, did I remember to tell you that the price of this sophomore effort has also been cut by 66%! That brings the Apple TV price point to US$99 – a great impulse buy for gadget geeks and mediaphiles. I’ll buy one, pick up a few extra HDMI and power cables, then tote a single unit around the house with me.

While I never considered purchasing the original Apple TV (not once), I can’t wait for this to ship (available in about four weeks to consumers in the US, Canada, the UK, France, Germany and Australia).

Am I alone with being impressed?

I fired open my Web browser on the iPhone and was greeted with a simple fee structure for the day:

Okay, $7.95 sounds quite doable. I was expecting it to be a bit more, to tell you the truth. Then, I wondered if I should just sign up on my iPad (since I’d be able to browse the Web easier with a substantially larger screen). That’s when I was smacked with this:

Wait a second. It’s the same Internet, it’s the same access point, it’s the same time of day, it’s the same flight – and somehow, Gogo Inflight wants to charge me $3 less on the iPad versus the iPhone? Something smells fishy – and it’s not the fish from First Class.

Yes, this “pointless” price discrepancy really pissed me off. Most people would use one device over another, never thinking of using both – and, certainly, they’d expect to see a quick explanation of the limitations of either usage model. I wondered, then, if Gogo Inflight was profiling (!) me – thinking that since I was an iPhone owner, I could afford to pay more – versus the iPad, which was seemingly being detected as a laptop?

Then again, can’t a laptop “do more” than an iPhone? Why charge more for one over the other? It made absolutely no sense to me – but before sharing my extreme disappointment with the world (via this blog, since I initially tweeted my concerns), I waited to hear from one of their representatives, who kindly explained:

I’m Caitlin, I work on Gogo Inflight Internet and I saw your tweets about the issue that you had with pricing yesterday. I’ve copied Mike on this email, who works directly with our customer care team. We’re both genuinely sorry that you had a frustrating experience, and wanted to take the time to try to explain what happened.

Our prices are based on both device type and flight time, as our team communicated on Twitter. You can see the basic pricing structure here. However, if flight data is not available, as sometimes happens on our equipment, we automatically default to the lowest price available for that device. It sounds like what happened with you yesterday was that the mobile site (which your iPhone would see) was able to give you the correct price based on flight time. However, your iPad, which runs on our laptop site, didn’t get that data and automatically gave you the lowest possible price. We try to always err on the side that benefits the customer, so you got a lower price since we couldn’t find the specific flight data.

Additionally, purchasing on a laptop, netbook, or iPad actually allows you to switch back and forth between that device and any mobile device, although you can’t use both devices at once.

Sorry, guys – but I don’t buy it. In fact, I’m even more confused now.

Why is Gogo Inflight charging less to allow the user to do more?! That’s Caitlin’s assertion: if you buy access from the iPad (“laptop”) for $4.95, you can switch between devices in-flight, but if you buy access on your iPhone for $7.95, you’re stuck with one device?

Dude. Seriously. Gogo Inflight needs a serious altitude adjustment.

Every person should pay the same amount for a flight, regardless of device. Once access has been paid for (once), let the user flip between devices so long as only one of them is on the network at any given time – lest they pay extra for a second device.

Anything less than that is just… devicist.

Best of all, there’s nothing to sign up for. You don’t need a password, and there are no time limits. As shown in the photo above, you only have to click twice to get online: once to agree to the Terms of Service and again to actually connect. You won’t be locked out (or thrown out) after an hour. You don’t have to come up with yet another fifty-character super-secret password. Just click twice… and go.

Starbucks claims that they feel no one will spend more time languishing over their laptops and drinks than they did before. I have a feeling they are very, very wrong in that assumption. I can already see the work-at-home sector dragging their gear to their local coffee joint and setting up shop at a corner table for an entire day. What better way to make connections, observe others, see and be seen and manage to look as though you are doing something productive is there?

I’m on my way back to Seattle from Spokane. I decided to initiate a FaceTime chat with my brother, using the free in-flight WiFi. It worked like a charm! Of course, I didn’t talk (that would have been a bit rude). I panned the cameras around a bit to show Adam what was going on, though. Too much fun!

After he saw the photo I captured above, Josh Haley decided to play around a little in Photoshop. I have to hand it to him: my brother has never looked so happy!

What types of things do you do when you have free in-flight WiFi? Do you plan to indulge in some FaceTime, or will you buckle down and get some work finished?

Should my dad go with a “Sprint phone” or an iPhone 4? Here’s your chance to influence his decision! The family that FaceTimes together… stays together. At least, virtually. I decided to live stream and capture the first FaceTime call with my parents. I wanted them to see just how easy it was to do.

Then, my dad launched into a series of questions – asking which is better, a Sprint phone or an iPhone? I gave him my answer – but perhaps you have a different response. If you can come up with a good list of reasons of which would be better for him, you can email them to me and I’ll forward them on to him.

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Now I can tweet at 30,000 feet! I’m also able to catch up on emails!

This is NOT a review. If it was, the MiFi2200 would be lucky to get 2 stars out of 10 from me. To view the screencast in better clarity, click the arrow on the lower right side of the video embed and select “Full Screen.”

I recorded this video to better illustrate the multitude of problems I’m having with Verizon’s product. I sent the video to Verizon Support and they auto-responded with a block of text that was absolutely useless in helping me solve the issues.

1. I can only get connected to the Internet (via the MiFi2200) by way of the VZAccess Manager software with the device connected via USB. I’m on Mac OS X 10.6.2, which should not need that software (according to them). I demonstrate that an Internet connection doesn’t work when connected to the MiFi2200 via WiFi.
2. The dialing profile is never saved in Network preferences, nor is the WWAN connection option ever available in the OS X menu bar (despite being checked off again and again).
3. I can’t ever access the MiFi2200 admin page, no matter how I try to connect to it – via USB or WiFi.

I have a feeling that it’s a bad piece of hardware, but no telling how Verizon will respond further to my support request. I have an official thread open with them, but they’re suggesting I call them – which would be an exercise in lunacy. I clearly demonstrated the problems I’m having, and really don’t care to waste any more time on it.

They responded a second time, asking me to perform more troubleshooting steps – which I did:

Let the buyer beware: the Verizon MiFi 2200 has completely failed to impress on the Mac.

So much is going on around here right now. Gnomedex is only a week away, and the team is all very excited. We have an excellent lineup of presenters this year, many fun and exciting things going on in the hallways and in the evenings. I know we’re going to have a fabulous time – but not without a few more days of all of us running around like crazy. To all my volunteers and helpers… bless you, every one. No way would this ever be happening without you all!

Even amidst the hectic days right now, I still make time to check up on all of you. I love reading what you’re up to and what’s on your minds. I hope you make time in your day to do the same.

• Does John Dvorak need your money?
• A nation is outraged over a police officer taking down an 84 year old Alzheimer’s patient.
• Partaking in simple pleasures can make life much more relaxed, and productive.
• What do healthcare, monopolies, inflation and the government have in common?
• In-flight Wi-Fi is changing in-flight entertainment.
• Shuttleworth is kicking in some real Debian support.
• How much does that bottle of water really cost?
• What ever happened to the GOP rebranding effort?
• What’s your best gaming memory?

I’m just hoping that people will be responsible with the wireless connection at 30,000 feet. It won’t take much to ruin a nearby passenger’s flight. How about some guidelines?

1. Either hit the mute button or use your headphones
2. Avoid browsing adult Web sites (or anything like ‘em)
3. Shut down all Bittorrent / P2P clients

And, under NO CIRCUMSTANCES should you open up a Skype video / audio call if there’s someone sitting next to you. I tweeted about it the other day – with some of my followers in complete agreement, and others completely oblivious to the reasoning:

randallholahan: why no skype? Bandwidth?

about a day ago

Sat Feb 07 21:30:02 +0000 2009

iBetaTest: Thanks for that great Video review about beta testing and mentioning iBetaTest.com :) Much appreciated!

about a day ago

Sat Feb 07 21:00:02 +0000 2009

DirkBeveridge: Agreed Chris. They MUST block Skype at 30,000 ft! Personal space is already invaded – I need my thinking or resting space!

about a day ago

Sat Feb 07 20:52:50 +0000 2009

cjweeks: just take notes and ask them later if you have any questions

about a day ago

Sat Feb 07 20:10:31 +0000 2009

RudyMcComb: no skype Chris…lol

about a day ago

Sat Feb 07 20:00:45 +0000 2009

jamesisapc: yh gd answer I think wifi on planes is great

about a day ago

Sat Feb 07 20:00:04 +0000 2009

wbahner: @chrispirillo: Skype on a plane? WTF??

about a day ago

Sat Feb 07 19:52:28 +0000 2009

macwhisperer: true that. And stay off those porn sites too.

about a day ago

Sat Feb 07 19:50:37 +0000 2009

TracyRenee: thought you couldn't use internet on planes, what good is skype then?

about a day ago

Sat Feb 07 19:48:43 +0000 2009

ammunix: rofl why? was someone babbling next to you?

about a day ago

Sat Feb 07 19:48:37 +0000 2009

Swamp_Daddy: so picky

about a day ago

Sat Feb 07 19:47:54 +0000 2009

JamesNaughton: I completely agree!

about a day ago

Sat Feb 07 19:47:52 +0000 2009

dougmcarthur: what's your beef with skype on planes? sucking too much bandwidth? too many people making noise?

about a day ago

Sat Feb 07 19:47:45 +0000 2009

Patrick_Grady: I know, right? I'm not old school about much… but come on. BTW – your piece on CNN was brilliant.

about a day ago

Sat Feb 07 19:47:36 +0000 2009

Ruben32: why?…

about a day ago

Sat Feb 07 19:46:25 +0000 2009

This is Kenny Mozzillo’s submission for the HP Magic Giveaway. Feel free to leave comments for this article as you see fit – your feedback is certainly welcomed! If you’d like to submit your own how-to, what-is, or top-five list, you can send it to me. Views and opinions of this writer are not necessarily my own:

Most people have a wireless home network these days. In the past few years, the cost of setting up a wireless home network has dropped. Setting up a wireless home network is much easier than it is to string networking wire through your walls and connect wall plates. In most cases, setting up a wireless home network is cheaper and easier than installing a wired network. Here’s a top five list on how to secure you wireless home network so that all of your hard-earned money used to pay for Internet access is not stolen by your neighbors.

• Position you router in the middle of your home. This reduces the amount of signal that leaks outside the house and (therefore) makes it harder for neighbors to pick it up. Most people don’t take this tip into consideration when they set up a wireless home network – it’s the easiest way to help enhance the security of your wireless home network. Security through obscurity.
• Turn on the wireless encryption! This sounds like a “duh,” but you would be surprised at how many people have an unsecured wireless network at home (or work). I’ve talked with many people who said that they didn’t turn on the encryption on their home network because they doubted that anyone would bother them. This would be the equivalent of leaving your house unlocked when you go somewhere because you didn’t think anyone would break in. It is very simple to enable encryption on all wireless access points. The best encryption mode is WPA2. WEP and WPA both have been cracked before, and it isn’t that difficult for someone to break the encryption key in a few minutes. Be sure to choose a password that no one can guess – never use things such as your pet’s name, your address, or your birthday as a password.
• Enable Wireless MAC Address Filtering. This is another feature that most people forget to enable. This allows a set amount of devices to get on the network (if their MAC address is placed on the list). Setting up this feature is fairly simple to do – even for the average person. If you need help, check your manual – and if you threw away your manual, I bet the manufacturer put a PDF of the manual on their Web site.
• Use home network monitoring software. This will allow you to scan the local network for mysterious devices that are connected to it. If you have a home network that has five devices connected to it, and the IP address scanner finds eight devices, you should look into what is connected that shouldn’t be connected to your network. Most home networking tools are free and can be easily found on any platform.
• Turn off the Access Point. When you are not home for an extended period of time, turn off your access point. This will ensure that when you are on vacation you will not have to worry about someone getting into your shared files on a PC.

If you keep these five points in mind when you are running a wireless home network, you shouldn’t have to worry about your neighbor and other people getting into your wireless network. If you have anything else to add, please be sure to comment on this blog post.

WEP does indeed stand for Wired Equivalent Privacy, which is a rather hopeful name considering that WEP can be cracked in less than 60 seconds now. How? Well, when you connect to a WEP network, the router sends you a randomly generated “hello” message. The connecting machine then encrypts the message using the WEP key and sends it back to the router. The router then decrypts it with the WEP key, and if it matches the original, unencrypted (“cleartext”) message, the machine is authorized.

This is bad. Why? Well, first we have to look at how the encryption and decryption is done. You may or may not be familiar with bitwise operators, but in this case we’re dealing with “exclusive or”, XOR. XOR, like other bitwise operators, operates on bits. If the 2 input bits are 0 and 0, it puts out 0. If they are 1 and 0, it puts out 1. If they are 0 and 1, it puts out 1. If they are 1 and 1, it puts out 0.

To encrypt the data for WEP, the data is XORed with the key (getting “cyphertext”). To decrypt, the cyphertext is XORed with the key, reversing the operation and returning the cleartext. When you think about it, that really can be shown visually (hope it doesn’t get mauled in the mail):

Cleartext   0 1 1 0 1 0 1 1
Key         1 1 0 0 1 1 0 1
—————————-
Cyphertext  1 0 1 0 0 1 1 0

Now, to decrypt:

Cyphertext  1 0 1 0 0 1 1 0
Key         1 1 0 0 1 1 0 1
—————————-
Cleartext   0 1 1 0 1 0 1 1

As you can see, we end up with the original message. (Cryptography is fun!)

However, this is where the problem is. Remember what we did to authenticate with WEP – we got sent a cleartext message, and then sent back the cyphertext results. What happens when we XOR the cleartext with the cyphertext?

Cyphertext  1 0 1 0 0 1 1 0
Cleartext   0 1 1 0 1 0 1 1
—————————-
???         1 1 0 0 1 1 0 1

That byte looks a lot like one we’ve seen before. I wonder what it could be…

Key         1 1 0 0 1 1 0 1

Well, darn. That’s our key. An attacker can get our key just by XORing two things exchanged when a connection is made. It can’t be all bad, though, since a connection has to be made before that can happen, right? How often do you disconnect a machine and reconnect it? A few times a day. They would have to be lucky to catch you doing it.

Except that there’s another vulnerability which makes booting everyone off the network and causing a reconnect easy. Thus, our friend the cracker needs only to force a disconnect of all clients, then watch for the handshake and XOR the two pieces of information exchanged between the router and one of the clients.

That’s why you use WPA now. WPA is pretty much competely safe, if you have a good password. Rule 1 (or perhaps it’s 0) of security is that you never use a short, easily guessable password. Using a short, easy to guess password opens you up to the dictionary attack, or as I like to call it, the Gandalf attack. Scream elvish words at the router long enough and the gates of Moria are bound to open to one of them. Make the “word” long enough (32 characters is good, and is about what I use since some devices have issues with 64) and it will be impossible to guess. Again, a lock is only as secure as its combination. In your case, for instance, I don’t recommend a password of “Pixie”.

Now, for the banking/email question. This brings us to the realm of diffie-hellman key exchange. Many a beginning cryptographer has lost his life to the tangle of bits and factored prime numbers that awaits us here, so suffice it to say this: If there is an SSL connection between you and your web site of choice, you are safe. All your traffic will be encrypted, and will not be decrypted until you get to the site. You’re safe, as long as you have an SSL connection to the site itself, regardless of whether it’s an open wifi hotspot. If you don’t have an SSL connection and they give you a WEP or WPA key, don’t think banking will be secure – if they gave the key to you, they gave it to others, too!

Now, there are caveats (aren’t there always with technology?). Notice I said “If there is an SSL connection between you and your web site of choice, you are safe.” I don’t want to have to send you HTML mail, so mentally underline the first part of that sentance. What’s to stop the hotspot from saying “Ah, he’s going to ‘MyBankSite’ – take out their certificate (the part that contains their “public key” – what you use to encrypt your data to send to them. Note that public and private key encryption are one-way operations – if you encrypt something with the public key, it cannot be easily decrypted with that same key. When I say “easily”, I mean it would take a supercomputer thousands of years.) and put in our own public key. That way, we can decrypt his traffic on our end, look at it, then encrypt it with his bank’s public key and send it on.” Well, in a word, nothing is stopping them. This is known as a man-in-the-middle attack.

Wait, nothing is stopping them? How am I safe, then? Well, nothing is STOPPING them, but their key won’t be signed by a signing authority. A signing authority basically verifies that a given key belongs to a given site, and then when someone asks whether a key belongs to ‘MyBankSite’ they check their database and see. The “someone” who asks is your browser. This is done automatically in modern browsers – if you have the SSL indicator in your browser somewhere on ‘MyBankSite’ (this varies by browser – it usually comes in the form of a lock in the statusbar), that means the browser has checked the site’s credentials out with a trusted authority (VeraSign, etc) and it has checked out. If you get a site that can’t be verified but has a certificate, you will be warned – as in the case of our scheming wifi friends. Thus, if you see a warning, run far, far away.

Whew. Well, that certainly only scratched the surface, but it should help some. Glad I didn’t type that on my phone.

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When it comes to accessing the Internet when you’re away from home, you never really know what you’re going to get. You have to stay secure to protect yourself. A friend of mine emailed me the other day, talking about this exact situation. He was traveling, and had to check his Gmail from an unsecured public computer. He apparently forgot to log himself out, as well. I asked him if he at least had used the more secure httpS instead of the plain http prefix… and he had not.

I even get nervous at times connecting to my email via my Sprint PCS mobile broadband connection. When I’m sending information back and forth wirelessly, if it’s not being done in an encrypted fashion I get nervous. You never know who will be sniffing packets of information. This is what you need to be aware of when you’re connecting to the Internet via a wireless hotspot.

One way you can help keep yourself safe is by using a VPN, or Virtual Private Network. One program, called Hamachi is free for personal use. I’ve been using it for awhile now, as you’ll see if you check out that link. However, I want to tell you about another program that one of our community recently emailed me about.

HotSpot Shield is another free program that can be used on Mac or Windows machine. It’s been reviewed by people on CNN and CNET, with good ratings. Think of a VPN as a shield that surrounds you and whatever you are wanting to connect to. If you’re connecting to the Internet via an unsecured network, anyone can look at the packets of information you are sending out. What a program like HotSpot Shield does is to encrypt that data, so it cannot be seen and/or read by those would-be information stealers.

While on the road this week, I had a need to log into Ponzi’s machine at home in Seattle, via my mobile connection. She has VNC set up, but it was behind our firewall. I didn’t want to have to go through opening ports and all of that. Instead, I chose to use the new TeamViewer. TeamViewer can establish a connection to virtually any computer in the world with just a few clicks. It’s a way to share screens, or remote control another computer as long as the other person is at their computer and grants the access. It’s simple, and made things much easier on me. I was connected to her machine securely, and quick.

If you are going to connect to a wireless connection, whether wireless or wired… I urge you to use either HotSpot Shield or Hamachi. And of course, why not check out TeamViewer if you have a need to connect to another machine.

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AT&T has now made it so you can now get online with your iPhone anywhere there is a HotSpot of theirs… including airports! Finally! It used to be a pita to try to get a connection in an airport. Not anymore, thanks to AT&T… or is it true??

On April 30th, MacRumors announced that “AT&T hotspots are now offering free WiFi access to iPhone users. Barnes and Noble, Starbucks and presumably AT&T’s 71,000 other WiFi hotspot locations are now offering iPhone users a custom portal to access free Wi-Fi. A special iPhone formatted page asks for your mobile phone number. Once entered, you can access the WiFi access for free.”

However, as of the date this video was uploaded, things have changed. Apparently, the WiFi was temporarily suspended. “No official announcement had been made, however, and AT&T representatives reportedly declined to comment. Today, many users are reporting that the free iPhone access has been removed and users are unable to log-in with just their phone number. This appears to be true at locations that were verified to offer the free WiFi access just days before.”

Hopefully, we’ll be able to re-announce this excellent service in the very near future.

FirstRSS ERROR: "http://shop.tagjag.com/products/iphone" NOT FOUND!

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