Entries tagged with “wireless”

Verizon FiOS Commercial Leaks Updated Kindle

Sunday, August 10, 2008 at 7:54 PM • 2 comments

I was watching TV when a commercial for Verizon FiOS in NYC came on.  I noticed that the Verizon installer was using an electronic gadget to keep track of his installation appointments.  The gadget looked surprisingly like an Amazon Kindle.  That’s when I realized that they must be testing an updated version.

Based on the commercial, we can see the following:

  • Same basic size and shape.
  • It will have a touch screen with cute little beeps when you touch it.
  • It will have either a backlit screen or a much brighter screen.
  • It will support custom applications like the Verizon FiOS installation application.

I assume it will be released in time for Christmas.

I’ve included the commercial and some large screen caps below.

Continue reading . . . 

Mar 29 2008

Good explanation of the “Free Public WiFi” SSID you see almost everywhere in public

My home wireless is named “Free Public Wireless”, just to mess with my neighbors.

AirPort Problem With iBook’s

Sunday, October 30, 2005 at 5:00 PM • 3 comments

About three weeks ago I upgraded the RAM in my iBook to the maximum 1.5GB.  I had 768MB but I noticed that when I ran Photoshop, Dreamweaver, Safari, Firefox, Mail, iCal, Adium and another app or two, there was a five second “pinwheel” when switching apps, and i figured that upgrading the RAM was a pretty cheap way to increase performance.  Every since then, every few days, I encountered a weird problem.

The problem happens without any clear event to trigger it, and happens every few days for me.  The symptoms are as follows:

  • The mouse response to the trackpad starts to jump around.  It is as if the mouse on the screen freezes for a moment, then jumps across the screen in an attempt to catch up with the trackpad.  This makes using the mouse very difficult.
  • The kernal_task process starts taking up about 65% of the processor.
  • The AirPort indicator in the menu bar loses at least one level of reception.

The only way to completely solve the problem, for the moment, is with a reboot.  Stopping the AirPort does fix the kernal_task issue and mouse movement issue, but they both come right back as soon as you turn it back on.  Also, when you turn the AirPort off and turn it back on, it may not reconnect to the wireless network.

I did a whole bunch of research and found quite a few threads in various forums that others were having a similar problem.

Continue reading . . .