Wi-Fi

Google is facing renewed privacy scrutiny in Britain, as a U.K. regulator reopens its investigation into how the Web giant's Street View program gathered personal data.

The U.K. Information Commissioner's Office announced today that it was motivated to reopen its probe, after information provided in an earlier U.K. investigation appears to have been contradicted by the Federal Communications Commission, which found in April that Google's data collection had not broken the law.

"During the course of our investigation, we were specifically told by Google that it was a simple mistake, and if the data more

The patent-infringement dispute between Microsoft and Motorola Mobility is expected to go to trial after a federal judge today rejected motions for summary dissolution filed by both companies.

The case, in which Microsoft accuses Motorola of unfairly seeking excessive royalty payments for patents used in several of the software giant's products, is now scheduled to go to trial in November, according to a Seattle Times report. The Motorola patents in question cover video streaming and Wi-Fi technology that Microsoft uses in Windows and the Xbox.

Today's ruling was in line with comments made in May by U.S. more

If America's Wi-Fi routers could vote, they'd likely reelect President Obama by about 6 percentage points.

That's just one of the unprovable conclusions I reached after looking at some clever new research by OpenSignalMaps, an Android app that relies on its crowd of users to keep track of all kinds of wireless data signals around the world. The app has gathered a database of almost 75 million geolocated routers worldwide and OpenSignalMaps co-founder James Robinson decided to parse some of that data for sentiments toward the president after noticing how many nearby routers were expressing themselves politically.

MacFixIt Answers is a feature in which we answer questions e-mailed in by our readers.

This week readers wrote in with questions about enabling TRIM on third-party replacement solid-state drive (SSD) devices, installing alternate Wi-Fi adapters to work around problems with the built-in adapter, using the Lion version of Quicken 2007 on older systems, and using a Time Machine drive for dual use as a storage drive. We welcome alternative approaches and views from readers, so if you have any suggestions or alternative approaches to these problems, post them in the comments!

Question: Enabling TRIM on third-party SSD devices
MacFixIt more

The Buffalo AirStation WZR-D1800H is the first 802.11ac (aka 5G Wi-Fi) router on the market, and Buffalo's WLI-H4-D1300 wireless media bridge is the first 802.11ac client. Since those are currently the only two 5G Wi-Fi devices, it was impossible to get a complete picture of the 802.11ac standard itself by testing them.

However, I was able to quite easily pair them together and experience the 802.11ac connection. Unfortunately, while the connection was very fast, it wasn't close to what the 802.11ac standard has to offer.

BOSTON--The nation's biggest cable operators are banding together to offer free Wi-Fi access to their broadband customers in more than 50,000 hotspots around the country.

On Monday, Bright House Networks, Cablevision, Comcast, Cox Communications, and Time Warner Cable announced on the first day of the Cable Show here that they'd enable each other's broadband customers to access their metro Wi-Fi hot spots. The companies are calling the new network "CableWiFi," so that subscribers will be able to find the hot spots when they're roaming outside their own cable territory.

In early 2010, Cablevision, Comcast, and more

Now that you can actually buy the first wireless networking products that use 802.11ac, Buffalo's router and media bridge, it's time you learned about the this new wireless standard. While the "ac" designation definitely does not mean "air conditioning," I can say for sure that 802.11ac is cool.

And by cool, I mean fast. That's the biggest difference about 802.11ac compared with previous wireless standards. But first let's see how similar it is.

802.11ac supplements 802.11n

802.11ac (aka 5G Wi-Fi) is the next step after 802.11n (aka N or

The whole "iPad Wi-Fi + 4G isn't a real thing" debacle is coming to a close across Europe. Apple has finished changing the wording of the kind of service the iPad offers across all European online stores, according to The Next Web.

Now, all the old "4G" branding is "Wi-Fi + Cellular."

The melee began in March when the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission said Apple was violating the Australian Consumer Law by misleadingly labeling its new iPad as 4G-capable -- the crux being that there aren't any 4G networks compatible with the device in Australia.

Soon other countries joined more

Tablets have enabled business users to get serious about being mobile. They are ultraportable, user-friendly, and get more feature-rich and powerful with each iteration. Many tablets (such as the Verizon-branded Samsung Galaxy Tab) are happily using 4G networking, which is -- compared with other mobile networks -- quite speedy. Of course, there are times when you either have no 4G signal or the 4G speed simply isn't fast enough. Fortunately, you can more