A Hotel Wifi Hack

Source: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/AVc/~3/253719935/a-hotel-wifi-ha.html

For those who haven't been following me on twitter or my tumblog or friendfeed, I am on vacation with my family in Hawaii.

Our hotel offers wifi, but no ethernet option, in the rooms. It's $11/day for seven days, or a total of $77 for hotel wifi for the week we are here. Not terrible, but what about the fact that all five of us have laptops and want to use them this week? $385 for the week for internet for the family is not an option.

So I came up with this cool hack that I though I'd share with all of you who might find yourself in the same situation. We signed up the Gotham Gal's macbook to the hotel wifi. Then we shared that connection via ethernet using the sharing feature in system preferences. Here's a sreen shot of my laptop's sharing options:

You can share a lot of resources on a mac, but in this case, you only need to share Internet and you need to share it via Ethernet.

Then I pulled out our trusty Airport Express which you can buy for $99. I never travel without it. It has come in handy so many times.

I connected the Gotham Gal's macbook ethernet port to the AIrport Express' ethernet port and we now have open wifi for everyone on our two hotel rooms.

It works great. The only thing is we can't disconnect Gotham Gal's laptop or turn it off or put it to sleep. Everyone is happy. Which is a good thing on a family vacation.

Read More...

Summary only...

Panasonic Goes Touchscreen With the LUMIX FX500 Digital Camera

It may not be first touchscreen digital camera on the market, but Panasonic's new LUMIX FX500 is better late than never with a 3-inch touchscreen LCD and the same 25mm ultra-wide-angle Leica DC lens 10.1MP resolution, intelligent ISO and face detection as the FX35. It also features a 5x optical zoom, auto focus tracking and the ability to shoot HD video (1280 x 720p) content and still photos with a 16:9 aspect ratio. Not too bad for the $399.95 price tag. Expect to see it on store shelves starting this May. Additional pic and press release after the break.

Read More...

Summary only...

IBM's light pulse love affair continues with tiniest nanophotonic switch

Posted Mar 17th 2008 8:59AM by Darren Murph

Filed under: Desktops, Laptops

Merely months after IBM first inserted silicon nanophotonics into our memory bank, and just weeks after we drooled all over ourselves reading about its green optical link, the mega-corp has chosen St. Patrick's Day to trumpet the development of the "world's tiniest nanophotonic switch." The device, which boasts a footprint "about 100 times smaller than the cross section of a human hair," is said to be a vital part of creating an on-chip optical network. More specifically, it's bringing the gurus behind it one step closer to conjuring up multi-core CPUs that transmit data with light pulses rather than relying on electrical signals on copper wires. This particular switch would essentially divert traffic within the network, ensuring that "optical messages from one processor core could efficiently get to any of the other cores on the chip." Keep on livin' the dream IBM -- just ping us when this stuff is anywhere near ready for the commercial market.

• Read

Read More...

Summary only...

Samsung said to be prepping lower cost, education-minded Q1 Ultra

Posted Mar 17th 2008 2:33PM by Donald Melanson

Filed under: Handhelds

Samsung's already busted out a handful of different Q1 Ultra models, but it looks like it's now come up with yet another variation to throw out there, this one aimed at the education market. According to Pocket-lint, Samsung is dishing out this latest incarnation in order to compete with Asus' upcoming 9-inch, Windows-based Eee PC, although it's not quite going head-to-head with it in terms of price, with this particular model apparently set to demand £399 (or just over $800) when it hits the UK next month (no word on a release 'round these parts). While complete specs are still a bit light at the moment, the new Q1 will apparently drop the spiffy dual camera and cut back on the hard drive to keep the cost down.

• Read

Read More...

Summary only...

GreenFuel Technologies signs deal to build algae fuel plant

Posted Mar 17th 2008 4:24PM by Donald Melanson

Filed under: Misc. Gadgets

As we've seen already, algae is big business these days, and it now looks like the alternative source of fuel is getting another shot in the arm, with GreenFuel Technologies recently announcing a deal to build an "algae-to-fuel" plant in Europe. The company, as you may or may not know, is now headed (at least temporarily) by Ethernet pioneer Bob Metcalf, with its main claim to fame being a bioreactor that's designed to grow algae from the carbon dioxide emissions of power plants. While complete details are still pretty light at the moment, that bit of technology was apparently enough to score it a $92 million deal with somebody (actually negotiated by the former CEO), which is reportedly contingent on it first building a small scale pilot plant and meeting cost and productivity goals along the way. As Xconomy reports, however, this latest development follows some hard times faced by the company, during which time it actually had to shut down one of its algae greenhouses after it produced more algae than the system could handle.

[Via Green Tech Blog]

Read More...

Summary only...