Implementing Wi-Max

The bandwidth and reach of Wi-Max make it suitable for application like connecting Wi-Fi hotspots, wireless broadband support, high speed mobile data transfer and 4G.

The important components needed are:

• Base Station: These are spots which provides you wireless connectivity, like satellites which relay signal back and forth. Together they form WI-Max network.
• WI-Max Hub: These are core base station from where everything is sent to base stations. This does the same what any server in network does, acts as a source or brain of the network.
• Access Points (not in image): These are optonal some where but are used mainly when you have more than 3-4 wireless gadgets requiring to access Wi-Max network. Say in your home if you have 4 laptops who want to connect to internet , use access point simple.
• Wi-Max enabled Devices: Ofcourse this is what we use, laptops, mobiles Wi-Fi hotspots and others. They all connect to access points to get to internet.

Take a look at the image again and you will understand clearly about how Wi-Max works.

The Future Ahead

As IT industry and countries are recognizing the potential of Wi-Max, the technology has promising future both in terms of cost effectiveness and benefits to consumers. There are few issues still to be resolved like spectrum allocation (as signals have no country boundary so every country has to work on some range of signal, like every state has boundary, every Wi-Max country needs a defined boundary for Wi-Max also). Wi-Max also needs to be combined with technologies like Wi-Fi, bluetooth and others. Let us hope it gives the best to us.

I hope you enjoyed the mini series on Wi-Max. Feel free to ask me any doubts.

This post has been submitted by Ashish Mohta from Technospot.net. Subscribe to his RSS Feed

Wi-Max Basics

WI-Max is defined as standards based technology enabling the delivery of last mile wireless broadband access as an alternative to generally used cable and DSL. It offers advantages over Wi-Fi, in terms of greater range and bandwidth efficiency. It can give speed upto 75 MBps at every station (Station are points from where wireless waves are send to other places so signal doesn’t get weak). With this speed it can cover up the whole city and make them free of wires.

How it is better than DSL and Cable Modems

DSL and Cabel Modems suffer from two biggest disadvantages low speed (you can say they have good speed but when you have to download movies and games its still very slow) and lot of wires. They need to boost up the speed every few kilometers and hence fills up cities with wires everywhere.

With WI-MAX these disadvantages are removed

1. Being wireless there is no cluttering around
2. Each station can provide a boost of 75MBps download speed which can cover the entire city easy. Imagine how it will be if DSL are going to cover everything with wires.
3. This also removes the problem of maintaining the wires and their connection which has definite shortcomings when it gets damaged somewhere

Even Intel has started implementing Wi-Max technology in it’s motherboard. So soon we will be seeing Wi-Max ready computers. Take a look at the image below and you will get the idea of how Wi-Max works.

Continue reading: Future Of Wi-Max And Its Implementation

This post has been submitted by Ashish Mohta from Technospot.net. You can subscribe to his RSS feed here.

Some of the best Online Storage services are provided by Box.net and Gmail. Yes, Gmail with the help of a simple extension to Windows explorer called Gmail Drive Shell extension can be used for backing up your files with ease.

Gmail Drive Shell extension is basically a Shell Namespace extension that creates a virtual drive that will point to your Gmail account, allowing you to use your Gmail account as a backup device. The Gmail Drive can be used just like your regular explorer drive allowing you to use similar function’s like cut, copy and paste.

To backup your files in Gmail all you have to do is drag and drop your files into the Gmail Drive.The files that you copy over get emailed to your Gmail account with a prefix containing the words GMAILFS using which you can create filters to label mails to any folders you want.

Keith Dsouza has explained the use of this extention more detailed on his article, using Gmail to back up files with ease.

Download Gmail Drive Shell Extension

Box.net

Box.net is another Online Storage service which allows you to store files upto 1 GB online for free. More space can be obtained for a small fee. You can upload files of any type and can be shared with your friends and family from any computer that has an internet connection. The free account offers all basic features but is limited to 10MB file size max.

If you want to upload files to your Box.net account the way Gmail Drive Extension allows you, Techie-Buzz has a good tutorial on how to mount box.net account in Windows Explorer.

My Thoughts

I liked the design and user interface of Box.net but I get some error when I upload files to my account using the mount method. Also I find it dissapointing that Box.net has put a limitation on the file size (10 MB) for free accounts.

Gmail Drive on the other hand satisfied me with it’s speed and ease of use. I created a filter in my Gmail account that will now onwards automatically archive and send the uploaded files to a label called ‘backups’. Another reason that Gmail satisfied me is that it offers more than 2 GB free of charge in a single account.

Want Unlimited Storage Space? To get Unlimited Storage Space all you have to do is to create multiple accounts at you favorite Online Storage service.

So which is the best Online Storage Service? For me it is Gmail, what about you?

Google Voice Search

Google patents “Voice interface for a search engine” which allow user to search by voice.

A system provides search results from a voice search query. The system receives a voice search query from a user, derives one or more recognition hypotheses, each being associated with a weight, from the voice search query, and constructs a weighted boolean query using the recognition hypotheses. The system then provides the weighted boolean query to a search system and provides the results of the search system to a user.

via Arstechnica

New Google Search Algorithm

Rather than just sending people off to relevant web pages when a search is performed, Google could now display text answering those queries directly in the Google interface, either as Google-branded answers or as text excerpts from websites it would otherwise be sending people to.

via bit-tech.net

Gmail for your domain is currently available as a limited beta. The students of San Jose City College are among the first beta users.

You can give each of your website members a 2GB storage email account, which is as great as Gmail. The email address is based on your domain such as yourname@yourdomain.com.

To apply you can show Google about your interest on the program at Gmail for your domain.

Here’s what you can find on their blog:

San José City College (SJCC) has embarked on a technology improvement program, and for the first time will be offering student email accounts. That’s where we come in. We’re testing a new service with the school by hosting Gmail accounts with SJCC domain addresses (like student@jaguars.sjcc.edu), plus admin tools for efficient account management. Massive storage and features that tame the most unruly inboxes, like powerful mail search, conversation view for messages, and a fast interface, make Gmail very handy for students. Together, we’re pleased to provide this channel for better communications and a stronger community for all 10,000 SJCC students.

If your school, business or organization is interested in following SJCC’s lead, let us know.

Via Google Blog

• Opera Widgets – Similar to Yahoo! Widgets, Opera Widgets are small AJAX applications that provide specific functionality like
  getting your favorite news, converting currency and so on. Opera has posted documentation on Opera Widgets not only how to use them but also how to make them.
  
  
  
  
  Opera Widgets can be accessed from “Tools” -> “Show Widgets”. Once you selected the widget, it will be downloaded and launched. The Opera Widget is visible even when you minimize Opera’s main window. You can also download Opera widgets from Opera Community.

  Opera Widgets include Calendar,Digg spy Widget,GSearch,Digg Frontpage News Viewer,CSS Design Lab,digg,multiSearch,My Opera Community,GoogleSearch…(I think there are 34 Opera widgets right now).

• BitTorrent – BitTorrent has become one of the most popular file transfer protocols around. Opera built it right into the browser so we can download torrent files easily. No more hassle finding the right port, no worries about setting upload and download speed.
  
  
  
  
  BitTorrent and Opera signed an agreement allowing Opera to use the BitTorrent trademark and access the BitTorrent search engine from the browser’s user interface.Opera claims that integrating the technology will allow more efficient and quicker downloads of large files.

  The BitTorrent service will be offered to Opera users in two ways. Users can search for torrent files in the browser’s integrated search field, or, when a file has been selected, Opera’s Transfer Manager feature will handle the download. Separate software will no longer be needed to search and download content.

• Customize your search engines – Use your favorite search engine in the search box. Go to the site you want and right click on the search field site and click on the search field. You will then be prompted to “create search”.
• Improved content blocker – Just right click on a page and select “block content”. Any content not greyed out can be blocked with a click. Select “done” and see the page the way you want.
• Improved pop-up blocker – Opera added more intelligence to help weed out even more pop-ups. But since not all pop-ups are created equal, use the trash can to retrieve pop-ups you may want.
• Site specific preferences – For those of you who want to control settings for specific pages. Want to accept some cookies and deny others? How about setting your own style sheet to make the site more accessible? Just right click on the page and select “Site preferences”.
• Thumbnail preview – Opera conserves system resources and uses less memory than other browsers so it’s easy to have many tabs open at once. But just what tab had that video you wanted? Using the thumbnail feature, you can find out by resting the mouse on any tab.

My Experiences

I feel that Opera 9.0 renders web pages better than 8.50. The rendered pages looks almost like the web pages rendered by Firefox.

The Opera widgets helps to expand Opera’s functionalities.

Since this is a “technology preview” version, you can expect some bugs in it. After installing Opera 9.0 TP2, I found that I could not reply to my emails in Gmail. Also it closed unexpectedly several times for me.

Opera 9 is not a final product and may contain bugs. You should only use it for testing.

Download Opera 9 Technology Preview 2

You no longer have to load a post about 20 times to see whether another user has commented on it.

To use coComment you need an invite, which means that you can register only if someone gives you your 16-digit invite code.

But here’s a method to register coComment easily:

• Go to CoComment.com
• In the right hand side bottom menu, check out the option called Get Notified
• Enter Your Email Address and submit
• Check your Email in 2 minutes, click on the invite and register.

Though the notified button says “You don’t have an invitation code? If you like to be notified when coComment is freely available, please give us your email address and we’ll let you know:”, the invite is sent instantly to you, so there is absolutely no need for the Beg,
Borrow, Steal routine here. Anybody can register and after this.

All you have to do is simple, just register, and whatever browser you are using, click on the “coComment Bookmarklet” and keep it in the toolbar. Everytime you want to comment, type the comment in the textbox, click on the Small Button in the Toolbar and click submit.

Some people whine that their time is wasted by clicking on the button but absolutely NOT! Due to simplicity and speed of AJAX, all it takes is a second (or even less), before your username appears next to the “Submit” button giving you authorization to post. After you post, you can check out your user profile to see all the comments that you’ve made. Next to it, a number shows the number of replies to the blog and if you click on the link, coComment automatically shows you the most recent comments to the post and gives you an immediate link to reply to the post or view other articles from the same blog.

Currently coComment supports 6 Major Blogging Platforms:

• Blogger/Blogspot
• MSN Spaces
• MySpaces
• TypePad
• WordPress
• Xanga

For info goto Techbulletin

Thanks to Retro for writing about Cocoment.

There are other features too..

• Add contacts and invite your friends to chat from Quick Contacts
• See when your friends are online
• Set your status to busy, sleepy, angry or whatever. Even sneezy.
• Get Google Talk to make free voice calls too. It’s completely synchronized with Quick Contacts
• Go off the record when you’re chatting so nothing gets saved to anyone’s Gmail account

For more info click here

The interface is optimized for small screens, says Abhijit Kalamkar, one of Google’s Software Engineer, on his post.

You can read the whole post here

Google Talk if installed will integrate with Google Desktop and inform me whenever I receive a mail in real time.

Web Clips is a panel in GD2 which is very useful when you want to be informed about the latest updates in your favorite blogs.

Other GD2 panels which interest me are Scratch Pad, News and What’s Hot.

Ofcourse there are other panels like Photos, Quick View, Stocks and Weather.