Monthly Archives: June 2008

Viral SSID: Free Public WiFi


I was standing outside of an office building the other day waiting for a friend to join me for lunch. While standing there, I decided to see if I could latch onto the somewhat nearby (ok, half a block) Starbucks Hotspot while waiting (definitely a long shot). Instead, I saw yet another instance of the viral SSID called Free Public WiFi. I often see these in airports and conferences. I think it was the first time I saw it standing on a sidewalk area. It is not usually dangerous in the sense that it is a malicious attempt to snare your wireless signal. It is more of an indicating of someone with a Microsoft Windows based notebook with Wireless Zero Configuration turned on. You can read more about this at the WLANBook.com site…

“Free Public WiFi” SSID

You’ll note that the “Free Public WiFi” connection is an ad-hoc one (client-to-client, not an access point). WLANBook.com also has an explanation for that oddball looking ad-hoc hpsetup SSID. Oy! 🙂

Zumobi 1.1

Zumobi 1.1 was released earlier this month. So, I finally decided to try it out on my TyTn (Windows Mobile 6 Professional Edition) last week. The interface is nice and, I guess, finger touch friendly. But, it seems a bit slow on my Pocket PC. The content in the available Tiles didn’t interest me much. However, Version 6.1 lets you create your own Tiles from RSS feeds. So, I should try to do that sometime. However, it seems to me that it is actually faster to scan through RSS feeds using a more conventional looking interface like Ilium’s NewsBreak.

I’ll play around with it a bit more, build a tile or two, and post some screencaps here later.

Eee PC 901, 1000, or 1000(H)???

Wasn’t it less than a year ago that we didn’t have any sub-$1000 ultralight notebooks? I bought an OLPC XO because I thought it was a good idea to have one donated somewhere and another for my daughter to play with. Unfortunately, the XO provides little interest for a child who grew up with full-powered Windows PCs and Apple Macs around her. I probably should have bought the original Asus Eee PC model at the time. Ah well. Now, we have a bunch of copycat sub-$1000 mini-notebooks from many vendors. And, here comes Asus again to up the ante with new models powered by the new Atom processor.

Asus Eee PC 901, 1000, and 1000(H) specifications

I’m leaning towards getting the 901. But, I’ll wait for the Dell Inspiron Mini to get a release date before making a decision.

Windows Mobile PowerShell Provider

I haven’t taken a close look at this yet, but this sounds very very cool! I found it mentioned in Jeffrey Snover’s blog…

PowerShell Access to Windows Mobile Devices

…and then hopped over to the Nivot Ink blog to learn more…

Windows Mobile PowerShell Provider

Here’s the feature list from that blog entry…

  • Copy, Move, Delete items between folders on your device (including Storage Card) with standard PowerShell Cmdlets
  • Move/Copy files to/from your device and your desktop with ConvertTo-WMFile and ConvertFrom-WMFile
  • Get device information and manipulate and explore the registry with a rich device object returned from Get-WMDevice
  • Invoke-Item against remote items to or execute or trigger their associated applications
  • Invoke-Item with -Local switch to attempt to execute a remote file in the context of your local desktop (e.g. office docs or images/videos)
  • New “Mode” attributes specific to Windows Mobile file attributes: (I)nRom, Rom(M)odule
  • File/Folder objects’ attributes can be modified with .Attributes properties just like FileInfos etc.
  • Tab completion with MoW’s PowerTab Download

iPhone/iPod touch: Tap Top Tip

I’ve had my iPod touch since, hmm, last October. But, I only learned about this iPhone/iPod touch browser tip a week ago. One web page design convention for iPhones is to put a tabbed row at the top of a web page for navigation. This tab set disappears if you are reading a long page that scrolls down. If you tap the top of the screen, you are flung back to the top of the page and, therefore, back to the nav row. I really should read product documentation more 🙂

Windows Mobile WiFi Fussiness

Windows Mobile WiFi stability seems to have hit its peak with Windows Mobile 2003 Second Edition. My Dell Axim X51 could connect to pretty much any unsecure or WEP wireless access point (WAP). It did not support WPA. My Windows Mobile 5 devices seemed a bit fussier about which WAPs they would connect to. Older WAPs seemed to cause the most issues. Windows Mobile 6 devices (all of mine are upgraded devices, I don’t have any native WM6 boxes) supports WPA. And, connecting to WAPs seems like a real hit-or-miss proposition here. It again looks like older WAPs (even with the latest firmware for the model) cause the most problems. But, it seems like my iPod touch doesn’t have the same problems I’m having with my Windows Mobile devices. It is pretty frustrating to see the SSID for a WAP and then watch my WiMo devices flail about trying to connect and fail most of the time. Some WiMo boxes are better than others. But, I’ve never quite figured out which ones work best under what conditions.