What’s New in Wireless

Wi-Fi’s more ubiquitous than ever, and products that take advantage of the wireless technology appear every day. From cameras to cell phones, hotspot detectors to network security, these tools offer small businesses a range of wireless options.

Following up on its last set of 802.11g-equipped cameras, Nikon’s new set of slim CoolPix units includes more models with wireless. The coolest: CoolPix S6 uses wireless to transfer pictures to a PC, and can print directly to any Wi-Fi equipped printer that supports PictBridge (the company sells a wireless print adapter to help). The six-megapixel  and 3x-zoom S6 will be out in March at a price of $450. (Other gewgaws include editing images right in the camera and creating camera slideshows with musical accompaniment.) The larger P models that previously supported Wi-Fi get an additional  unit as well: the P3. Both models also come in non-wireless versions, but who’d want that?

If you own a phone that supports the Verizon Wireless 3G network called BroadbandAccess but don’t want to pay for it all over again just to get your laptop online, you may not have to. The carrier is now going to let owners of select phones &#151 the BlackBerry 7130e, LG’s V and VX8100, or Motorola’s RAZR V3c and E815 &#151 use them as modems. Hook the phone to the computer with a USB cable (not Bluetooth) and you’re ready to start surfing at 400 to 700 Kbps.

If you like soccer (sorry, football) and Wi-Fi, TRENDnet has a product for you. The limited edition $60 TEW-429UB is an 802.11g HotSpot Detector + USB Adapter, but with a black-and-white soccer ball motif. It’s in celebration of the 2006 FIFA World Cup coming to Germany in June. The hardware has an LCD screen for showing details about nearby Wi-Fi signals, including the SSID, encryption type, channel and more. It will start selling in April.

Corrent Corp. has released the SR25 security appliance, which incorporates firewall, VPN and Wi-Fi in one unit for use by small offices using Microsoft Internet Security & Acceleration (ISA) Server 2004 with little or no IT staff. The desktop unit can help protect up to 100 users, both wired and wireless, using WPA, WEP and IPsec -over-wireless encryption on the 802.11g side. It ships in March at a price of $1,900 to start.

Adapted from wi-fiplanet.com.