I recently had a conversation with Carl Temme at Atrua Technologies, a company that builds hardware and software for fingerprint recognition applications (as well as touch controls, but that's another story). I've known Carl for a very long time; we first met when he was at Wi-Fi chip pioneer (and still leader) Atheros Communications, and then again during his tenure at MIMO pioneer AirGo Networks, which was acquired by Qualcomm.

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As you probably know, I remain a big fan of metro-scale Wi-Fi deployments, which are going to see great success despite the current slump. An announcement yesterday from key industry player Belair Networks reinforces the role of the metro mesh by bringing the mesh indoors via an indoor .11n mesh AP.

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Well, my excuse is that I was on the road last week at Network World's IT Roadmap event in San Francisco, and thus I completely forgot to mention that the third entry in my six-article series reporting on the detailed testing of WLAN management products that I've been waist-deep in for months now was published last Monday. This one covers discovery tools and connection managers, and has a few surprising results.

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This is actually a truly sad story. You'll see why shortly. But, for the moment, have a look at Dell's new Latitude ON feature. One might be tempted to call this (and I've seen a few other similar approaches) clever; after all, this capbility allows "near-instant access" to e-mail, the Internet, and other commonly-accessed stuff without actually booting up Windows Vista on a Latitude notebook.

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I've written about the problems resulting from the lack of quality in tech products before, and it appears that the situation isn't getting any better. A report (based on a survey) just published by the Pew Internet and American Life Project reveals that "48% of technology users need help from others with new devices and many tech users encounter problems with their internet connections, home computers or cell phones".

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I guess virtualization is all the rage this week. Now VMware, one of the leading firms in PC and server virtualization, has announced their VMware Mobile Virtualization Platform (MVP) that promises the ability to run multiple operating systems simultaneously on a single handset.

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Motorola this week announced the first elements of their Total Enterprise Access and Mobility (TEAM) integrated voice and data portfolio, those being management and applications servers for their (and, really, anyone else's) wireless-LAN system, some very nice Windows Mobile 6.1-based Wi-Fi handsets, and associated software.

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Meru Networks this week announced the concept (and their implementation) of virtual ports for wireless LANs. This is a little complex, but so is virtualization, which is the art of making something appear real when it is not. Most IT professionals are very familiar with virtualization as applied to virtual machines, taking advantage of hardware features that have been in x86 microprocessors for some time to create many virtual processors that behave the same as a real one.

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Some carriers still (and rather provincially, IMHO) view Wi-Fi as a threat. Verizon is clearly in this camp, with no real offering to speak of in terms of either services or devices. The upcoming BlackBerry Storm, arguably Verizon's answer to the iPhone? No Wi-Fi.

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The Web is buzzing this afternoon with news that WPA has been cracked. While we've known for some time that WPA and even WPA2 are susceptible to dictionary attacks (duh), this appears to be a new technique. While I'm going to wait to see a little more info on this crack before recommending that everyone panic, any news like this should be taken seriously until the whole story is known - and possibly after that as well.

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I must begin today with offering my congratulations to our soon-to-be President, Senator Barack Obama. As a reforming political junkie (I was active in local politics for many years, and last night had the privilege of being part of our local cable-access election coverage programming, and, yes, I even won an election once myself), I don't get nearly as excited about political goings-on as I used to. But the fact that we're very clearly moving beyond the traumas that have occupied so much of our time in recent years is indeed exciting.

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I know a lot of people have been more than skeptical of Verizon Wireless' claims, beginning in late 2007, that they would go open access, allowing any (technologically-compatible, obviously) device and any application on their network. Was this, as many assumed, just a ploy to influence the regulators, simply a cynical attempt to curry market favor supported by little or no real effort?

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I was in Toronto yesterday speaking at a forum organized by Bell Canada and Trellia Networks. My part of the program was providing an update on wireless in general, and I stressed (as I always do) that an emphasis on cool radio technology and cool devices is often misplaced in an enterprise setting. The core emphasis must instead be instead on management, especially out to the device.

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At least week's Mobile Internet World conference is Boston, Intel's Anand Chandrasekhar commented, in his keynote, that he didn't believe that the rapidly-emerging category of mobile PCs known as MIDs, netbooks, nettops, and whatever will replace the notebook PC.

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I recently had the opportunity to spend a few days with a Nokia E71 equipped with the latest release of DiVitas Networks' client software. DiVitas is best known for its approach to mobile-to-mobile convergence, allowing both voice and data connections to be handed off between Wi-Fi and cellular networks.

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Today is one of those days you'll always remember - and where you were when 802.11g, that mainstay of wireless LANs for, well, essentially forever, died. Yes, it happened today, as wireless-LAN chip leader Atheros Communications announced what I think will be the first of many replacements for 802.11g - and it is based on, no surprise so far, 802.11n. But many out there are unaware that all that MIMO stuff that makes .11n so cool (and more expensive than .11g) is, in fact, an optional element of the standard.

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I spoke at the Mobile Internet World conference in Boston yesterday, and decided to stay for the day. This event is in its second year, and I've re-joined the Advisory Board for it for next year. I love the concept - everything about mobile (and wireless) access to the Internet, from basic technologies to (ugh) mobile advertising. My session was on wireless LANs, but that's not what I want to talk about here.

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Just about every week now I'm getting a call from the PR rep for a new "mobile advertising" company wanting to see if I'd like to meet with their client. The answer is almost always no, because I think mobile advertising is fundamentally evil. I'd be happy to debate any of these companies on their value-add, or lack of it, and I'll report here if any of them ever take me up on my offer. But I can't say I wish them well.

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WLAN chipset newcomer Quantenna today announced the first 4x4 MIMO 802.11n chip family, which extends raw throughput to 600 Mbps. I had not expected to see such capability for another year or so, but, let's face it, more throughput is always a good thing and startups tend to provide the innovation that produces such great leaps forward. And note here we are talking about 4x4 radios, not 4x4 streams or some other metric of chip configuration or performance.

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I think, in hindsight, that I was wrong in my earlier forecast that the state of the US and global economy would not really affect wireless (although, to be fair, I was speaking about the energy crisis in that case and only indirectly about the overall economy). Looking back, it was clear that I (and even a lot of economists, so I don't feel too bad about this one) did not know the real extent of the problem.

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