BART goes WiFi

Arguably the best train service in the nation, the Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) system has begun offering wireless services to all passengers. As of today, wireless devices can be used in the Embarcadero, Montgomery, Powell Street, and Civic Center stations in San Francisco, with service to be expanded to other city stations as well as the East Bay area.

Google to supply WiFi for Mountain View, CA

With hometown Internet star Google offering to blanket Mountain View with free wireless Internet access, the city is leaping ahead of neighbors in the race to be Silicon Valley's most tech-savvy town.City leaders unanimously accepted Google's offer Tuesday night to make Mountain View the first city in the Bay Area -- and possibly the country -- to get a full umbrella of free WiFi coverage. Google will install as many as 400 transmitters the size of a shoe box on streetlamps throughout the city.As part of a five-year contract starting by June, Google will test the system, which will link wireless-ready laptops to the Internet in most of the city. In a matter of months, surfing the Web with a wireless laptop should be possible from a sidewalk cafe on Castro Street. But a paddleboat at Shoreline Park might be problematic -- unless it's near a streetlamp.``It's going to make us one of the first, if not the first, to have citywide Internet . It's a pretty cool thing,'' Mayor Matt Neely said. ``We're thrilled for all our neighbor cities who get to follow our lead.''

Catching Mosquitos with WiFi

American Biophysics, a small private company based in North Kingstown, Rhode Isalnd, runs a healthy business selling the "Mosquito Magnet," a system to rid backyards of biting insects, according to its new CEO Devin Hosea.Simply described, the magnet emits a humanlike scent that includes carbon dioxide and moisture to attract bloodsucking insects. When the bugs flutter past, they're sucked into and suffocated by a vacuumlike device.Now AmBio, as the company is commonly called, is upping the ante with a "smart" mosquito net, or computerised defense system, to serve the corporate and public health sectors. By the first quarter of 2006, AmBio executives hope to have finalised sophisticated software to control a network of magnets -- forming a kind of wide-scale fence -- which will be able to communicate with a central network through wireless 802.11b technology.