Venturing out into the world of public wifi can be risky, with malicious users potentially poking around the same network to steal data. Even if your laptop is full of nothing but cat pictures, it’s important to utilize security measures whenever possible. Boingo has made this simple by adding a personal VPN feature to its Wi-Finder app for Mac and Windows users.
The VPN feature was originally launched for the company’s iOS apps, and has now been ported to its desktop application. Users with a Boingo account can utilize the VPN, which is free, with a single click. The service uses the Boingo account for authentication, and connects users with a nearby server to help maintain performance quality.
Boingo’s Vice President of Consumer Marketing Dawn Callahan commented on the new feature. “Since we launched the Boingo VPN for our iOS customers this summer, we’ve seen nearly 20 percent of all iOS sessions protected with our simple security solution. Nearly a third of the devices seeking Wi-Fi in our venues are laptops, and we want to ensure that these users can also take advantage of our intuitive VPN and feel secure connecting at any Wi-Fi location.”
Boingo’s Wi-Finder app allows users to easily connects to Boingo’s wireless networks, as well as partner networks. The app gives users access to a directory of 150k+ free hotspots, allowing you to find a place to connect when you’re desperate for a network. Each hotspot is given a quality rating based on input from other Wi-Finder users.
Some of us have important data on our laptops — some more important than others — which can make the idea of connecting to a public WiFi hotspot sound like an invitation to disaster. Boingo thinks it can make those hotspots nearly as safe as a clamped down work connection by porting its Boingo VPN from iOS to the Wi-Finder app on Macs and Windows PCs. The option gives habitual hotspot users an encrypted connection from a close-by server, preventing someone else at the coffee shop from casually snooping on their files while they sip on double-shot espressos. VPN access is considered a free perk of having an account and doesn’t even require latching on to a paid Boingo hotspot. As such, we’d strongly advise grabbing the update to keep that secure option available, especially if you’re a Russian spy.
Remember our story on how T-Mobile’s Google Nexus not supporting WiFi calling, a feature that many folks on T-Mobile have been taking advantage of whenever they do not have a decent phone signal and yet are in the vicinity of a fast Internet connection? Well, it seems that we might have been sniffing down the wrong trail, and would like to apologize for any confusion which arose from our previous story. While T-Mobile did confirm that there will be no WiFi calling support on the Google Nexus 4, this has nothing to do with T-Mobile restricting this feature from the Nexus 4.
After all, a Nexus device from Google and whichever hardware manufacturer that they decide to partner with generally does not receive any input from mobile carriers, so T-Mobile was probably in the dark like you and me during the development of the Google Nexus 4. This means there was no input from T-Mobile for the Nexus 4’s manufacturing process, hence the lack of support right from the get go for such a feature. All in all, this should not come across as a surprise as it is a pure Google device, hence no carrier-provided software will be part of it.
Also, some folks did mention that WiFi calling smartphones do come with a specific kernels that was developed by the carriers themselves, and if you have a high level of technical knowledge, tinkering around with 3rd party kernels and custom ROMs, who knows, the Google Nexus 4 might just be able to handle WiFi calling after all.
Most video walls would be just a tad too large for the average living room, but the Tokyo University of Technology might have a clever technique to make them travel-sized. Its new Pinch interface joins mobile devices (currently iOS hardware) into a single display simply by making the namesake gesture between at least two gadgets: WiFi keeps them in sync and recognizes the relative size and orientation. While we probably wouldn’t resort to a wall of iPads in place of a large TV, there’s clear practical uses like extra-large creative apps, communication and very local multiplayer games. The best news may be that the university isn’t keeping the technology to itself. It wants developers to borrow Pinch for their own apps, which could lead to a legion of smartphones and tablets getting extra-cozy.
Pinch is an interface which connects the displays from multiple touch devices together. It is currently under development by a research group at the Tokyo University of Technology. When the user places a thumb and index finger on two adjacent screens and pinches, the screens link up. The screens can be lined up freely, whether vertical or horizontal, and the pictures can be matched up if they’re misaligned. The connected devices share each other’s position and screen size via Wi-Fi. …
Glimmers of a new Samsung tablet have appeared, with suggestions that the company is readying a new, 7-inch Note complete with more pen-controlled Android. The new model – teased as the Samsung Galaxy Note 7 – has cropped in in two forms at the DLNA Alliance, the Samsung GT-N5100 and GT-N5110, with the same GT-N prefix as sported by the Galaxy Note II and Note 10.1.
The listings for the mystery Samsung gadgets – here and here [pdf links] – aren’t particularly enlightening, and nor is the sparse description the Alliance gives. “Galaxy S2 GT-I9100 OS upgrade version derivative model – Icecream Sandwich version – Tablet” is the only hardware detail, the GT-I9100 being the Galaxy S II, but the tablet mention would seem to belie suggestions that it’s a simple upgrade.
According to AndroidSlash, there are indications that the GT-N5100/N5110 could be a 7-inch Note to slot in-between the current “phablet” and its full-sized tablet counterpart. That would take on the iPad mini and Nexus 7, though obviously provide pen input unlike either of those rivals.
Interestingly, the GT-5100 also passed through the Wi-Fi Alliance certification program recently as well, though there’s some confusion around certification IDs. According to Google’s copy of the record, the GT-5100 is described as a “WiFi and other” tablet with WiFi 1/b/g/n (2.4/5GHz) support and WiFi Direct, though the certificate itself [pdf link] is for the GT-T8025, a different tablet.
With no record to be found at the FCC, it’s hard to know whether the Note 7 would follow in the tablet-focussed footsteps of the Note 10.1, or attempt to be a phone too, like the Note II. The two variants – N5100 and N5110 – could well indicate WiFi-only and WiFi/cellular models for mobile data use.
Panasonic introduced last Friday in the US its new 12.5″ convertible with the Toughbook C2. Designed for professional the new C2 comes by default with Windows 8 Pro, a nice 5-point capacitive multi-touch 12.5″ 500 nit LCD IPS display, 4GB of RAM, an Intel Core i5-3427U vPro CPU, USB 3.0, WiFi, Bleutooth, LTE or 3G and a battery life announced for 11h! The Panasonic Toughbook C2 is available this December from authorized Panasonic resellers starting at $2949. The Toughbook C2 …
For all that we’re told to live digitally in the cloud, there are still plenty of people who rely on handwritten notes in a Moleskine or similar to keep their lives in order. Livescribe wants to build a bridge between paper and digital, and the new Livescribe Sky WiFi smartpen is its latest attempt: a digital pen that can record all of your handwriting and sketches, as well as audio, and upload it wirelessly to the ever-popular Evernote. New sharing features, and the promise of toolkits for integrating the smartpen with iPhone and Android apps, gild the deal, but do we really need a pen that can squirt ink onto the internet? Read on for the full SlashGear review.
Hardware
At first glance, the Livescribe Sky looks just like a fat pen: perhaps something you’d give a child to more easily grip as they learned to write. Inside, though, there’s a lot going on. Livescribe says that, while externally the design is pretty much identical to its previous Echo model – bar a slightly different color scheme for the lower half – on the inside it’s almost entirely different.
The replaceable nib sits next to a small camera that faces down at the page, tracking what you’re writing. All you get in the way of physical controls is a power button, which sits by a monochrome, single-line OLED display, a microphone, and a small speaker. A 3.5mm audio jack is on the top, which also doubles as a microphone input, and there’s a microUSB port for hooking up your computer or recharging the internal battery.
In the hand, the Sky takes some getting used to versus regular pens. The thickness of the barrel feels strange, oversized, and the taper – which gets broader up toward the top half – can feel unnatural. That can end up making your handwriting in initial notes somewhat more untidy than usual, though you do get used to the feel of it over time. The lid – which slides in firmly to cover both the nib and the camera lens – can be a little tricky to remove, too, and is easily lost since there’s nowhere on the phone to clip it when you’re writing.
With so few controls on the pen itself, actually taking advantage of the Sky’s functionality relies on the specially printed paper notebooks. The pages in these are covered in a unique pattern of microdots, which the camera in the tip can track; each page has a different layout of dots, meaning the record of each note is unique, and – as long as it’s turned on – the SmartPen always knows where it’s pointing.
That’s the case for writing and sketching, but it also means Livescribe can print controls onto the paper and have the Sky recognize those. You get the usual buttons for menu navigation, record/pause/stop, jump forward/backward a few seconds in playback, media position, playback speed, and volume/mute printed along the bottom of the page, and tapping them with the nib triggers the appropriate function. At the back of the notebook there’s a scientific calculator – results are shown on the smartpen’s display – and buttons to set the time and date. It’s all very responsive, with no lag from when you tap.
However, the Sky version gets a new page of wireless controls, printed on the inside front cover of the notebook and – for those with pre-Sky notebooks – sticky labels printed with the same buttons. There’s a big WiFi setup section, with buttons to scan for networks, scroll through the list of results on the smartpen’s screen, and then select it, plus a QWERTY keyboard to enter the password; you also get buttons to turn WiFi on/off, trigger a firmware check, and sync with the cloud. A new block of WiFi Share controls will, eventually, allow you to fire off select notes via email (to yourself), to Google Drive, to Facebook, and to Dropbox, though those features won’t be available until Q1 2013.
Unfortunately, there’s no way to connect to WiFi connections that require you to log in via a webpage (such as is often the case in hotels or cafes). Instead, Livescribe recommends either using the mobile hotspot feature on your phone or laptop, or synchronizing notes via the free Livescribe Helper Application, which pulls them off the smartpen over a USB connection.
Three versions of Sky will be offered, a 2GB for $169.95/£159.99, a 4GB for $199.95/£179.99, and an 8GB for $249.95/£224.99. They store around 200 hours, 400 hours, or 800 hours of audio respectively; the 8GB model also comes with a leather smartpen folio and a one-year subscription to Evernote Premium. All versions get 500MB of dedicated Evernote upload allowance. Livescribe will continue to sell the Echo smartpen as an entry-level model, though it lacks wireless and still demands the old Livescribe Desktop app.
Livescribe Sky WiFi smartpen demo:
Software, Evernote, and Sharing
Ditching the Livescribe Desktop software is arguably the best news about the new Sky smartpen. The old app was functional but didn’t make sharing notes straightforward, particularly if they had audio attached. By switching to Evernote, however, Livescribe has sidestepped needing to handle management software, and the cloud-based notebook service’s own sharing tools – together with some HTML5 magic – mean collaborating with notes is far easier.
When you first set the Sky smartpen up, running through Livescribe’s online guide, you associate it with your Evernote account (or set up a new one). A new notebook is created in Evernote, and any new scribblings you make are automatically filed in there. Evernote already has clients for Windows, Mac, iOS, Android, and other platforms, or you can access notes via the browser view.
Most of the time you can leave the smartpen to its own devices when it comes to synchronizing. It’s triggered when you come back within range of a previously-saved WiFi network (though we occasionally had problems with the odd wireless network not being auto-resumed, and had to manually search, select, and connect to it, though the Sky smartpen did save the password), and – if a connection is present while you’re actually writing – notes are automatically uploaded when you press the “stop” button to end audio recording. The #1 shortcut button on the top of some notebook pages is also set to trigger a manual sync by default, and there’s another button to do the same printed as part of the WiFi controls layout.
Upload speed itself will obviously depend on how fast your data connection is. Text-only notes are gone in seconds, while audio comes in at between 7.2MB to 35.6MB per hour depending on quality and whether it was recorded in mono through the Sky’s integrated microphone, or in stereo via the optional microphone accessory Livescribe offers. Uploads continue while you’re taking notes, but are paused if you start recording more audio.
Once they’re safely stored in Evernote, you can use most of the service’s regular tools with them. They can be tagged though you can’t change the titles as otherwise Livescribe will lose track of which notebook page relates and you won’t be able to sync any amendments later on; notes with audio recordings are clearly flagged up in the collated list, as well as pulled out into a separate section for easier review. Evernote can even pull up search results from handwritten text, though the accuracy of that obviously depends on your penmanship. We had mixed results, though if you try to get into the habit of writing titles and subtitles in block text, it makes digging through notes with search more consistent.
Evernote also has integrated sharing tools, and coupled with Livescribe’s new HTML5 player it’s incredibly easy to pass notes on to others. If you send an email, the recipient sees an image of the note which, if they click on it, opens up the new player in their browser. A media control bar operates audio playback – the text goes from grey to green as it tracks along with the recording – or you can click on any point in the notes to jump the audio to that specific place. There are easy buttons to flip between pages, along with controls to skip forward or backward in 10 second increments. Any HTML5-compliant browser should be able to view the pages, too, including those on your iOS or Android phone.
You can see a demo of a shared Livescribe note here [opens in new window].
In the Pen Pipeline
Adding wireless to the Sky smartpen is just the start of Livescribe’s ambitions, however. The company is hoping to turn the digital stylus into a platform, not just a product, with multiple partnerships simmering away for launch over the next few quarters.
Arguably most useful will be the extra sharing options Livescribe is cooking up. Pencast PDF is due in Q1 2013, embedding notes – complete with audio – into PDFs that can be opened up in Adobe Reader 10 (or newer). Considering the HTML5 player requires a web connection, that will clear the way for offline playback; it also adds another level of security, since there’s no way to password protect a shared HTML5 note sent from Evernote. As long as someone has the URL, they can play back your recording; Livescribe tells us that updated security settings to address that are coming in the next important feature release.
Also worth remembering is that a shared note isn’t a fixed, immutable thing: if you subsequently add to a page you’ve shared with somebody, they’ll be able to see the sync’d additions by clicking the original link they were sent. There’s no apparently way to limit them to the state of the note at any one, fixed point in time; nor any way to “unshare” that note. In short, don’t add any extra jottings to a note that you might not want anybody it was shared with to subsequently read.
Also being worked on is transcription. Liverscribe is collaborating with Vision Objects on technology to convert handwritten notes into text, and with other developers on the same for audio recordings, though releases for both haven’t been pinned down to anything other than “in the future.”
Before then will be SDKs for iOS and Android, allowing third-party developers to integrate Sky smartpen functionality into their apps. The iOS SDK will arrive in Q4 2012, with the Android version following on in Q1 2013; Livescribe sees huge potential in linking handwritten notes with digital content, for instance.
The company has come up with a few demo apps – not for public release, sadly – such as one which allows handwritten annotations to be appended to PDF documents shown on-screen, by jotting them down on a physical notebook. There’s also a collaborative whiteboard app, which permits up to thirty people to remotely work on a single virtual whiteboard, each making notes on their Livescribe pad. Exactly when we’ll see the first such apps is unclear, and Livescribe isn’t talking about specific developers it’s working with.
Battery
Livescribe quotes 11-12 hours of recording audio with wireless turned off, or 4-5 hours if the WiFi is on. That obviously increases considerably if you’re only taking handwritten notes, not recording audio at all, and an imminent firmware update is expected to squeeze even more runtime out of the smartpen.
In practice, we managed nearly two weeks of intermittent use – with WiFi always on, but turning the Sky smartpen off in-between bouts of note taking – and the battery gage dropped by half. That’s with a couple of pages of notes per day, perhaps a third of which had audio recordings as well.
Wrap-Up
Livescribe’s smartpens always made sense for personal note taking, but they also demanded some extra degree of organization in use: remembering to plug them into your computer to sync, and then sharing them via the company’s awkward homegrown sharing system if you ever wanted to review them from elsewhere. Packaging up the Sky smartpen with WiFi and Evernote support addresses each of those problems neatly: now, all you need do is flip the pen on when you get home and your notes are not only pulled straight to the cloud, but distributed to all your Evernote-sync’d devices.
You can read notes on your phone, on your tablet, via the browser on your computer at work, and anywhere else Evernote is accessible. That will get even better when integration with other cloud services is added at the start of next year. Plus, Livescribe’s HTML5 player means showing other people your notes needn’t be the headache it has been so far.
Some still can’t grasp the value of a digitally-enabled pen, and it’s true, there are many who can take notes on their smartphone or tablet screen just as quickly as they can handwrite. For those who want their sketches to be included, however, or who still enjoy the feel of a physical pen nib on physical paper, Livescribe offers the best of that tactile experience with the convenience of digital backup and sharing. The inclusion of wireless to streamline that process only makes it more appealing.
If getting long-range WiFi is a perpetual battle, ASUS just started a nuclear war. Its fresh RT-N12HP router carries a pair of (thankfully removable) high-gain, 9dBi antennas and a separate signal amplifier that can jointly boost the range of the router’s 802.11n wireless up to 300 percent versus challengers that reach the same 300Mbps peak speed. Beyond that, the hotspot mostly claims sheer flexibility as its virtue with support for as many as four separate WiFi networks and a fast toggle between pure router, access point and repeater modes. Once ASUS confirms that we can grab the N12HP in specific countries, it’ll likely deliver a good signal from corner to corner in most any home — and invite some Freudian interpretations.
Since taking over Motorola Mobility, Google has started to rein in some of the manufacturer’s legal adventures. First, it struck a licensing deal with Apple in Germany, then it withdrew an ITC complaint against the company in early October. Now Microsoft is benefiting from its new, seemingly less lawsuit-happy adversary. Moto has decided to pull its WiFi-related patent claims from a complaint against the Xbox 360. That still leaves its H.264 patents on the docket, though, we wouldn’t be surprised to see the case disappear completely before the two companies go to trial in December. Microsoft claims it’s entitled to a reciprocal license from Google due to an existing agreement between Mountain View and MPEG LA. German courts have already ruled that Motorola’s claims regarding its H.264 patents are strong enough to issue injunctions against the Xbox 360 and Windows 7, however the company has been unable to enforce those sales bans due to ongoing investigations in the US.
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