We’ve recently discovered a new router that Netgear came out with a few months ago. After making a curiosity-driven purchase and playing around a bit, I’m glad to say that I am impressed. The WGR614L is an open source wireless router with an entire community surrounding different developments for the equipment. DD-WRT, Tomato, and OpenWRT firmware all work with the router as well as Netgear’s own factory firmware and a community-built independent build.

The people around here were so impressed with the possibilities of the Netgear WGR614L that Titan Hotspots has begun working with the fine folks at Netgear’s Advanced Wireless Division. We’d like to announce that we are now using Netgear’s router to power our new client hotspots. We’ve worked hard to modify our management software work with the device and arranged to purchase Netgear routers for new setups. This will provide our clients with what we believe to be a more reliable and faster hotspot connection.

Congrats on a better surfing session for all Titan Hotspots’ users!

Brian Said the following about the seminar, “Oh wow, this event was a great eye opener to all of the intelligent and passionate people around the Chicago entrepreneurial community. Great questions were asked and my experienced friends on the panel had insightful, wonderful answers.”

Thank you to DePaul University and the Coleman Entrepreneurship Center for hosting this event.

Another valuable service offered free of charge from us to you.
Learn more by giving us a quick call at 1 (800) 616-7609.

Serdar Yurdakul, director of marketing says, “We were able to come up with a solution where the device side could be plugged in without going through a hub – which means, at a lower cost, you can have a Wireless USB device capability.” This new product will not only be nicely priced, but also much more convenient for its user.

Although a conventional hub may be thought to be a better option both in price and convenience, Wisair hopes to do away with that idea. Yurdakul points out that this designs greatest strength is how easy it is to use. The dongles will automatically connect, taking away the need for wires. “A hub will be always be useful, of course, but this particular reference design enables a literal USB wire replacement,” comments Yurdakul on the new product.

Wisair is looking to launch a commercial product sometime later this year.

It’s been a banner year for buyouts in the tech sector. Take a look at some of the largest of the past months:

• Ebay acquires StumbleUpon for $75 million
  The Founder, Garrett Camp, started StumbleUpon for $1.5 million from Ram Shriram and Mitch Kapor and built it into one of the most prominent social bookmarking sites on the web. After more than 2 million users voting thumbs up or down for their bookmarks, Camp sold and will continue managing the company under Ebay.
• Feedburner bought by Google for $100 Million (according to TechCrunch)
  The people at Titan Hotspots absolutely adores Feedburner! We even use them to serve our news feeds, and it’s working out great. We were estatic to hear about Google’s acquisition earlier this year. One great company joining the others, sparks are most definitely soon to be seen. Keep an eye on these two, great things are on their way.
• Facebook buys out Parakey for under $4 million (according to TechCrunch)
  Parakey is not a well-known name, or even a launched company for that matter. That didn’t prevent Facebook from taking advantage of a mutually beneficial deal to buyout the open-source Internet operating system created by whiz kids Blake Ross and Joe Hewitt, the Mozilla Firefox developers.

Be sure to check out BusinessWeek’s article on Tech Buyouts for even more!

Before the wireless mesh was available, CTA employees routinely inspected each rail car at more than 10 of their rail yards, the largest of which holds over 280 railcars. Now, inspectors are able to do this automatically through the use of hand-held computers working with the wireless mesh like a huge hotspot. Inspectors can scan railcar identification barcodes for more accurate records.

Congrats, Chicago Transit Authority!

“We drive the same route in New York, London and Paris,” comments Toffer Winslow, vice president of product management and marketing at RSA. “We record the total number of access points we see. We can determine things like the encryption tech they’re using, if defaults have changed, that kind of thing,” all data collected used free, and easily used applications. The similarities in the route makes it easy to draw conclusions from the data collected.

From the data taken, the amount of access points on the routes observed took a huge jump. Paris increased by 44%, New York by 49%, and London with the most at 160%! The RSA also notes that the amount of access points that are in use for business in London was up by 180%!

Although the amount of access points in use is up, so is the number of encryption on the access points. Not enough to keep up with the number of access points. From the data taken, use of WEP encryption or WPA/802.11i in London only rose 6% (to 81%) in London and about 2% in Paris and New York(to 76% and 80%). Although not all are encrypted, it is still better than in 2004 when RSA found that only 2/3 of London and Paris access points were encrypted.

Not only do access points lack in encryption, but business access points face similar problems. “The thing that boggles my mind is in 2007, one quarter to one fifth of businesses have no encryption at all,” comments Winslow. Its not only a problem of no encryption, but also a problem of lazy encryption. RSA found that 30% of access points had default passwords installed on their networks.Winslow comments on the problem saying, “A lot of unsophisticated users make themselves vulnerable.”

Obviously there a problem with a lack of education on network security which needs to be addressed in the coming years.

Would you like to know more about how Titan Hotspots protects hotspot users with secure Wi-Fi hotspots using the latest security technologies? Read about it on the features page or just give us a call! Toll-Free: 1 (800) 616-7609.

Kevin Kahn, a director at Intel’s communication technology lab, comments on the increasing standards in this market, “There’s Wi-Fi, WiMAX , GPS, cellular, Bluetooth, Ultrawideband (UWB) and a never-ending collection of standards. And then there’s also an ungodly number of different frequency bands these things operate at.”

One of the major problems thats Kahn and developers face is not only being able to support the functionality of all these different frequencies, but being able to fit all of the technology in smaller and smaller devices. Intel is continuing to develop “ultramobile” devices that are able to support many of the features of a regular PC, but are actually small enough to fit inside your pocket!

Not only does Kahn and others face the issues of these new technologies, they also face the issue of fitting all the technology in notebooks that continually decreasing in size. They must be able to cram all the communication technology and the shielding necessary to make it all work without interference.

This issue is not a big of deal as the issue of very small devices. Being able to integrate all the possible wireless technology into their devices will be a must for Intel and their competitors. Taking away certain wireless standards or technology from their products will limit the market of people who will want to continue to use their products. “It’d be a lot easier if we said we don’t like this or that band, but if folks want it, we have to provide it,” said Kahn.

Intel will certainly face an uphill battle to keep their technology at the top!