Savvy Wi-Fi citizens should not only be on the lookout for fast and nearby hotspots, but also be sure to lock down a secure Internet connection. Accessing open Wi-Fi signals can expose you to hackers, malware, and viruses, which can put private information at risk. At Boingo, we don’t want you to worry about practicing Internet safety, so we’ve developed a handy solution for you – Boingo Security VPN! Continue reading
If your cellphone provider is putting you on a data diet, what good is an inordinate amount of storage in the cloud? How useful are services like Spotify, Pandora, Hulu or Netflix on your phone if Verizon or AT&T make it ridiculously expensive to use on a regular basis or severely restrict your throughput once your “unlimited” account hits a data threshold? What are your data management strategies for using the cloud services you want to use without penalty? Continue reading
Boingo’s CTO recently co-hosted a discussion with John Payne, former CIO for San Francisco International Airport, about the most pressing issues surrounding airport Wi-Fi service. Administrators should consider each of these issues to ensure their planning accounts for the dramatic growth and increased risks on the horizon, and in many cases that have already begun to play out in their airports today. Continue reading
Hot on the heels of CES, the research firm NPD In-Stat released research this week about the significant growth in integrated Wi-Fi support for everything from digital TVs and Blu-ray players, to game consoles, picture frames and set top boxes. The company’s VP of research claims that Wi-Fi has moved from a “nice-to-have” feature to a “must-have” feature for any new consumer entertainment device, because consumers expect to be able to move content from device to device, and Wi-Fi’s established market penetration — along with new uses made possible by innovations like Wi-Fi Direct and Wi-Fi Display — makes it the obvious technology of choice. As a self-avowed tech wonk (and longtime Internet nutjob), all of my network-enabled TVs, Blu-ray players, and set-top boxes (including an Apple TV) are connected to the Internet and are accessible to each other. But I’m a nutjob. And since I was ahead of the curve, I had to find ways to get Ethernet cables to each device, since they weren’t Wi-Fi enabled. But this ultimately created a much better content ecosystem for our family. How so? We use Apple’s Remote application to play music and videos throughout the house on various available speakers and
This morning we distributed something we like to call the “Wi-Fi Snapshot” [DOWNLOAD]. It’s a collection of statistics that we think are interesting, based on what kinds of Wi-Fi enabled devices our web server sees in the 60 airports where we run the network. It also includes some metrics based on connection/session data we’ve logged over the hundreds of thousands of hotspots that comprise our network. The most significant data point is that for the first time in our history, mobile devices (smartphones and tablets) make up a majority of the Wi-Fi device audience. In June, 58.9% of all Wi-Fi enabled devices that loaded our walled garden page (where we ask if you want to log in or buy access) were not laptops. And 83% of those devices were running iOS (iPhone, iPad, iPod Touch). This is in stark contrast to 2007, when laptops represented 99.9% of all devices we saw, and most of the other 0.1% were Win CE devices (Pocket PC, Windows Mobile). Another key indicator is the explosive growth of iPads in the marketplace. Remember that when Apple announced the iPad, many pundits claimed the tablet was a product that no one wanted. It wasn’t small enough
Recently, there have been a lot of headlines identifying mobile data growth as a crisis in the making — a collection of different voices adding to the discussion, culminating in a chorus of warnings about the coming capacity crunch. Even with upgrades to 4G, there won’t be enough mobile data capacity to meet the exploding demand for data thanks to the proliferation of powerful smartphones that put the Internet in our hands, available at every turn. Andrew Seybold, one of the wireless industry’s best established pundits, has added his voice to the chorus with his newsletter article “Managing the Demand for Wireless Data” — and it is one of the most thorough deconstructions of the issue that we’ve seen in print. Sometimes it takes a seasoned veteran to distill the myriad complexities of the issue down into a single, comprehensive overview that readily addresses the critical aspects of the issue at hand, including the likelihood of increased costs for heavy users due to new tiered pricing structures. We highly recommend reading his article, and then reading it again. It’s that good. LINK: Managing the Demand for Wireless Data
We recently covered some of the biggest security risks a user might face when connecting to unmanaged Wi-Fi networks (most free ones), including various hacking attempts to capture user data. One of the recommendations we made in that article was to make sure you’re using the secure browsing for your online services. We gave Google’s Gmail and Documents as examples. There is a setting that allows you to force SSL connections for all interactions. This is confirmed by seeing https:// at the beginning of every URL interaction with that service. We originally stated that Facebook doesn’t yet offer this — but hold the presses! Facebook announced this week that they are adding secure browsing for all Facebook activities. It is slowly being rolled out to all users, so you may not have it yet. ARTICLE: Facebook’s New, Simple and Essential Safety Feature We highly recommend enabling this option on your account, especially if you spend a lot of time Facebooking over public wireless networks. HOW TO: Click on “Account” in upper right of your Facebook home page and select “Account Settings” from the pulldown menu. About two-thirds of the way down the next page, choose “change” next to the “Account
Last week, the Sacramento Bee, citing concerns from the FBI, published an article about the security risks of free Wi-Fi networks. These days, free Wi-Fi hotspots abound. So what can you do to keep your personal data safe? We asked our CTO, Niels Jonker, for some words of wisdom to help understand the potential risks, and ways to stay safe when you connect to a free or unmanaged Wi-Fi network. LOCK OUT HACKERS WITH A VPN According to the FBI’s Sacramento office, hackers may set up fake Wi-Fi hotspots in airports with names like “Free Wi-Fi”. A user connects to this SSID thinking they are connecting to a legitimate airport-sponsored service, when in fact it’s bogus. The hackers are then able to steal passwords and other personal information. ARTICLE: Include Wi-Fi Among Security Risks At Airports, FBI Warns Niels’ Words of Wisdom: “Open Wi-Fi, by its very nature, is insecure. This means that your best defense is a good offense. Make sure you’re only using SSL-encrypted services – which means logging in to https://gmail.com instead of http://gmail.com — or use a VPN to lock down all of your traffic over the wireless network. Most online service providers like Google and
Today’s news items include a few articles about how Facetime on the Verizon iPhone will only work over Wi-Fi. Verizon’s iPhone FaceTime program will only work on WiFi For those Verizon customers anxious to take advantage of the coolest features of their iPhones from the start , they’ll need a Wi-Fi roaming account…like Boingo! As a friendly reminder, Boingo Mobile gives you unlimited access to more than 200,000 hotspots around the world for $7.95 per month, and Boingo Wi-Fi Credits lets you use your iTunes account to buy Wi-Fi connections an hour at a time for $1.99 per connect. For the iPhone (and iPad and iPod Touch) user on the go, these accounts can provide the connectivity and functionality you want and need to be the most connected iOS user on the block.
As the dog days of summer are replaced by a chill in the air, and the boys of summer have been winnowed down to the few, the proud, the postseason victors, we choose to reflect on the best parts of playoff baseball. Cold October nights awash with excitement and dread, the tension of a two-out at bat with runners in scoring position and your favorite team behind, and (still) watching the Batting Stance Guy with his ridiculous imitations of our favorite players. Gar Ryness, the inimitable YouTube sensation known as the Batting Stance Guy, has long called it “The Least Marketable Skill in America.” Ironically, it’s turned into a boondoggle of sorts, sending him on trips around the country to perform the batting stances in Major League Baseball parks across the country as part of the pregame festivities. It has also catapulted him onto such high profile shows as CBS’s “Late Show with David Letterman” and ESPN’s “SportsCenter.” The “Least Marketable Skill” also netted him a book deal with Scribner, called (what else?), “Batting Stance Guy: A Love Letter to Baseball.” We recently caught up with Gar, somewhere between his numerous posts on Twitter (@BattingStanceG): 1. Tech geek or Luddite?
I took the one less traveled by, And that has made all the difference The Road Not Taken – Robert Frost Instead of taking Interstate 40 for our family vacation last week, we opted to take a pair of shiny rails. And the decision to take Amtrak for the transit portion of our trip from Los Angeles to Albuquerque and back made a tremendous difference on our entire trip. The most noticeable one being that we arrived sooner and better rested than if we had driven the distance ourselves, as we usually do. According to Google Maps, the 800 miles from LA to ABQ should take about 12 hours to drive. Obviously, Google doesn’t make their calculations with two small children in mind, as well as a wife who loves to make hour-and-a-half stops at whichever Cracker Barrel is closest at mealtime. Ultimately, it amounts to two full days of driving, logging close to eight hours a day behind the wheel — or stuck in transit purgatory. With Amtrak, our trip was more like a long international flight in business class, with better meal options, more entertaining views, more options to keep oneself entertained en route, and a whole lot
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