Hasta La Gadget!

Stop worrying: BearExtender is not in the business of enabling the bear population, but rather WiFi signal strengthening. The company’s two latest products — the BearExtender 1200 and BearExtender Turbo (how’s that for a name?) — offer that service in two different flavors. The 1200 is a much stronger version of the company’s previously released BearExtender, adding “70 percent more power” to signal boosting, while the Turbo is specifically designed to bring 802.11ac functionality to Macs. Both arrive this fall, with the 1200 ($50) landing in mid-August and the Turbo (not priced yet) available in October. Again, neither is designed to extend the reach of murderous bears, nor is the Turbo designed to speed up said murderous bears. That said, it’s best to keep an eye out and stay vigilant.

Filed under: Laptops, Networking, Internet

Comments

Source: BearExtender

Uros’ Goodspeed hotspot service offers sanely priced international data, but it hasn’t been available in China so far — that’s not much help when visiting friends in Fuzhou. Travelers won’t have to fret, however, as Uros just unveiled a network agreement with China Unicom. Goodspeed’s €5.90 ($8) daily rate now supplies a modest-but-usable 500MB of 3G data throughout large parts of China. Visitors will also need to pay Goodspeed’s usual €9.90 ($13) monthly fee and buy the €269 ($353) hotspot, but they’re still looking at big savings over conventional data roaming. Those planning Chinese expeditions will likely want to give the service at least a cursory look through the source link.

Filed under: Wireless, Networking, Mobile

Comments

Source: Goodspeed

Google may have been on pins and needles while the FCC scrutinized its white space wireless database over the spring, but it can relax this summer — the FCC has given the database the all-clear. The approval lets Google serve as one of ten go-to sources for white space devices needing safe frequencies in the US. It also lets those with interference-prone devices, such as wireless microphone users, register the airwaves they consider off-limits to white space technology. The clearance won’t have much immediate effect when very few Americans are using the spectrum, but it’s a step forward for rural broadband rollouts and other situations where long-range, unlicensed wireless comes in handy.

Filed under: Wireless, Networking, Google

Comments

Via: SlashGear

Source: FCC, Google

The CEO position is usually the last rung on the career ladder — after that, it’s either retirement or a less-than-graceful ouster. It’s not the end for BT CEO Ian Livingston, however, as he’s moving to the even bigger leagues of government. The executive will step down in September to accept a role as the UK’s Minister of State for Trade and Investment. The company’s current head of retail, Gavin Patterson, will take the reins from that point on. Livingston leaves BT mostly better off than when he took the lead in 2008: questionable patent lawsuits notwithstanding, the telecom giant has been forward-thinking with its plans for ultra-fast fiber and LTE service. Let’s just hope that Patterson can deal with fiercer competition.

Filed under: Wireless, Networking, Internet

Comments

Via: Rory Cellan-Jones (Twitter)

Source: BT

It’s hardly a secret that AMD has stepped out of its x86 comfort zone to develop an ARM-based server chip, but now we know a little more about it. Going by the name of “Seattle” and scheduled for launch in the second half of next year, it’ll be built around ARM’s 64-bit Cortex-A57 in either 8- or 16-core configurations, which will likely be clocked at a minimum of 2GHz. In an apparent acknowledgement of ARM’s superiority at low wattages, we’re told that this design has the potential to deliver 4x the performance of AMD’s current Opteron X processors, with improved compute-per-watt. There’s a clear limit to AMD’s reliance on ARM, however, as it’ll use Seattle to up against Intel’s little Atoms, but will continue to sell its own x86 designs for higher-power applications. Meanwhile, we’re still waiting on something more interesting from this union, which might be an ARM CPU paired with a Radeon HD graphics processor in some sort of mobile-class SoC. Guess we’ll just have to be patient.

Filed under: Networking, Internet, AMD

Comments