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Random thought:

All aboard the WiFi express

The term "pervasive computing" has been around for several years. It's finally beginning to mean something. WiFi or 802.11b is making it happen.

People who get tired of working in the office or working from home now have another option. Consider a freelance programmer I know. He can work in a client's office. He can work in his home office. Or he can work in a coffee shop. The equation is: Programmer + WiFi + Notebook + Cell phone = office.

About 1000 Starbucks outlets around the country have installed WiFi and more installations are planned. So has Stauf's Coffee Grinders here in Columbus and so have 3 Cup'o'Joe operations around town. Hotels that cater to business travelers increasingly have WiFi installed. You'll find it at airports. Many universities have WiFi in classrooms, dorms, and sometimes everywhere so that students can sit outside and do classwork.

And now McDonald's. By the end of the year, the company says it will be able to offer one hour of free WiFi access to anyone who buys a combination meal. The only catch is that this is a test at 300 restaurants in several US cities.

To use WiFi, you need a computer with a WiFi PC Card installed. They're available for Macs and PCs and they don't cost nearly $1000 any more. If you bought one when they did, you'll be ever so happy to know that the going price is now about 50 bucks.

And with support from Intel, it may be effectively $0. Intel's Centrino chips for notebook computers, contain a built-in WiFi transceiver.

WiFi, by the way, is short for "wireless fidelity", which might make you think that it's something you'd want to use with your home stereo instead of with your computer. This is the same technology that people use at home to set up wireless local-area networks (WLAN).

When you check into a hotel room that's equipped with WiFi, you don't need to plug your computer in to the phone and you get a much faster connection than you would with the phone. You can also still use the phone while you're on-line.

You might be wondering what the cost is. So are the people who provide the service. You can find prices ranging from free to "included in the price". Operations such as Boingo, with WiFi installations scattered around the country, may charge $30 per month or $100 per month or you might pay 10 cents or 50 cents per minute, $5 or $20 per hour. Providers are still trying to figure out which prices work.

Where are the connections? See www.wi-fizone.org for a database of locations.

Sneak Peek

The embargo says I can't tell you who wrote the new filter set or when it will be released or what it's called or how to get it (because you can't get it yet) or any other information. But the embargo doesn't say that I can't show you a sample of what it can do.

One of the companies that makes filter/effects sets for use by people who use any of the mainstream photo editing programs is about to release a new set of filters, but the information is under "embargo" until next week. I'll be able to tell you more next week, but for now all I can do is show you what happens when you take a picture of your cat sitting on a bed and electrify the image.

To see a larger version of the image, just click the image. Note how calm the cat looks. He was not really electrified. This is a special effect. I like cats and would not connect them to something that would hurt them. This disclaimer is essential because, without it, some clueless person might suspect that I had been torturing this cat.

CD writers: Faster than ever

Remember when 4x was fast? The first CD writer I saw was DOS-based and cost more than $3000. For that, you got 1x and 2x writing speeds that usually worked and a 4x speed that was almost guaranteed to create a coaster unless the data for the CD consisted of one large file.

Today there's a whole new crop of high-speed burners entering the market -- CD and DVD. Standard CD burners have hit 52x speeds (meaning you burn an 80-minute music CD in about 2 minutes). Even the rewritables -- stuck for so long at 2x and 4x -- now are available in 24x models. And DVD-R/+R run at 4x. That's still slower than you'd like, but it's fast enough to make it possible to record video real-time.

Is faster better? If you're making a disc that you want to use for archiving data, I'd stick with the slower speeds. The research is still sketchy, but indications are that the faster writing speeds create an image that's not as permanent as those created by writing at slower speeds. Logically, this makes sense. I use the faster speeds when I'm copying information to a CD that I expect someone to use and then discard.

The manufacturers of discs have to keep up with the hardware. Verbatim, for example, has just released 80-minute 48x CD-R discs that come in half-thickness jewel cases. The cases have a clear front and a color back. The color is the same as the color on the CD label. These are handy for color coding -- digital camera images on orange, MP3 on green, digital video on blue. The half-thickness jewel cases are a plus, too, because they consume just half the space of standard cases.

Verbatim is the same company that released CD-R discs that look a lot like 45-RPM records. They can be used for data, of course, but they're being promoted to people who burn their own music CDs.

All of that is just window dressing, though. What really counts is how well the CD's dyes are made. Some (usually cheap no-name) discs can begin losing data in a week or less. Ultraviolet light from the sun is a CD's enemy. Knowing that -- if you want to do a semi-scientific experiment to see how well your discs might survive -- here's what to do.

Create 4 discs (all with the same information):

• Use a no-name disc and record at 1x.
• Use a no-name disc and record at the fastest speed your recorder supports.
• Use a premium disc -- Verbatim or Kodak, for example -- and record at 1x.
• Use a premium disc and record at the fastest speed your recorder supports.

Find a shelf that gets several hours of sun every day and put these 4 CDs on the shelf, label side down. The data side (the side with the dye) will be subjected to ultraviolet light every day.

Try reading each of the disks each week until they have all failed.

As a scientific test, this is no good for a number of reasons. The sample is too small. The test isn't blind. Even with the CDs on the same shelf, they may not get exactly the same amount of sun every day. Individual variances from disc to disc could easily flaw the results. If you have a big budget and a lot of time and space, try this experiment with 100 of each type disc and let me know the results.

Even though it's not a valid scientific experiment, chances are good that the two discs written at the fastest speed will fail earlier than those written at 1x and that the no-name CDs will fail before the premium discs. The more things change, the more similarities we find to previous experiences: I remember cheap no-name diskettes. I could count on a failure rate to 10 to 30%, but that was acceptable for sending files to somebody by mail (this was before e-mail attachments were known outside the defense community). For backup -- and yes, disk drives were once small enough to be backed up onto floppies -- we used the premium brands.

Nerdly News

Spam ... the quest continues

Recently I've told you a lot about GoodbyeSpam.com and how much I like the way the program works. Well, this week I received 2 or 3 spams that got through after some automated process replied to the challenge message. (See previous stories here and here.)

Any of the "semi-legitimate" spammers could do this because they have real return addresses, but the paid "professional" version of GoodbyeSpam (the one I'm using) offers other kinds of challenge and response mechanisms. I have increased the security to level 2, which requires the challenged person to click a link AND then type in a random number at the website. The random number is shown as a graphic to make automating the process more difficult.

A spammer that gets a lot of challenge messages with the random number could easily figure a way to read which graphic files are being used, match those to the appropriate numbers, and then have a program input them automatically. If that happens, I can move to security level 3.

Under security level 3, the challenge message will explain that a message for "Bill Blinn" has arrived and ask the person being challenged to provide the e-mail address that matches the name. Since most spammers have only e-mail addresses (no names), this will be difficult and time consuming for them.

I hope I'll never need to use that capability, though, because it would be a real disincentive for people who send legitimate mail.

XP slower after SP1?

A lot of people thought that Windows XP seemed slower after they installed Service Pack 1 (issued back in September of 2002) but Microsoft denied knowing anything about it. Until now. Finally, this month Microsoft has posted a Knowledgebase article that admits the problem exists. As for a solution ...?

You'll have to wait. But if you'd like to read what Microsoft has to say about it, the information is here.

After some users install the patch (which fixed a number of security problems) some programs take a little longer to start. Actually, they take a lot longer. TEN TIMES LONGER. A program that used to start in 10 seconds could now take more than a minute and a half! Fortunately, this doesn't affect every XP user.

If you're one of the people who is "severely affected" (Microsoft's term), you can contact Microsoft support to obtain an interim fix. Microsoft doesn't recommend that for most users, though, because the current patch hasn't been fully tested.

This reminds me of a slogan that I once saw in a software support office:

Let us know what you think about this program! Write to:
Bill Blinn --
(wtvn@blinn.com still works)
Joe Bradley --

Joe
(Photo by Sally)

Bill
(Photo by Scampi)

Privacy Guarantee:

I HATE SPAM and will not sell, rent, loan, auction, trade, or do anything else with your e-mail address. Period.

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Annoying legal disclaimer
My attorney says I really need to say this: The Technology Corner website is for informational purposes only. Neither Joe nor I assume any responsibility for its accuracy, although we do our best. The information is subject to change without notice. Any actions you take based on information from the radio program or from this website are entirely at your own risk. Products and services are mentioned for informational purposes only and their various trademarks and service marks are the property of their respective owners. Technology Corner cannot provide technical support for products or services mentioned on the air or on the website.