As Om and Stacey noted on GigaOM last month, many companies also are sponsoring free Wi-Fi hotspots in some useful locations for travelers, such as Google offering access in 47 airports across the U.S, and Yahoo providing Wi-Fi in Times Square in New York. Google is sponsoring in-flight Wi-Fi on Virgin America flights, but if you’re flying with another carrier, you could try one of these codes for free in-flight Wi-Fi from Gizmodo.

Still struggling to find a hotspot? Check out Mike’s post, “14 Ways to Find a Wi-Fi Signal.” If you’re planing on using public Wi-Fi, you should also read our guide to using VPN to secure your sessions — a few free, easy-to-use applications can secure your data from hackers, even in public locations.

Where’s your favorite free Wi-Fi spot?

(via Lifehacker)

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Much Faster and More Dependable, But Test It. The primary advantage of 802.11n over previous Wi-Fi standards is speed. It takes advantage of MIMO (multiple-input, multiple-output) antenna technology for much faster performance than 802.11g offers. If you are upgrading to 802.11n on a Windows network, I highly recommend the free application Xirrus Wi-Fi Inspector for managing and troubleshooting connections, and monitoring your signal performance.

Better Range, But Optimize It. In previous posts I’ve done on Wi-Fi, I’ve been surprised at how many readers use a router only for their home Wi-Fi setups, and no access points. Access points, including 802.11n access points, extend your roaming range while preserving a strong Wi-Fi signal, and can be bought for under $75 — often much less. If you install new 802.11n Wi-Fi technology, and were planning on using just a router, you may want to experiment with at least one access point (I use several at home). You can get a good 802.11n router for under $100, so there is room to optimize the components on your network. Of course, whether you need access points will depend on the size of the space you want covered, how many floors you want covered, etc. The range is good enough with 802.11n that I know people who have a router on the bottom floor of a home and get a good signal upstairs and far away.

Experiment With Access Point Placement. It’s surprising how finicky Wi-Fi components are, including 802.11n components. As you put in a new Wi-Fi network, try different placements for your router and access points. The smallest change can make a big difference in the performance and range that you get. Remember that Wi-Fi is radio technology, so it tends to work best away from obstructions, and away from metal.

Security Matters. While this point pertains to Wi-Fi networks of all stripes, it’s also well-known that one of the biggest mistakes people make when putting in a new Wi-Fi network is not establishing proper security. It used to be that to secure your wireless network you had to know your way around complicated acronyms and the like, but now you can just follow the steps on your router’s installation CD to lock your network down.

Keep Track of Upcoming 802.11n Offerings, and Certification. The Wi-Fi Alliance is the main body that certifies Wi-Fi products for interoperability and performance. The logo above is the one that the organization uses in certification — look for it. Also, many businesses don’t upgrade their Wi-Fi networks until the IEEE ratifies a standard, which just happened for 802.11n. As businesses upgrade, there are likely to be new products and good deals appearing, which should be worth keeping track of.

Are you using a 802.11n in your home network?

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Optimize Your USB Flash Drive. Many people own USB flash drives that they got as gifts or were passed on from someone else, and high-capacity versions have become very cheap. Even on drives with relatively low capacity, you can put entire suites of freeware and open-source applications on your flash drive, keep it in your pocket, and have useful applications to use no matter where you are, even if you need to work on someone else’s computer. PortableApps is my favorite site for downloading a suite of Windows apps optimized for a flash drive, while MacLibre is a good equivalent for people on Macs.

Next-Gen Note Taking. Recently, I’ve been using the Livescribe Pulse smartpen (shown above), which you can get for $149 to $199, for capturing digital notes. It’s a writing instrument, but it has a computer and camera onboard. As you jot down notes on special paper (it has millions of dots embedded in it), every move you make is digitally captured so that you can take handwritten notes right into software applications. What makes it better than other similar digital pens is that it also records audio, and creates a time line so that you can jump to various parts of a recording and review anything you were taking notes on at that point. Highly recommended.

Better Battery Life. Low battery life remains a chief complaint among users of portable computers, but there are a number of simple steps you can take to radically improve it. In this post, you’ll find nine tips that can make a big difference. Also, this post illustrates how much juice the display on your portable computer consumes, which is an incredible amount. One of the quickest and easiest ways to get much more battery life is simply to turn your brightness down.

The Lowly Mouse. In my post, “Nine Ways to Make Your Mouse Roar,” I made the point that many of us spend more time sitting with a computer and a mouse than we do with any person. The post details a number of ways to get more out of your mouse (not many people read mouse documentation), including using a scroll wheel directly within productivity applications, scrolling horizontally, and speed scrolling without using the scroll wheel.

Get More From Wi-Fi. Many of us rely on Wi-Fi all day long, but I am constantly surprised by how many people there are who don’t optimize their Wi-Fi setups. As just one example, a couple of years ago, I wrote this post, recommending using access points around a home, and many commenters responded that they use a router only for home Wi-Fi, and haven’t considered access points. That’s fine in some homes, but in others, especially larger ones, an under-$50 access point can provide huge performance and range benefits. Check out more tips on inexpensive Wi-Fi hardware upgrades here.

Share your hardware tips in the comments.

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It’s always worth taking a network cable if you’re staying in an unfamiliar hotel because it might have expensive Wi-Fi, poor Wi-Fi reception in your room, or no Wi-Fi at all. This cable took a little room in my bag, but I’m very glad I packed it.

Share your travel tips in the comments.

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New applications or enhancements to existing ones can provide big efficiency benefits, but there are also many simple tweaks, unsung tips, and new ways to think about the tools that you already use that can help you work better. In this post, I’ll share five ways that can help you accomplish more and experience less hassle. You can take advantage of many of these tips in minutes.

Double Up On Monitors. We’ve covered the efficiency benefits of using dual monitors before. While some users like sitting in front of one giant monitor these days, for the same cost you can buy two (or more) reasonably priced monitors, put them side-by-side on your desktop, and use the displays as one fluid desktop. I recently switched to this kind of setup, and I’ll never go back. The time I save simply loading web pages and applications is substantial, and it’s also just easier to work this way. Windows XP and Vista both offer dual-monitor support out of the box, as does Mac OS X. Give it a go if you haven’t tried it.

Flex Your Mouse Muscle. Some of the most surprised comments I’ve ever gotten for any post on this blog came in response to a post called, “Nine Ways to Make Your Mouse Roar.” I made the point there that you may well spend more time with your mouse each day than you do with any person, and yet, a lot of people install a mouse without ever consulting the documentation and finding out what it’s capable of. Do you have a mouse with a scroll wheel? If so, in any tabbed browser, just click your scroll wheel while hovering over a link on the web to open it in a new tab. Or try this: In the middle of a web page you’re looking at, click once on your scroll wheel. Your cursor should change shape. Moving up and down with the mouse will let you scroll the page, and do speed scrolling. If your eyes are tired, hold your Ctrl key down and lightly push your scroll wheel up a few notches. The size of the text on the page you’re looking at will increase, and you can  hold Ctrl and scroll back down to return it to normal size. There are many more of these tips in the original post.

Become a Word Power User. There are plenty of nifty ways to squeeze more productivity from Microsoft Word and make it easier to use. For example, if you need to leave a document but want to have your cursor sitting right where you left it in the middle of an editing session when you return, you don’t have to leave your document open. Go ahead and close it. When you reopen it to resume editing, hit Shift+F5 to take your cursor back to precisely where you left it. Do you have multiple Word documents open and need to take a break? To rapidly save all open documents, hold down the Shift key and go to Word’s “File” menu. The usual “Save” menu choice will show up as “Save All.” There are many more of these tips in the posts above. Check out this post and this one for more essential efficiency tips.

Get More Out of Outlook. While it’s almost nobody’s favorite email application, many of us must use Microsoft Outlook for work. If you do, you’ll find eight good efficiency tips for it in this post. For example:  Do you often forget to respond to important Outlook messages? To set a reminder — visible in your Inbox — to act on or reply to any message, right-click on the message you want to set the reminder for, select Follow Up, and choose your Due By time and date. When you click OK, the message will be flagged for you to remember to respond to it.

Reboot Your Wi-Fi. In this recent post, I described how important it is to do a regular, cycled reboot on your home Wi-Fi setup. I also described how the combination of the cycled reboot and changing Wi-Fi channels can eliminate dropped signals and other common problems. Several readers provided comments with Wi-Fi efficiency tips of their own, including free, open-source firmware applications that can give you much more control over your Wi-Fi router, and better performance through boosted signals. Many of us are very dependent on Wi-Fi all day, so look into how a few simple tips can help you be more wirelessly efficient.

Share your tips for boosting efficiency in the comments.

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Here’s the common problem I had, and how I fixed it.

I frequently like to write and work on a laptop, so that I can move from room to room. A home Wi-Fi network is great for this, and I can even get a good signal outside my home most of the time.

However, recently I found my Wi-Fi signal getting dropped at regular intervals, which is really very annoying. In instances where that happens, you just use a sniffer utility to reestablish the connection, but it’s annoying to have to do so. I have a secure Wi-Fi network, and though I wasn’t exactly sure what the problem was, I knew it wasn’t interference from neighboring networks.

One important thing I learned a long time ago is that a Wi-Fi network needs a cycled reboot of all essential components on a regular basis. This means turn off the computer that your router is attached to, turn off your broadband, physically disconnect the modem and router connections, turn off and physically disconnect your access points, turn off portable devices hanging on the network, and then reconnect and start everything back up again.

I actually learned the value of that on a support call years ago when I got my first Wi-Fi network installed. It makes perfect sense. How many times have you solved a computing problem by rebooting, or shutting down an application and going back in?

After a cycled reboot, I was pretty sure that my dropped Wi-Fi problem was solved, but as an added step, I changed the channels on my router and access points. I learned about the importance of this through some reader comments to this post here on WWD.  I recommend taking a look at them and following the links provided if you’re having any Wi-Fi problems at home. Here is a good tutorial on channels and changes from Wi-Fi Planet.

After this second step, I never have had another problem with signal drops. Truth be told, I’m not exactly sure what my problem was, but I’m pretty sure I was running into some kind of interference. Many electronic devices in a home can create radio interference, so if you’ve been experiencing signal drops, try the steps described here.

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Cellular Options:

Mobile phone operators in the United States have been investing billions into building out their mobile broadband networks. Of the four major mobile carriers, three (Sprint/Nextel, Verizon and AT&T) provide high speed mobile broadband to their customers. The little brother of the bunch, T-Mobile, is still only delivering a slow EDGE network to subscribers but are rumored to be rolling out a 3G network soon.

AT&T has a 3G network that uses a technology called High-Speed Download Packet Access (HSDPA) that can support download speeds of 1.8-14.4 Mbit/s. Globally there are 102 HSDPA networks in 55 countries. In the United States, AT&T has rolled out HSDPA to most major metropolitan areas.

You can access HSDPA through specific handsets that support the technology or via USB/PCMCIA cards that plug right into your laptop. Note that not all AT&T handsets support HSDPA, particularly BlackBerrys and the ever-popular iPhone. Yet. These non-3G handsets utilize AT&T’s slower 2.5G EDGE network. HSDPA is quick and speedy, but you pay in lowered battery life.

The cost of 3G data access is in addition to whichever voice plan you have with AT&T, and varies depending on the device you have. To add data access on to your non-smartphone handset, AT&T charges start at $19.99 a month for MEDiaNet access. Data plans for smartphones (BlackBerry, Windows Mobile, etc.) start at around $30/month. To add a data plan for your laptop, you must subscribe to a DataConnect Plan starting at $60/month for 5GB of monthly bandwidth. To use DataConnect, you must have either a USB or PCMCIA data card.

Sprint and Verizon Wireless both support the same 3G networking protocol which is different than HDSPA. These two wireless carriers use a 3G technology called Evolution-Data Optimized or EVDO that comes in two flavors – the faster Rev A and the older Rev. 0. The speedier version (currently used by both Verizon and Sprint), can reach download speeds of up to 2.4MBit/s.

EVDO has been around longer in the US, and as result Verizon and Sprint have more handsets available that use this 3G technology. Also, the reach of Sprint’s and Verizon’s high-speed network is wider. Not only are major metropolitan areas well-covered by EVDO in the US, but access is also available in smaller communities.

Verizon’s data plan, BroadbandAccess, ranges in price from $40/month to $60/month. The less expensive plan allows you a measly 50MB of bandwidth. For the typical web worker, I would recommend the 5GB $60 plan. Sprint, on the other hand, has an unlimited data plan with no caps for $60/month. Alternatively, they feature a less expensive $40/month plan that caps you at 40MB/month.

Cricket (previously covered by WWD) is a low cost cellular service provider that is available in limited areas including Portland, Oregon, Central Texas, Denver, San Diego, and others. Cricket offers EV-DO rev. 0, which is slower than Sprint and Verizon’s EV-DO. However Cricket’s data plan is $35/month for unlimited data usage. If you’re looking for a lower priced option and can work with the slower speeds, Cricket is worth consideration.

If you’re looking to be able to use a broadband data plan for a few days, check out RovAir. They offer cards from AT&T, Sprint, and Verizon for daily rentals.

With these cellular providers, you must check their coverage maps on their respective websites to ensure you’ll have broadband access in your area. Just because you have a cellular signal on your phone does not mean you have 3G/EV-DO network connectivity in that area.

Wi-Fi Options:

If you need Wi-Fi for mobile connectivity, you can rely upon free Wi-Fi hotspots at coffee shops and the like, or pay a subscription fee. To find Wi-Fi hotspots, check out the resources we featured in a previous post.

JiWire is an excellent resource for finding Wi-Fi hotspots around the globe.  In addition to their website locator, the company features downloadable applications for Windows, iPhone, and Mac OS X that will make it easy to find a hotspot.

Are you willing to share a piece of your home Internet connection with others in exchange for access to additional hotspots while on the road?  Fon is a company that sells you a wireless router that will enable you to have a ‘private’ network which is for your own use, and a separate network for fellow Fon users.  Once you’re sharing your network, getting on other Fon wireless hotspots (which are available all around the globe) is free of charge.

For subscription services, there are three major players in the US: T-Mobile, AT&T and Boingo. T-Mobile’s Wi-Fi service is well established and available in many locations. In related news, recently it was announced that Starbucks would eventually ditch T-Mobile in favor of AT&T’s Wi-Fi. AT&T advertises 71,000 places to get online with their subscription service.

T-Mobile’s Wi-Fi service plans start at around $30/month. Please see their website for detailed information. AT&T offers their Wi-Fi subscriptions starting at $20/month for unlimited use. If you’re already an AT&T DSL customer, you get access to AT&T hotspots as a part of your monthly DSL rate. See AT&T’s website for additional program details.

If you’re traveling outside the United States or spend a lot of time in airports, you’re more likely to find access via Boingo Wireless than T-Mobile or AT&T.   Boingo plans start at $22/month for laptops and $8/month for smart phones that feature Wi-Fi capabilities.  With all plans, be sure to read the small print regarding roaming charges.

What method do you use to get online while on the road?

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A new service from iPass combines all three of these ways of getting online. After going after the enterprise market, iPass has launched iPassConnect for consumers. According to the company, they are the first to combine 3G data in the US, wired hotel broadband, and a global dial-up network.

Being a part if iPass will allow you to get online at nearly 1,000 hotspots in 500 airports, from hotels such as Hyatt, Hilton, and Marriot, and from retail location such as Starbucks, McDonalds, and more.

To get strted, sign up and at the iPassConnect website. Currently, the service is only available for Windows computer running Vista, XP, or Windows 2000. Pricing starts out at $29.95/month.

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Using other’s Wi-Fi is a common occurrence, according to the Register.  Some Internet enthusiasts feel you’re doing humanity a favor by leaving your home wireless connection open for passers-by to use.  However security experts and opponents of this practice warn against subjecting yourself to legal troubles if a stranger uses your Internet connection for illicit activity.  In some instances, people have been arrested for utilizing Wi-Fi that wasn’t theirs.

What are your thoughts?  Is it ethical to steal Wi-Fi?  Do you leave your wireless connection unlocked for anyone to use?

(photo credit: Flickr user dana~2)

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As you may know, independent coffee shops have long offered wi-fi as an attractant for business people, road warriors, and web workers to get them in the door. For the longest time, many coffee drinkers and wi-fi seekers chose the independent houses because getting online used to cost $6-$10 an hour at Starbucks.

When asked about whether he felt the independents would lose out on business with Starbucks recent announcement, David Blumenfeld of Boingo replied, “Many patrons of the smaller coffeehouses will continue to support their local shop due to loyalty, unique surroundings versus corporate giant, community support, convenience of location, etc.,” he said. “Any customer losses may also be offset simply because there continues to be so much more demand for Wi-Fi access in general.”

I would agree with Blumenfeld. The people who go to the independents go there because it’s in the neighborhood and because it’s a part of their routine. These customers are accustomed to their local coffee houses and will continue to patronize the same coffee houses they’ve been going to for years.

The business traveler, however, is more likely to stop into Starbucks based on familiarity with the national brand and because of Starbucks ubiquitous presence nationwide.

Battling for your breakfast dollars:

Boingo and Wayport, two of the major wi-fi subscription services our readers may be familiar with, made an announcement this week that will allow Boingo subscribers to use Wayports hotspots at McDonald’s restaurants. By doing so, Boingo is adding to it’s already 100,000 locations. There are 9,000 Wayport enabled McDonald’s restaurants, as reported by Computer World.
The battle for your business at breakfast time has been increasingly interesting, namely because Starbucks and McDonald’s are in a heated battle to attract your dollars in the morning. McDonalds recently started serving gourmet coffee, prompting Starbucks to respond by serving breakfast items (but just announced they would halt breakfast sandwich services).

Now, with Starbucks card holders getting 2 hours of free wi-fi, the Boingo announcement has McDonald’s hoping business customers will stop into McDonalds for their morning cup o’ joe and a hot cup of coffee.

(Image credit: Flickr user Dan)

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