Headworx

Last week I wrote a bit about the Linksys WRV200 wireless home router. It eventually saved my day struggling with the Nabaztag , and definitely deserves more coverage. Basically I had two issues using my old WRT54GC router . The coverage was not enough - even though I was using an external antenna, I had to install a second WAP54G access point. The good thing was the WAP54G could have been configured as a "wireless repeater", so no extra cabling (only power supply) was necessary. The second issue was the need to have a VPN access to my home network from outside. VPN is a secure "tunnel" you can set up over the Internet, so even being physically "outside" the firewalled network, you can work over this "tunnel" as you were inside (for example print on the home printer or watch a home camera or schedule a TV recording using the web interface to the home TV receiver). After short evaluation (and being a happy Linksys customer) I decided to go for ...

We have adopted a rabbit this Christmas. A smart rabbit, that is - the Nabaztag . The idea of an electronic pet connected to various online services is cute. I will not go into the deep functional details, as you can watch the presentations on the Nabaztag.Com web site. And unfortunately I cannot tell you more from own experience, as we barely managed to get it running before the my.nabaztag.com site went down this morning "due to overwhelming rabbit registrations". But it definitely seems the rabbits have been a commercial success and most of them found their place under Christmas trees. I can only imagine the frustrations of hundreds (thousands?) of people unpacking their rabbits and then trying to configure them over the web service that stopped working. It looks like the Nabaztag concept is really great, but then we have two very fundamental flaws in the execution. First is an overloaded server that cannot handle Christmas traffic. But I think (and hope) the company wi...

Christmas around the corner so may be this is the right time to put together a personal gadget wish list? This time I will try to think of what can be improved with the current state of the art. So no new technologies, just what we have available, but put together as better, smarter designs. Here we go: Notebook power supply with several (2-4) USB power sockets. Hey, I take my notebook computer with me on almost all my trips. I bring several other gadgets as well. All of them are charged over the Universal Supply Bus. But at the moment I have to either bring an extra charger or leave my notebook running overnight to charge them. Targus, Kensington, APC, do you hear me? Bluetooth A2DP portable speakers. I love taking my music with me. I have a pair of Altec Lansing inMotion portable iPod speakers. They produce very good sound, but there are several drawbacks: (i) they do not charge over USB, (ii) most of the time I do not bring an iPod anymore - on a train or plane I listen to the song...

Last week I had very nice holidays in Morocco. Unfortunately there was not any good Internet connection. I wonder why people generally do not demand this going to n-star holiday resorts. You can get everything there, food, drinks, girls included, but the only connectivity option is slow and very expensive (roaming, 2$ per 100KB) GPRS. Ah... there was an Internet cafe with several PCs. So after several days of being completely off-line, I decided to give it a try. Bought 1 hour of on-line time (4$). Unfortunately there was no way to connect my laptop. I could only use one of the "public" computers there. Quick check showed the PC was running Windows XP SP1, no firewall and no antivirus. How could it survive is a mystery to me. But still touching an unprotected XP SP1 machine was something I could not feel comfortable with. I fired the Microsoft Internet Explorer and started typing the first URL address when I realized I better not did that. Public machine, hundreds of peopl...

Mobile operators. Is their future bright or clouded? In the advent of VoIP are they going to be downgraded to the role of IP packet transport providers, aka “dumb pipes”? This is what is happening to the fixed telephone operators. The fixed guys experience a massive drop in voice revenue, yet they are able to compensate the loss with data services, mostly DSL lines. The long distance charges are disappearing, but again they can potentially be compensated by IPTV services, bringing the fixed line to a triple-play service (voice + data + television). All together the monthly bill you get from your fixed operator most likely remains the same as it used to be ten, or twenty years ago. What is different is what arrives through the line – it used to be just voice, then voice plus analog modem - based dialup data, then voice plus high speed DSL data, then voice plus data plus on-demand TV. Ultimately the standard voice service will probably disappear, leaving us with pure digital, high speed...