wireless networks

For consumers concerned about wireless network congestion, hope may be at hand. That's the message from a group of tech companies backing wireless fidelity, or Wi-Fi, a way to get online without having to go through a traditional mobile-phone network.

The Wi-Fi Alliance, an industry group that includes Intel, Marvell Technology Group, and dozens of other electronics companies, was at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas to tout a new technology called Wi-Fi Direct as a way to relieve bottlenecks in wireless networks caused by increased use of mobile devices to access the Internet.

Q: I'm having problems picking up any networks that are in a new location. Any networks I've previously been on will work, i.e. at my parents' house, at the hospital, etc. But at any new location, such as when I was at the beach, the computer will not connect to the network. I never see that the new networks are available; the computer just won't show them. I'm running the Windows Vista operating system.

If you're a fan of the Internet music site Pandora.com, you'll want to take a look at the Livio Radio with Pandora.

Sometimes it's just not convenient to listen to your Pandora stations on a computer. Options for a stand-alone radio have been scarce and expensive. In fact, the last Pandora-equipped radio I reviewed cost $500.

The Livio Radio with Pandora is just $199 (or cheaper at Amazon) and does a great job bringing the Pandora experience to your living room or stereo system.

In an address at a USB conference in New York Wednesday, AT&T executive Ralph de la Vega told investors that the performance of the wireless provider's 3G network is being strained by the heavy data demands of a relatively small number of smartphone users. Just three percent of all AT&T network users are consuming 40 percent of the carrier's capacity, he said.

After moving to a new building on the corner of 11th Street and New York Avenue, Google's Washington office got a face lift that made it as hip and colorful as the company's Silicon Valley headquarters. But Google's top Washington lobbyist, Richard Whitt, won't be spending much time amid the bouncy balls, LEGO bricks, and foosball tables this autumn. Come October, Whitt expects three times the usual number of meetings with members of Congress and Obama Administration officials. "Google and the others on our side will step up our advocacy," he says.

Federal Communications Commission Chairman Julius Genachowski wants to mandate Internet service providers to grant consumers equal access to all legal Web applications and services -- and the debate is on. What was once the battleground for wired service providers has been expanded to the flourishing wireless industry, and that spells bad news for large telecom and cable operators like AT&T, Verizon Wireless, T-Mobile and Comcast.

Federal Communications Commission Chairman Julius Genachowski wants to mandate Internet service providers to grant consumers equal access to all legal Web applications and services -- and the debate is on. What was once the battleground for wired service providers has been expanded to the flourishing wireless industry, and that spells bad news for large telecom and cable operators like AT&T, Verizon Wireless, T-Mobile and Comcast.

Ever since Apple unveiled its latest operating system in August, Mac users worldwide have been asking themselves if the upgrade is worth it.

The answer is no, you don't need Snow Leopard, otherwise known as Mac OS X version 10.6, if you're only looking for new features. But it's an unqualified yes if you're looking for extra speed.

"Our engineers further developed more than 90 per cent of the more than 1,000 applications in Mac OS X," says Georg Albrecht, a spokesman for Apple's Germany operations.

Herman Heunis isn't your typical social-media startup founder. He's 50 years old, was raised on a sheep farm in Namibia, and is a veteran of the South African Navy. Little surprise that the company he built is no garden-variety social network either.

Reaching the most remote rural customers with high-speed Internet access can be prohibitively expensive. Consider the case of Hill Country Telephone Cooperative in Ingram, Tex. The small provider is undertaking a $57 million effort to install fiber and bring broadband service to a substantial part of its market, which covers 2,900 square miles, roughly twice the size of Rhode Island. Yet even with this effort, the provider will not be able to serve 543 remote households, about 5 percent of its market area, because it's simply too expensive.