While you've no doubt got an "unlimited" data contract, sometimes it's faster/cheaper/easier to connect to Wi-Fi. Particularly if you're trying to download a new mega-app. Wi-Fi Analyzer is a free app which displays the strength of all Wi-Fi hotspots nearby. It's been out for a while now, however Recombu's review of it brought the app to my attention. Shown on a bar graph with varying colors, each Wi-Fi connection in the area is displayed along with the "channel rating," which will give you some idea of how many people are connected to that signal. In the picture shown, the green signal is the lowest of all—which means it's also the busiest. The red arc is the highest on the graph, which is the one you should be connecting to.
If there's one drawback with this app, it's that you can't connect to your chosen hotspot within the app itself. You'll have to nip into the Android's own Wi-Fi section, or download the Wi-Fi Connector Library app from the same developers, which will do the job for you. [Recombu]
Lawyers suing Google claimed Thursday they have discovered evidence in a patent application that Google deliberately programmed its Street View cars to collect private data from open Wi-Fi networks, despite claims to the contrary.
"At this point, it is our belief that it is not an accident," said Brooks Cooper, an Oregon attorney suing Google in one of several class actions lawsuits around the country arising from Google's disclosure that its Street View cars intercepted Wi-Fi traffic around the world. Google has described the sniffing as a coding error.
The evidence, the relevance of which Google disputed Thursday, is a 2008 Google patent application (.pdf) describing a method to increase the accuracy of location-based services - services that would allow advertisers or others to know almost the exact location of a mobile phone or other computing device. The patent application involves intercepting data and analyzing the timing of transmission as part of the method for pinpointing user locations.
The so-called "776″ patent application, published by U.S. Patent and Trademark Office in January, describes "one or more of the methods" by which Google collects information for its Street View program, Cooper's legal team said in court documents filed late Wednesday in federal court in Oregon.
Google spokeswoman Christine Chen said in an e-mail that the patent in question "is entirely unrelated to the software code used to collect Wi-Fi information with Street View cars." In a follow up e-mail, Chen added that Google files "patent applications on a variety of ideas that our engineers come up with. Some of them mature into real products or services, and some of them don't."
Chen did not immediately respond to an e-mail asking whether Google has performed the "776″ method in practice.
Whether Google willfully sniffed out internet traffic on unsecured Wi-Fi hotspots in dozens of countries is an enormous public relations headache. It also carries huge legal and monetary ramifications in the United States, where the Mountain View, California, internet giant is being sued for privacy violations in multiple federal courthouses.
Among other reasons, Google might escape liability if it accidentally collected and never divulged the data, which includes web pages users visited or pieces of e-mail, video, audio and document files.
Google must turn over the U.S. data it siphoned to a federal judge in Oregon by Friday. The data will remain under lock and key.
Street View is part of Google Maps and Google Earth, and provides panoramic pictures of streets and their surroundings across the globe.
The internet giant has maintained the collection of data was inadvertent –- the result of a programming error with code written for an early experimental project that wound up on the Street View code. Google said it didn't realize it was sniffing packets of data on unsecured Wi-Fi networks in dozens of countries for the last three years, until German privacy authorities began questioning what data Google's Street View cameras were collecting.
First, Verizon changed their mind about the Google Phone after releasing the similar HTC Incredible. Now Sprint, weeks before the release of the Evo 4G, has done the same. And with that, the CDMA Nexus One is all but dead.
When Sprint's Michelle Leff Mermelstein told us that the company wouldn't be selling the Nexus One because of the "upcoming availability of the award-winning Evo 4G," it didn't change much for your average user. The Evo, like the Incredible, looks at least as enticing as the Nexus One, and even shares a lot of the same hardware. Where it diverges, Sprint says it's a "more robust, full-featured device," which, well, it is.
But what about the Google Phone? It wasn't just a handset, it was an idea. It was Google.com/phone. It was a brand, sort of. We were told to wait for other carriers to jump on board, and that's what a lot of us did. And now it seems that the Google Phone, only sold on contract with one major carrier, its launch partner T-Mobile, has suffered the same fate as so many of its fellow handsets: It has become just another Android phone.
Not much here in the way of verifiable detail but we're hearing that a CDMAified Nexus One is en route to Verizon (or Google's warehouses, anyway) from HTC's factories. The Economic Daily News (EDN) adds that Verizon will begin to "market" Google's superphone this month or in April at the earliest which lends some credibility to that March 23rd date tossed about previously. As for the Vodafone branded handset; EDN says HTC will ship it "soon" -- something we've been hearing since January.
Google and [insert any wireless carrier here] are the last two entities in the world that we'd expect to issue a joint statement on net neutrality, seeing how Google firmly believes the FCC should enforce it regardless of medium while carriers generally want to be exempted -- but Verizon and The Goog have put their differences aside for just one day to put together a thoughtful, lengthy piece on the subject. There aren't any surprises in the piece other than the fact that CEOs Lowell McAdam and Eric Schmidt are personally attributed to the statement, but it echoes what most ISPs have been saying since new FCC chair Julius Genachowski came into play: they generally acknowledge that a free, unhindered internet has led to a better world and that it's in everyone's best interest to make sure that it continues to be that way. They go on to say that "there will be disagreements along the way" -- Google and Verizon don't see eye-to-eye on the finer points, for example -- but that they're all looking forward to a spirited debate with the folks over in Washington. Ultimately, the FCC's ability to effectively police true neutrality on wireless networks ties in deeply with its ability to free up a lot more spectrum -- something the CTIA's been pushing for lately -- and Genachowski recently mentioned that they'd be looking into it, so this could all end up working out without any broken hearts or black eyes.
T-Mobile USA told those at the Mobilize conference yesterday that the carrier plans to ramp up its 3G speeds significantly in the next year. Although it began its 3G deployment much later than its GSM rival AT&T, T-Mobile's chief technical officer Cole Brodman expects to have its 7.2Mbps HSPA service online by the end of 2009. He now additionally expects the firm to introduce HSPA+ service at 21Mbps at some point in 2010.
The approach potentially gives T-Mobile a temporary edge over AT&T. While HSPA+ was once in the latter's roadmap, the company now says it will likely skip the format and move directly from 7.2Mbps 3G to its first 4G service when that becomes commercially available in 2011. T-Mobile also plans to move to 4G in a relatively close timeframe.
In addition to the network changes, Brodman updated the audience on the performance of Android and noted that there are now almost 10,000 apps available through Android Market in the less than a year the OS and online store have been available. Users on at least T-Mobile's network have also typically downloaded 40 apps, or about eight times more than Blackberry owners that often have few or no apps. By comparison, the iPhone's App Store has over 75,000 programs, though there aren't recent estimates for the number of apps downloaded per person.
The catalog and the adoption rate are both expected to go up in the near future following Google's redesign of Android Market to better advertise apps, especially paid titles, as well as the adoption of more non-HTC Android phones like the Motorola Cliq.
