Ethernet Jack Wireless Points

Wi-Fi Network News has a post about new access points that plug directly into ethernet jacks. These Aruba access points are powered over with Power over Ethernet and connect to a Aruba switch (I assume that the switch has built in Power over Ethernet.)

Also Aruba worked out a deal with Ortronics to make 802.11 access
points that are built into the ethernet jacks. This seems like a
great product to use when wiring a house. I would have loved to
use it when I wired our house. This would solve all of the
wireless dead spots in our house, since there would be more consistent
coverage

SoundBridge includes free 802.11

My last post
described the Linksys Music System. I really like how inexpensive it was.
Now it looks like Roku has brought down the price on their SoundBridge, by including free 802.11.

For
the people who have already bought one of One of the SoundBridges, they
can get a free Roku tested 802.11 card, $100 off another SoundBridge or
their High-Def media player, or send a $50 refund check.

I really like the features of this player. The one that really interests me is that it can work with the open source server software made by SlimDevices.

Linksys Music System

I am amazed about all of the cool network music players that are out there now. Now there are 802.11b media players that are available for less that $200.

The Linksys Wireless-B Music System is a 802.11b device that plays MP3 and WMA music files from a PC, as well as music streams from the Rhapsody Digital Music service. It looks like it is only compatible with Windows PCs. If it were compatible with Mac OS X, this would be a serious competitor to the Squeezebox, since it is so much cheaper.

BL-C10A Network Camera

I have been interested in buying a network camera for a while. I think that it would be great to have a camera that could be used for looking at who is at the front door, or to be used as a baby monitor.

Panasonic makes a BL-C10A which is a ethernet network camera. It has a 100-degree per seconds pan-and-tilt control that can be operated remotely. It looks like it has a web interface to see the pictures, as well as sending pictures via mail or ftp.

It looks like it supports different versions of Windows, I wonder if I could use it with Mac OS X, from the browser.

Spellchecking in Firefox

blogggity.com has a post on a spell checker for Firefox. It looks
like there is a sourceforge project where they ported the spell checker
from Mozilla into an extension for Firefox

IceRocket

IceRocket.com is a new search engine, that has some pretty cool features. The search results can contain a thumbnail preview of the home page of the resulting web site. Also it has a feature where you can email a query to them, and get an email response with the result.

I don't think that this will be serious competition for Google, but they do have some good features.

2Wire MediaPortal

2Wire is working on a pretty cool DVR. The MediaPortal is a PVR that can receive standard def and high def satellite signals, as well as ATSC and NTSC broadcasts. It will record HD broadcasts in 480p, 720p and 1080i. It will record up to 180 hour of standard def content, and up to 25 hours of high def content.

In addition to the DVR functionality, it will play, store and organize video, music and photos localy and from networked PCs.