Keep your Customers by Offering a Wi-Fi Hotspot

Giving your customers access to an Internet connection with unbelievable speed can increase the attractiveness of your business to your target audience.  For instance, someone wanting to stay at a Bed and Breakfast would much prefer to settle in at one advertising a WiFi connection than one without Internet access.

In today's world, people conduct business or simply stay in touch even while they're on vacation and without high-speed Internet access, they're doomed to miss out on important communications.

B&Bs aren't the only ones jumping onto the WiFi bandwagon.  Other small business owners are realizing the importance of catering to their customers' needs, such as the owners and operators of campgrounds, independent bookstores, apartment buildings, family-owned restaurants, and coffee houses.

It's not just travelers looking for a WiFi connecting spot.  Many local residents like to make sure a business carries this feature so that they can get out of the house and relax with access to a high speed Internet connection.

The cost of setting up your own WiFi hot spot is minimal, but it goes a long way in fostering the relationship you want to develop with your customers.  It's one must-have aspect many people check on before committing to visit a certain establishment.

If you want to stay competitive with other businesses in the community, set up your own WiFi hot spot and offer it s an added incentive for people to visit your place of business. 

The first thing you do is invest in some equipment, which will include a Broadband connection and credit card processing in case you want to offer your WiFi services at a fee, as some businesses do to deter squatters from taking up space all day in their place of business.

Buy some hotspot equipment for less than $300 and install it according to the directions.  You want to choose an option that delivers good technical support for your customers, in case you don't want to be responsible for troubleshooting yourself. 

Small business owners have the choice to buy and install the WiFi equipment and system themselves or hire someone to do it for them, such as a hotspot specialist or management service.  Regardless of which installation method you choose, make sure it's running effectively before you advertise it to the public.  Then sit back and watch as the loyalty to your business grow exponentially.

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5 Tips to Secure Your Wireless Router

Wi-Fi routers can give you enough headaches without worrying if someone is leeching off your connection. You pay for that bandwidth you receive every month, and with so many movies to stream, games to play, and work to remotely connect to, you don't want to share your Internet pipe.

Not only can having others access your router slow down your connection, but there is the possibility they might get you into some legal entanglements. An incident made news least year in which a man was falsely arrested in child pornography charges. The guilty party was actually a neighboring bandwidth parasite neighbor using the innocent man's connection to download the odious content.

While a false arrest is an extreme case, having unauthorized users can cause performance issues and pose a security risk. Here are a few ways to keep leeches off your router.

    Password encryption should be well-known to anyone with a wireless router. Never leave your router open without a password, and there are very few reasons for the average home and small business user to not encrypt wireless signal with WPA2 security.

    Turn off broadcasting is a feature available in just about all routers. For example, you name your network "Jane's Wi-Fi." You know what the wireless name is (also called SSID), so you can easily enter the SSID into any devices you want to access that network. Other people, however, do not need to know the SSID. To prevent outsiders from seeing your network's name turn off broadcasting in your router's settings. This capability is typically found within the wireless router settings page in the router's management software. In the below image the "Enable SSID Broadcast" option would be unchecked, so that your network's name does not show up in other people's wireless network scans.

Disable Guest networks because lots of router now ship with an extra wireless network configured for guests to access your router. A guest network lets guests share your Internet connection without giving them access to shared files and devices on your private network. Guest networking is often used by businesses to provide customers courtesy access, but I recommend home users turn it off. Guest network passwords are sometimes configured with no security, or default passwords that anyone can easily look up on Google if they know the kind of router you have. If you are friend enough that I give you permission to share my router, you are friend enough to know my passphrase key.

MAC Filtering is a feature also found in most routers. You add the MAC address (a unique identifier for that unit) of any device you want to give access to the router into the filtering list. Any device not on the list that tries to get on will be blocked from accessing.

Get a network monitoring app such as Fing which will scan your network and provide information that you can use to see if you have any unwanted users or devices on your network. Fing will perform a discovery on your network and report information such as hostnames, IP addresses, MAC addresses, and more. If there is any information you don't recognize, you can investigate and found out if someone or something is on your network that shouldn't be.

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Sri Lanka to be the first country to have universal internet access with Google Loon

Sri Lanka’s government and Google on Tuesday signed an agreement to cover the Island with 3G internet under ‘Google Loon project’.

Sri Lanka is the first country in the world to have Internet access covering the whole country with the government support, Google Vice President and Project Leader on GoogleX Project Loon, Mike Cassidy said.

Project Loon is the latest moonshot from Google[x]: balloon-powered Internet access.

It is a network of balloons traveling on the edge of space, designed to connect people in rural and remote areas, help fill in coverage gaps and bring people back online after disasters.

“With our system we use LTE which is a common protocol most of the telcos use around the world. So anyone with a smart phone would be able to get internet access. One of the key things we do is we partner with the local telcos. In New Zealand we partnered with Vodafone.” Cassidy said.

It is expected to place 13 balloons above Sri Lanka over the next few months (One balloon is expected to last over 100 days) and internet service providers will have to connect this network through these ‘floating towers’ which will ultimately reduce their transmission costs.

“Matara covered or Jaffna covered is now history. In a few months we will be able to say Sri Lanka covered,” addressing the signing ceremony Foreign, Telecommunications and IT Minister Mangala Samaraweera said.

“As a result of this agreement, the entire Sri Lankan island – every village from Dondra to Point Pedro – will be covered with affordable high speed internet using Google Loon’s balloon technology.” Samaraweera said.

The project is handled by ICTA with the collaboration of former Facebook executive Chamath Palihapitiya who now represents lotus flare, a leading mobile content provider.

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Apple iCar Looking Even More Likely

Rumours of the Apple iCar have been sparked once again as reports show that Apple has roped in the head of operations at Chrysler to work on an electric ‘iCar Project’ to rival Tesla.

Apple’s list of car specialists just keeps getting bigger with the tech giant hiring Doug Betts, ex-head of global operations at Fiat Chrysler automobiles.

Betts has now changed his job status to “operations-Apple”.

Although pretty cryptic, we can only guess that Betts has joined Apple to work on a car project.

Since February of this year, reports of several hundred employees working on an Apple-branded eclectic car shot into public attention.

Other employees of Apple’s new project include the head of research and development of Mercedes-Benz North American Lab.

It's no wonder everyone is flocking to Apple, as according to Bloomberg, Apple is offering $250,000 signing bonuses with gigantic salary hikes.

Unfortunately we still have no idea what the iCar will look like or any of its features as Apple is keeping things very much behind closed doors.

But with Betts in Apple’s corner and their specialist team getting bigger, hopefully it won't be long before we see the fruits of their labour.

Interested in the Apple Car? Read everything we know about the project here.

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Celebrate the Biggest Day for Positive Environmental Action!

World Environment Day (WED) is the United Nations’ principal vehicle for encouraging worldwide awareness and action for the environment. Over the years it has grown to be a broad, global platform for public outreach that is widely celebrated by stakeholders in over 100 countries. It also serves as the ‘people’s day’ for doing something positive for the environment, galvanizing individual actions into a collective power that generates an exponential positive impact on the planet.

The WED theme this year is "Seven Billion Dreams. One Planet. Consume with Care." The well-being of humanity, the environment, and the functioning of the economy, ultimately depend upon the responsible management of the planet’s natural resources. And yet, evidence is building that people are consuming far more natural resources than what the planet can sustainably provide.

Many of the Earth’s ecosystems are nearing critical tipping points of depletion or irreversible change, pushed by high population growth and economic development. By 2050, if current consumption and production patterns remain the same and with a rising population expected to reach 9.6 billion, we will need three planets to sustain our ways of living and consumption.

Consuming with care means living within planetary boundaries to ensure a healthy future where our dreams can be realized. Human prosperity need not cost the earth. Living sustainably is about doing more and better with less. It is about knowing that rising rates of natural resource use and the environmental impacts that occur are not a necessary by-product of economic growth.

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FREE Public WiFi

Benefits of a Hosted Wi-Fi Hotspot Portal

The overall benefit or goal of hosting a Wi-Fi hotspot at your location is being able to offer high-speed wireless Internet access for your customers. In addition to satisfying the needs of connectivity for your customers and visitors, you and your staff can take advantage of having a powerful media channel to reach out to your customers.

Other benefits of hosting a public Wi-Fi hotspot include:

• Attract people to your location
• Generate additional revenue
• Create a private network for your own use
• Attract People to Your Location

Hosting a Wi-Fi hotspot, in any type of business, should attract new people to your location and entice them to return and stay longer. For retail stores such as cafés and bookstores, this access helps fill empty seats. For businesses such as hotels, having Wi-Fi Internet access available for guests might be essential to prevent losing potential customers. If you are in a transportation business like buses, taxis, trains or other mobile operations having public WiFi available for you passengers is an important part of your business.

Customers find WiFi hotspots in many ways, including these:

• Online directories
• Software directories
• Display signs
• Wi-Fi finders
• Laptop/PDAs

The best way to attract users to your hotspot is to display signs advertising that you have a hotspot at your location. These signs could simply say "Wi-Fi Hotspot Here" or "Wireless Internet Access Available."

How do you control access and  brand your WiFi Hotspots?

Each WiFi Hotspot comes with a custom home page (portal) hosted in our datacenter - which all users see when they open their web browser, and a thank-you web page - which customers will see after they successfully log in.

How Does it work?

When a user first brings up their web browser they attempt to reach some particular web page, typically their home page. The user's computer issues a DNS ("Domain Name Service") request to lookup the IP address of the specified domain. The Access Controller "re-directs" the user's session and returns the IP address of the login page on the our Captured Portal / WiFi Access Portal server. No matter what domain a user tries to go to they will be returned to the captured portal access page until the agree to terms and setup there access account.

Why not sell advertising space on these pages to local or national businesses?

Lock Media provides end to end products and services to turn your facility, bus, train, or other fixed or mobil locations into a WiFi hotspot for public wireless internet access. We take care of the end-to-end process of creating, maintaining and profiting from your WiFi hotspot. Starting with a WiFi Gateway, we can support all WiFi-enabled Laptop and PDA users. Our WiFi Gateways come complete with user authentication, subscriber billing, credit card and Prepaid Card processing, portal access branding and more!

No technical experience is required - We manage it all for you!

You can add computers or laptops, Security appliances like firewalls and content filtering solutions, Kiosk Management software, WiFi Access Points, Bridges and Repeaters, High Gain Antennas, High Power laptop wireless kit  and other WiFi solutions to expand your offering

Public WiFi Access Portal - Branded to Your Company Image

FREE Public WiFi, also called Hotspots are a convenient, easy way for your customers to use broadband internet access that is branded and controlled by your companies own messaging and terms. Using wireless technology (Wi-Fi), your customers and guests can access the internet at any of your locations. WiFi hotspots are showing up in an increasing number of places such as cafés, hotels, restaurants and retail centers around the world. And now we even have solutions for offering In-Vehicle WiFi for buses, taxi cars, trains and any other situations that requires a mobile internet connection.

The User Experience

• Your customers will connect to the Wi-Fi signal, launch their web browser, and see your companies "Welcome Page" that asks them to log onto your Wi-Fi network by accepting the Terms of Service (TOS). This is your first opportunity to brand you WiFi Hotspot to your corporate image and offer additional information and specials offers.
• We then have the ability to asked them to watch a short Sponsored advertisement that you can control or message in return for receiving FREE Internet access.
• At the end of this introductory message, the users will be redirected to your "Landing Page", which will be their actual gateway to the Internet.
• After the session ends, they will be disconnected from the Wi-Fi and asked to log in and be directed to another messaging area in order to continue.

They are free to repeat this process as many times as they like.

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Google’s Project Ara store

Google’s Project Ara modular smartphone dream may not be a reality yet, but in preparation, it’s building an online marketplace for parts already. The company struck a deal with software solutions company Globant to work on a modular smartphone parts marketplace that’s as easy to use as the Google Play Store.

Ideally, the marketplace will serve as a one-stop shopping center for those brave, adventurous souls who want to build their own smartphones piece by piece. Presumably, companies – whether it’s small independents, or well-known manufacturers such as LG, Samsung, and Sony – will sell components and modules for Project Ara directly to the public, much like the Play Store works for apps.

In a statement, Globant said Google hopes Project Ara will create “a two-sided market between module developers and consumers, with module developers gaining direct access to consumers (versus having to market to original equipment manufacturers), and consumers benefiting from a more diverse ecosystem of functional hardware options for their device.”

Once all the different modules are on the site, users will be able to browse through components and decide which camera module, processor, storage option, and other features they want on their modular smartphone. Just like the Google Play Store, the Project Ara component marketplace will feature user reviews of different modules and recommendations from early adopters. It’s unclear whether the site will offer a how-to guide for users who want to build their own phones, or if all the components will be compatible with each other.

Obviously, it’s still early days for Project Ara and its marketplace will undoubtedly take clearer shape once Google announces it’s ready to bring modular phones to the world. Although the Project Ara team does have a working prototype running Android, it seems unlikely the project will be ready to go live at the second Project Ara Developers Conference in January. The team is expected to reveal a new Ara Module Developers Kit and an update on its progress at the event.

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What is Raspberry Pi ?

Some of you might have seen in the news this week that Raspberry Pi have released a new board: B+.  This is the third iteration of this single board computer in the two and a half years that they have been around.  Before I talk about their wonderful new product, first a quick history of where the Raspberry Pi came from.

Origins

The Raspberry Pi Foundation is a registered educational charity which is based in the UK.  The idea behind it all started back in 2006.  In the University of Cambridge’s Computer Laboratory, Eben Upton, Rob Mullins, Jack Lang and Alan Mycroft raised the concern of the lack of Computer Science students and the fact that the few who were applying had very little experience in things such as web design.  This might not sound too bad, but taking into consideration that the numbers of potential students applying to read Computer Science were dropping year on year paints a desolate future for programmers.  In my opinion, this is probably because kids these days have access to so many entertainment platforms such as games consoles, they no longer get bored and feel the need to entertain themselves through creative means.  In addition, computers have become easier to use so you no longer need to have a basic understanding in order to use them: you just turn them on and everything’s there for you already.  So these clever guys decided to put their heads together to address this problem.

Raspberry Pi Prototype. Photographer: Paul Downey, Source: Wikipedia

After a couple of years of tinkering around, the Raspberry Pi started to become a reality.  The aim of it was to allow people of all ages (children included) to be able to easily learn how to program.  Come 2008, mobile devices were becoming more prominent, thanks probably in part to the release of the iPhone in 2007.  Where mobile devices were more common place and the technologies used in them were coming on in leaps and bounds, the processors themselves became more affordable and powerful.  This was fantastic for the team behind the Raspberry Pi because it enabled them to source processers which would support multimedia, a necessary feature when getting kids interested.  In time, Eben, Rob, Jack and Alan teamed up with Pete Lomas (MD of hardware design and manufacture company Norcott Technologies) and David Braben (co-author of the seminal BBC Micro game Elite) to form the Raspberry Pi Foundation.  The idea that started all those years ago was starting to become a reality!

Initially, the Raspberry Pi Foundation expected to sell about 1,000 units which would be for the new undergraduates at Cambridge University.  However, three weeks before the launch, initial demand was for more than 200,000 units.  Although this sounds great, it actually posed a lot of problems as the Raspberry Pi Foundation had to dramatically scale up their operations.  This lead to them creating a partnership with element 14/Premier Farnell and RS Electronics.  This initial interest didn’t wane after launch and in the time since it first went on sale and now, they have sold over 3,000,000 units (that’s three million for anyone who can’t be bothered to count the noughts)!  Quite a dramatic increase from their initial 1,000 they thought they’d be producing.

Raspberry Pi Model A. Photographer: SparkFun Electronics, Source: Wikipedia

What Actually Is A Raspberry Pi?

So now you know where the Raspberry Pi came from, I’m sure you’re keen to know exactly what it is.  Well, to quote the Raspberry Pi website, it is a “low cost, credit-card sized computer that plugs into a computer monitor or TV, and uses a standard keyboard and mouse”.  The Raspberry Pi itself has General-purpose input/output (GIPO) pins, USB ports, and SD card slot.  It is aimed at people of all ages and facilitates the learning of programming languages such as Scratch and Python.  However, you can do other things other than programming: you can do everything that you could do from a standard desktop, from surfing the net, to writing a blog, to playing games, just to name a couple of uses.  All of this for less than £25!

There are a multitude of other uses for the Raspberry Pi as well.  The ethos of the Raspberry Pi Foundation encourages people, especially children to use it for digital maker projects.  These can range from photo booths, to motion detecting cat sensors which tweet a picture of the cat, to breaking a skydiving record, and everything in between!

Raspberry Pi B+

The Raspberry Pi B+ has built on its predecessor and is backwards compatible (although the B model is still available to buy so that manufacturers who use it currently do not have to change their designs).  The number of GPIO pins has increased from 26 to 40 which allows the addition of more sensors, connectors and expansion boards.  The first 26-pins on the B+ board are identical to the B board to facilitate backwards compatibility.  Like the B model, the Broadcom BCM2835 Chipset has remained, as has the 512MB of RAM and the Ethernet port.  However, the SD card slot has been replaced with a micro-SD slot which is positioned underneath the board.  Another addition to the board is a four-pole connector which compliments the existing HDMI connector allowing AV connections.  Furthermore, the number of USB ports have been doubled from two to four which allows you to attach more USB peripherals such as a 2.5” hard drive.  That’s not the only improvements that have been made however, the clever guys at Raspberry Pi have not only made all of these improvements but have also managed to reduce the power usage from 750MA down to 600mA.

Raspberry Pi B+

Conclusion

Raspberry Pi seems to have been the catalyst for a revolution in computer programming.  It has brought together people from all ages and all walks of life together in their love of this tiny computer.  I think that part of the success is down to the low price: it has allowed it to be rapidly take up as it is so affordable.  It’s lovely to see the next generation putting down their games consoles and actually creating things again.  A wonderful community has sprung up around the Raspberry Pi who will welcome anyone into the fold.  Not only are there multiple forums and blogs online about it, but there are also things like the Raspberry Jam.  This are events which are family centred, allowing the whole family to get into programming.  It has also made hacking more main stream.  I know that when I used to think of hackers, I always envisioned a geeky guy sat in his bedroom by himself.  Now anyone can get into it and share their work with others, just head over to the Raspberry Pi Foundation’s blog to get a glimpse into what some people have been up to.  So what are you waiting for?  Go and get your very own Raspberry Pi and join in the fun!

 Source: Wikipedia

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If You Can Make Solar Power Better, Google Will Give You $1 Million

“Smaller is baller,” “Min it to win it,” “Think shrink.”

Those are the puns Google is using to promote its new competition: $1 million to whomever can invent a working power inverter for solar and other forms of renewable energy that’s roughly as small as a laptop. The company has teamed up with the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers to launch the competition.

For background, a power inverter is a box that takes alternating current (AC) out of a direct current (DC) — such as a solar array — and applies that AC to run things in our homes, offices, and businesses. In order to use the DC power generated from wind turbines and solar panels, it must be converted into alternating current, via a power inverter.

“Much of our domestic world relies on AC,” the tech blog Venture beat explains. “And AC needs robust power distribution grids, huge power plants and either fossil fuel, nuclear power, or falling water.”

As they are currently, inverters for solar and wind are, according to Google, too big — “roughly the size of a picnic cooler,” the company said on its new website for the “Littlebox Challenge.” But if they can be shrunk down to the size of a tablet or laptop, the company says, it would “enable more solar-powered homes, more efficient distributed electrical grids, and could help bring electricity to the most remote parts of the planet.”

“There will be obstacles to overcome; like the conventional wisdom of engineering”, Google Green’s Eric Raymond said in a statement announcing the competition. “But whoever gets it done will help change the future of electricity.”

The challenge for engineers is to design and build a 1-kilowatt-minimum power inverter with a power density of at least 50 watts per cubic inch — not an insane amount of power, but enough to fuel some lights and a box fan. Applicants must register by September and submit their ideas by July 15 of next year. Eighteen finalists will be chosen, and a grand prize winner will be announced sometime in January 2016, the company said.

Google has long-promoted increased use of renewable energy, but its relationship with it has been a bit of a puzzle. The company’s Google Green subsidiary has invested millions in clean energy projects throughout the last decade, with an eventual goal to power its data centers with 100 percent renewable energy. The company claims that, with purchased offsets, its carbon footprint is zero, meaning it does not contribute to climate change. So far, Google has sunk more than $1 billion into wind and solar projects that in total generate more than 2 gigawatts of power.

At the same time, however, Google has hosted fundraisers to benefit one of the U.S. Senate’s most vehement climate deniers, and is a member of the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) — a corporate lobbyist group that actively works to thwart statewide renewable energy programs.

The two-way relationship has raised questions about the company’s intentions among some environmentalists, who are asking Google to cut ties with the anti-climate group. But one possible explanation for the company’s partnership with interests purportedly contrary to their own is that it’s necessary to help sway them to their side, as Tim Worstall in Forbes notes.

“Sadly, the way that the modern economy works is that government, at all levels, has a great deal of influence over how business works,” he writes. “So, it is necessary for a large business to flash the cash around to both sides, to join lobby groups from all sides of the political compass.”

 

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