Router WiFi portatil para Internet/3G.

INTERNET/3G Wi-Fi to Go, No Cafe Needed By DAVID POGUE Published: May 6, 2009 Novatel's MiFi, a 3G Wi-Fi router. Someday, we'll tell our grandchildren how we had to drive around town looking for a coffee shop when we needed to get online, and they'll laugh their heads off. Every building in America has running water, electricity and ventilation; what's the holdup on universal wireless Internet? Getting online isn't impossible, but today's options are deeply flawed. Most of them involve sitting rooted in one spot — in the coffee shop or library, for example. (Sadly, the days when cities were blanketed by free Wi-Fi signals leaking from people's apartments are over; they all require passwords these days.) If you want to get online while you're on the move, in fact, you've had only one option: buy one of those $60-a-month cellular modems from Verizon, Sprint, T-Mobile or AT&T. The speed isn't exactly cable-modem speed, but it's close enough. You can get a card-slot version, which has a nasty little antenna protuberance, or a U.S.B.-stick version, which cries out to be snapped off by a passing flight attendant's beverage cart. A few laptops have this cellular modem built in, which is less awkward but still drains the battery with gusto. But imagine if you could get online anywhere you liked — in a taxi, on the beach, in a hotel with disgustingly overpriced Wi-Fi — without messing around with cellular modems. What if you had a personal Wi-Fi bubble, a private hot spot, that followed you everywhere you go? Incredibly, there is such a thing. It's the Novatel MiFi 2200, available from Verizon starting in mid-May ($100 with two-year contract, after rebate). It's a little wisp of a thing, like a triple-thick credit card. It has one power button, one status light and a swappable battery that looks like the one in a cellphone. When you turn on your MiFi and wait 30 seconds, it provides a personal, portable, powerful, password-protected wireless hot spot. The MiFi gets its Internet signal the same way those cellular modems do — in this case, from Verizon's excellent 3G (high-speed) cellular data network. If you just want to do e-mail and the Web, you pay $40 a month for the service (250 megabytes of data transfer, 10 cents a megabyte above that). If you watch videos and shuttle a lot of big files, opt for the $60 plan (5 gigabytes). And if you don't travel incessantly, the best deal may be the one-day pass: $15 for 24 hours, only when you need it. In that case, the MiFi itself costs $270. In essence, the MiFi converts that cellular Internet signal into an umbrella of Wi-Fi coverage that up to five people can share. (The speed suffers if all five are doing heavy downloads at once, but that's a rarity.) Cellular wireless routers, as they're called, have been available for years. The average person hasn't even heard of this product category, but these routers are popular on, for example, Hollywood movie shoots. On-location cast and crew can kill their downtime online, sharing the signal from a single cellular card that's broadcast via Wi-Fi. Those machines, however, get no cell signal on their own; you have to supply your own cellular modem. They're also big and metal and ugly. But the real deal-killer is that they have to be plugged into a power outlet. You can't use one at the beach or in the woods unless you have a really, really long extension cord. The MiFi is remarkable for its tiny size, its sleek good looks, its 30-foot range (it easily filled a large airport gate area with four-bar signal) — and the fact that it's cordless and rechargeable. How is this amazing? Let us count the ways. First, you're spared the plug-and-unplug ritual of cellular modems. You can leave the MiFi in your pocket, purse or laptop bag; whenever you fire up your laptop, netbook, Wi-Fi camera or game gadget, or wake up your iPhone or iPod Touch, you're online. Stuart Goldenberg Last week, I was stuck on a runway for two hours. As I merrily worked away online, complete with YouTube videos and file downloads, I became aware that my seatmate was sneaking glances. As I snuck counter-glances at him, I realized that he had no interest in what I was doing, but rather in the signal-strength icon on my laptop — on an airplane where there wasn't otherwise any Wi-Fi signal. "I'm sorry," he finally said, completely baffled, "but how are you getting a wireless signal?" He was floored when I pulled the MiFi from my pocket, its power light glowing evilly. If he'd had a laptop, I would have happily shared my Wi-Fi cloud with him. The network password is printed right there on the bottom of the MiFi itself. That's a clever idea, actually. Since the MiFi is in your possession, it's impossible for anyone to get into your cloud unless you show it to them. Call it "security through proximity." The second huge advantage of the MiFi is that, as with any wireless router, you can share its signal with other people; up to five road warriors can enjoy the same connection. Your youngsters with their iPod Touches in the back of the van could hop online, for example, or you and your colleagues could connect and collaborate on a corporate retreat. Verizon points out how useful the MiFi could be for college students working off-campus, insurance adjusters at a disaster site and trade show booth teams. (Incredibly, Verizon even suggests that you could use the MiFi at home as your primary family Internet service. Sharing a cellular-modem account was something it strenuously discouraged only two years ago.) Some footnotes: First, the MiFi goes into sleep mode after 30 minutes of inactivity, to prolong its battery life. Yes, it means that a single charge can get you through a full day of on-and-off Internet noodling, even though the battery is supposed to run for only four hours a charge (it's rated at 40 hours of standby). But once the MiFi is asleep, your Wi-Fi bubble is gone until you tap the power button. It's probably the height of ingratitude to complain about having to press a single button to get yourself online. But if the MiFi is flopping around somewhere in the bottom of your bag, just finding it can be a minor hassle. Fortunately, you can turn off that sleep feature, or even change the inactivity interval before it kicks in. This gizmo is a full-blown wireless router with full-blown configuration controls. If you type 192.168.1.1 into your Web browser's address bar — a trick well known to network gurus — the MiFi's settings pages magically appear. Now you can do geeky, tweaky tasks like changing the password or the wireless network name, limiting access to specific computers, turning on port forwarding (don't ask) . A final note: If your laptop has a traditional cellular modem, you can turn on a Mac OS X or Windows feature called Internet Sharing, which rebroadcasts the signal via Wi-Fi, just like the MiFi. But the MiFi is infinitely easier to use and start up, doesn't lock you into carrying around your laptop all the time, has better range and works even when your laptop battery is dead. (The MiFi recharges from a wall outlet; it still works as a hot spot while it's plugged in.) It's always exciting when someone invents a new product category, and this one is a jaw-dropper. All your gadgets can be online at once, wherever you go, without having to plug anything in — no coffee shop required. Heck, it might even be worth showing the grandchildren. Go to Pogue's Posts E-mail: pogue@nytimes.com

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Tecnología 3G. Qué es ?

Mayo 1, 2009. Videos: "Qué es Tecnología 3G" y otros. Tomado del website www.3gamericalatina.com 3G es la tercera generación de estándares y tecnologías de telefonía móvil, tecnologia que permite al usuario integrarse directamente a la red Internet. Existen varias alternativas para utilización de 3G en computadoras personales (notebooks y computadoras de mesa). Dispositivos 3G externos, como módems USB y tarjetas de datos (PCMCIA y PCI Express), son la primera opción. En el caso de notebooks, contamos hoy también con decenas de modelos que salen de fábrica equipados con módulos 3G ya integrados (a ejemplo de aquellos comercializados con conectividad WiFi integrado). Las proyecciones de analistas apuntan para la prevalencia, en el futuro, de notebooks con módulos integrados y módems USB como las soluciones preferidas por los usuarios. Para ver el video hacer "click" aquí ó sobre la imagen superior. Para ver otros videos hacer "click" aquí ó sobre la imagen inferior. Abrir Sitio Web "Tecnología 3G" en el Browser. Apoyo de QUALCOMM.

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NYT Servicio "Zoombak". La versión "criolla"; -MapFront-Triplog-, se consigue en el Showroom DePapaya/Geinsys SuperOutlet La80.............

PERSONAL TECHNOLOGY/ State of the Art. Zoombak Tracks Your Dog, Your Car, Even Your Children By DAVID POGUE Published: April 22, 2009 Stuart Goldenberg You have to wonder if anyone in Hollywood has ever actually seen a computer. Here we are, 30 years into the PC revolution, and computers in the movies still do all kinds of unrealistic things. Text chatters as it spills across the screen. A wrong password produces a blinking ACCESS DENIED message. Confident technicians, when told to "enhance" a security-camera freeze-frame, somehow manage to zoom into a 640-by-480-pixel image about 50 times. And then there are those tracking dots, those tiny self-adhesive (or skin-implanted) buttons that spies use to follow their targets across the globe. They're such a common plot device, it seems downright unfair that they don't actually exist. Actually, their great-grandparents do. There is such a thing as a GPS-based locator. Today's consumer models aren't quite as small as those "Mission: Impossible" dots, but otherwise perform the same function. And you don't need a beeping hand-held receiver to track the transmitter, either; a Web browser will do the trick. Most of these gadgets cost about $500, $50 a month in service charges and a couple of bucks every time you request a location fix. Trucking companies use them, for example, to manage their fleets. But a company called Zoombak has come up with an interesting, consumer-friendly twist: make a transmitter the size of a 1980s pager, price it at $100 and charge $15 a month for unlimited tracking. (The service price drops even more if you pay in advance, and there's currently a two-months-free promotion.) Zoombak is small enough to attach to a dog's collar. Now, Zoombak won't get rich catering only to spies; after all, if the movies are any indication, another dozen spies seem to die off during every single mission. Instead, the company suggests that you can install its locator on things like your car (in case it's stolen), your pet's collar, your child's backpack, your older relative's glove compartment, your luggage or the lawn equipment that you lend to your low-life neighbor. The company daintily avoids mentioning the screamingly obvious, and much more controversial, uses for the Zoombak: secretly tracking the movements of your spouse, children or employees. The Zoombak can certainly be used this way — it works even when it's hidden inside a glove compartment. But you might blow your cover when you retrieve it for charging every three or four days. And you'll have a lot of explaining to do if your subject discovers the thing. All right then. Suppose you have no ethical qualms, or at least you've managed to squelch them. Here's how it works. The transmitter itself is 2.9 by 1.7 by 0.8 inches, 2.5 ounces, ruggedly built with a waterproof cover for the charging jack (clearly a nod to nomadic-dog applications). It has a single rubber on-off button — you hold it down for several seconds — and a single blinking green indicator light. (It's so small, in fact, that I actually managed to lose the first unit that Zoombak sent me for review; the battery died before I noticed. To lose a tracking device... how embarrassing is that?) At Zoombak.com, you can have all kinds of fun. You can click Find Now to see where the transmitter is at the moment, accurate to within a few yards and displayed on a Microsoft Earth map. Frankly, the map is too small — you have to do a good deal of zooming and panning to figure out what you're looking at — but at least it gives you a choice of road map, satellite view or aerial view (photos taken by airplanes from different angles of the same spot). You can also look at a bread crumb trail of where your locator has been recently, although this information is generally sent to the Web site only once every four hours. (Alternatively, you can turn on "continuous" mode, which generates five-minute bread crumbs in an hourlong burst.) Successive location reports are indicated by pushpins on the map, cleverly filled by fainter colors as they age. You can also set up the Zoombak to notify you, by text message or e-mail, when someone tries to turn the thing off, or when the battery dies. Most intriguingly, you can define up to five "safety zones": addresses or other points with a radius that you specify. You might define a 200-yard circle as OurHome and a two-mile region as CollegeCampus. Zoombak can be set up to alert you automatically when it has left a preset "safety zone." Once you've done that, you can set up automatic, free alerts for those locations. When your trackee enters or leaves one of these zones, you get a text message, an e-mail message or both saying, for example, "Chris has arrived at IrresponsibleFriendsHouse." You can also ping the Zoombak at any time from your cellphone, once you've registered that phone on the Web site. You may feel as if you're doing your taxes all over again — you have to type out your password, a comma, a space and then its name ("1823, Spybot7" or whatever). But in seconds, you get a text message that says something like, "Your Zoombak locator Spybot7 is currently located near 500 West 57th St, New York, NY." It's creepy good. When all of this works, it's awesome. As long as your wily subject doesn't toss the Zoombak into the back of a passing truck, à la "The DaVinci Code," you're getting pure peace of mind for $15 a month. So why wouldn't it work? Why are the customer reviews on Amazon all over the map? First, Zoombak's price, features and reliability have come a long way since its debut a year and a half ago. It used to cost $200, not $100, and there were plenty of technical glitches and missing features at the outset. (There's also a pet version, also $100, which includes a Velcro pouch to attach it to the pooch's collar, and a car-kit version, $150, that includes a cigarette lighter cord as well as a hard-wired trunk-installation kit.) Second, that safety-zone alert system depends on the Zoombak's 15-minute ping schedule. If your dog runs into a zone and then runs out again within 15 minutes, you won't even know it happened. This also means that whoever kidnaps your child or hot-wires your car has at least a 15-minute head start. Finally, and most important, once Zoombak determines its location using GPS, it transmits that information to you using the cellular network. Unfortunately, it's T-Mobile's. As you probably know, T-Mobile's American coverage is not, ahem, blanketlike; huge swaths of this country out West, and far too many smaller swaths everywhere else, have no signal at all. In those areas, the Zoombak falls into radio silence — useless. If I were a car thief or dognapper, I'd set up shop in Montana. That's the biggest downside, but it's not the only one. For example, although the Zoombak has a 30-day guarantee, you can never change its account information. When old Rover finally arrives at the big kennel in the sky, your Zoombak can't protect another family's deserving critter. The Web site needs a lot of design help, too — should you click Save or Finish? Locator or Tracking? — and it's incompatible with the Safari Web browser. There have been plenty of complaints online about Zoombak's Costa Rica-based tech support department, too, although Zoombak swears that that's improved recently, and at least it's available 24 hours a day, toll-free. For some people, there's a certain flakiness to those e-mail and text-message alerts, too. So who knew? There really is such a thing as compact tracking devices, just like the ones in the spy movies. This one is nicely priced, well built and, fortunately, undergoing constant refinement. Even so, Hollywood still has a ways to go before it attains accuracy in its depiction of real-world technology. Just once, I'd like to see the hero of "Mission: Impossible" lose the villain's trail, swat his forehead and mutter, "Dang that T-Mobile network!" To see the VIDEO click here or over image. Go to Pogue´s Posts. E-mail: pogue@nytimes.com. Abrir articulo en el Sitio Web del NYT Copyright by the New York Times 2008

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El ipod va a la guerra.

Published Apr 18, 2009 From the magazine issue dated Apr 27, 2009 Apple's New Weapon By Benjamin Sutherland | NEWSWEEK TECHTONIC SHIFTS To help soldiers make sense of data from drones, satellites and ground sensors, the U.S. military now issues the iPod Touch. Tying the hands of a person who is speaking, the Arab proverb goes, is akin to "tying his tongue." Western soldiers in Iraq know how important gestures can be when communicating with locals. To close, open and close a fist means "light," but just opening a fist means "bomb." One soldier recently home from Iraq once tried to order an Iraqi man to lie down. To get his point across, the soldier had to demonstrate by stretching out in the dirt. Translation software could help, but what's the best way to make it available in the field? The U.S. military in the past would give a soldier an electronic handheld device, made at great expense specially for the battlefield, with the latest software. But translation is only one of many software applications soldiers now need. The future of "networked warfare" requires each soldier to be linked electronically to other troops as well as to weapons systems and intelligence sources. Making sense of the reams of data from satellites, drones and ground sensors cries out for a handheld device that is both versatile and easy to use. With their intuitive interfaces, Apple devices—the iPod Touch and, to a lesser extent, the iPhone—are becoming the handhelds of choice. Using a commercial product for such a crucial military role is a break from the past. Compared with devices built to military specifications, iPods are cheap. Apple, after all, has already done the research and manufacturing without taxpayer money. The iPod Touch retails for under $230, whereas a device made specifically for the military can cost far more. (The iPhone offers more functionality than the iPod Touch, but at $600 or $700 each, is much more expensive.) Typically sheathed in protective casing, iPods have proved rugged enough for military life. And according to an Army official in Baghdad, the devices have yet to be successfully hacked. (The Pentagon won't say how many Apple devices are deployed, and Apple Computer declined to be interviewed for this article.) The iPod also fulfills the U.S. military's need to equip soldiers with a single device that can perform many different tasks. Apple's online App Store offers more than 25,000 (and counting) applications for the iPhone and iPod Touch, which shares the iPhone's touchscreen. As the elegantly simple iPods—often controlled with a single thumb—acquire more functionality, soldiers can shed other gadgets. An iPod "may be all that they need," says Lt. Col. Jim Ross, director of the Army's intelligence, electronic warfare and sensors operations in Fort Monmouth, New Jersey. Apple ipod-touch The iPod isn't the only multifunction handheld on the market, but among soldiers it's the most popular. Since most recruits have used one—and many already own one—it's that much easier to train them to prepare and upload new content. Users can add phrases to language software, annotate maps and link text or voice recordings to photos ("Have you seen this man?"). Apple devices make it easy to shoot, store and play video. Consider the impact of showing villagers a video message of a relaxed and respected local leader encouraging them to help root out insurgents. Since sharing data is particularly important in counterinsurgency operations, the Pentagon is funding technology that makes it easier for the soldier on the ground to acquire information and quickly add it to databases. Next Wave Systems in Indiana, is expected to release iPhone software that would enable a soldier to snap a picture of a street sign and, in a few moments, receive intelligence uploaded by other soldiers (the information would be linked by the words on the street sign). This could include information about local water quality or the name and photograph of a local insurgent sympathizer. The U.S. Marine Corps is funding an application for Apple devices that would allow soldiers to upload photographs of detained suspects, along with written reports, into a biometric database. The software could match faces, making it easier to track suspects after they're released. Apple gadgets are proving to be surprisingly versatile. Software developers and the U.S. Department of Defense are developing military software for iPods that enables soldiers to display aerial video from drones and have teleconferences with intelligence agents halfway across the globe. Snipers in Iraq and Afghanistan now use a "ballistics calculator" called BulletFlight, made by the Florida firm Knight's Armament for the iPod Touch and iPhone. Army researchers are developing applications to turn an iPod into a remote control for a bomb-disposal robot (tilting the iPod steers the robot). In Sudan, American military observers are using iPods to learn the appropriate etiquette for interacting with tribal leaders. Translation is another important area. A new program, Vcommunicator, is now being issued to soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan. It produces spoken and written translations of Arabic, Kurdish and two Afghan languages. It also shows animated graphics of accompanying gestures and body language, and displays pictures of garments, weapons and other objects. Procurement officials are making a "tremendous push" to develop and field militarily useful Apple devices, says Ernie Bright, operations manager of Vcom3D, the Florida firm that developed the software. The iPod has already transformed the way we listen to music. Now it's taking on war. © 2009 Open Article at Newsweek´s WebSite. About Newsweek, Inc. Contact Us User Agreement Privacy Policy Rights and Reprint Sales. © 2009 Newsweek, Inc.