How Can I Connect Two Windows 8 Machines with Wi-Fi Direct?

Want your Windows 8 devices to effortlessly talk to each other? Maybe you should try Wi-Fi Direct, a new wireless standard that does away with access points. Wi-Fi Direct is an emerging technology, and it's still a little buggy-so the experts at Stack Exchange are here to help.

I noticed I have a Wi-Fi Direct network adapter in Device Manager. I did a bit of research and it provides peer-to-peer communication between two devices using Wi-Fi. I researched how to transfer files between two Windows 8 laptops, but got no results. This article was the closest thing I could find, yet it doesn't totally explain how to send a file from computer A to computer B using Wi-Fi Direct. Why can't I find anything about file transfers, etc.? How can I use Wi-Fi Direct? Do I need third party software to send files?

Option 1

 The simplest way is to run a Wireless Hotspot (Personal Hotspot) on an Android, Blackberry, or iPhone, and connect both your computers to that same Wireless network.

Option 2

Another way is to simply run a network cable between the two. (No need for a cross-over cable on modern computers.)

Option 3

Ad-Hoc mode , which is simple to set up on Windows XP or Windows 7 but no other operating systems.

Now the "Fun" Part

Generally, there is no universal or fool-proof way to transfer files between PC's. Here are your options:

• Windows file sharing. Right click on a folder and choose "Share". Many, many issues.

• FTP Server and client

• Skype (If you're on the same LAN it won't use your internet bandwidth!)

• Web server program on the host PC. (Eg. http://www.rejetto.com/hfs/) Simply run it in the folder you want to copy files from.

How?

Wi-Fi Direct Is Still In Its Infancy

The technology of Wi-Fi Direct is still new and has not yet matured in Windows 8. If your network card is made by Intel and is compatible, you can install Intel My Wi-Fi Dashboard to enable WiFi-Direct. This should (theoretically) already have been installed on your computer together with the network driver. If it's not available on your computer, I advise you to download from Intel and install the full driver package for your network card. If still unavailable, you can try to download the stand-alone package from Intel at Intel My WiFi Dashboard Software for Windows 8.

You probably just want to transfer data or files between the two PC's, right? Believe it or not, the sad truth is that the most fool-proof way is to use a flash disc, removable harddrive, or a service such as Skype, Dropbox, or email, for which you don't need any connection other than an internet conneciton. The benefits to a direct Wi-Fi connection is, of course, that it won't eat your bandwidth. (But that's different from the Wi-Fi Direct protocol!)

The simplest way is to run a Wireless Hotspot (Personal Hotspot) on an Android, Blackberry, or iPhone, and connect both your computers to that same Wireless network.

Another way is to simply run a network cable between the two. (No need for a cross-over cable on modern computers.)

Ad-Hoc mode , which is simple to set up on Windows XP or Windows 7 but no other operating systems.

Generally, there is no universal or fool-proof way to transfer files between PC's. Here are your options:

Each computer on a network has it's own "internet phone number" called an IP address. From Windows you can usually find other computers without knowing these addresses by simply browsing the "Network Neighborhood" or "Homegroup." Sometimes this freezes up or doesn't work, so on Windows, plan B is generally to click the start menu, and then the IP-address-of-other-pc, for example: 192.168.1.100. This will either open up the shared folders on that PC or it will prompt you for a username and password for an account on that PC. Google for "Find my LAN IP address."

LAN is important here, as it's your local address, not your internet address which the internet sees! Think of an internal extension vs. your direct (inward) dial (or DID) phone number. So technically you have two IP addresses: your LAN IP address and your internet IP address. If you're using FTP or a web server, you generally enter the IP address of the host (server) PC in your FTP client or web browser, to access the files hosted there.

Wi-Fi direct is a special protocol which probably won't see PC support due to innumerable technicalities. You'll be lucky if you get it to work between two devices from different vendors. And yes, it will take special software and some more years to mature. Microsoft obviously included it to compete with Samsung on mobile devices. But it really is a pointless protocol IMHO.

The Zune Tribute Desktop

Marios loves the Zune Music software about as much as we do, so he decided to build this custom desktop as a tribute. Not only does it have the same good looks, it also helps him get things done. Here's how he set it up.

Marios' submitted his desktop to our Desktop Showcase, which is what you should do if you want to see it featured here. All you have to do is post a screenshot to your Kinja blog (the one that came with your commenter account), and include links to the wallpaper, widgets, skins, and tools you used to customize it.

His desktop isn't just a tribute to the Zune software (which Marios notes is still his favorite music player), but also to his favorite band, Queens of the Stone Age. If you want the same look, regardless of who your favorite band is, here's what you'll need to put it all together:

• The wallpaper is a screenshot of the Zune Music software playing while Queens of the Stone Age was playing. You could reproduce this with any band pretty easily, as long as you have the software installed, which you can get here.
• The Rainmeter system configuration and monitoring utility for Windows
• The Elementary theme for Rainmeter to create the time and date display in the center
• Rocketdock for the application launcher on the left side of the screen (set to 60% opacity)
• The Windows Phone icon pack for Rocketdock to replace the default dock icons
• The All in One Player skin for Rainmeter to display the actual Now Playing in the bottom left corner of the screen

Marios notes that he has a number of other wallpapers that shuffle over the course of the day, rotating out every few minutes. He even has a Flickr gallery of them if you're interested.

This setup is pretty straight forward, but we like the way he incorporated the Zune player's visual style into the whole thing. If you have any questions, want to give Marios a thumbs up, or just want to let him know you like the desktop, head over to his Kinja blog to say hello.

Do you have a good-looking, functional desktop of your own to show off? Share it with us! Post it to your personal Kinja blog using the tag desktop showcase or add it to ourLifehacker Desktop Show and Tell Flickr pool. Screenshots must be at least at least 640x360 and please include information about what you used, links to your wallpaper, skins, and themes, and any other relevant details. If your awesome desktop catches our eye, you might get featured!

How to Install SteamOS on Your Computer

SteamOS has finally dropped in all its beta glory. If you were one of the lucky 300 people who got some hardware to play with, you're all set. The rest of us, however, have to install it on our own machines. Here's how to do that.

Before we begin, there are some very important caveats:

• This will wipe your machine. Due to the way Valve has distributed this image, you cannot partition a hard drive or dual boot it with your existing set up. This is a recovery image and your partition table will be wiped clean if you attempt to install it on the same hard drive. If you want to play around with it in a non-destructive manner, you can try it in a virtual machine. Once you've got SteamOS installed, you can create a new Windows partition, but this will wipe your existing setup.
• This may wipe your secondary hard drives, too. The basic method is not optimized for installing on systems with multiple drives. Depending on how your boot tables are set up, you might inadvertently lose data on your other drives as well. Be safe and remove all hard drives except the one you want to install SteamOS on.
• You'll need an NVIDIA graphics card. Sorry AMD users. Support is reportedly coming in the future, but for now if you don't have an NVIDIA graphics card, you'll have to sit this one out.

What You'll Need

Before you get started, here's what you'll need to download and/or collect:

• The SteamOS Installer (Here's an unofficial torrent)
• A 4GB or larger USB stick
• A Motherboard with UEFI support

There are two main ways to install SteamOS and which method you use will determine which download you need. The easiest method involves flashing a recovery disc image and that download is about 2.4GB (called "SYSRESTORE.zip" at the link above). The slightly more complicated method which has all the fun expert buttons is about 960MB and labeled "SteamOSInstaller.zip".

Method #1: The Easy Way

The simplest method to get SteamOS up and running is to install the recovery image. Again, as a reminder, this method will completely erase your entire hard drive regardless of partitioning. As long as you're prepared for that, here's what to d

1. Format the USB stick to FAT32. Name it "SYSRESTORE".
2. Unzip SYSRESTORE.zip and place its contents on the USB drive.
3. Boot your machine from the USB stick.
4. While booting, select the UEFI entry from the boot menu.
5. Select "Restore Entire Disk."

This method will result in a complete, ready-to-use SteamOS installation being created on your machine. If you want to dual boot SteamOS with a Windows installation, you can set that up now. While this is based on Debian, our guide to dual booting Windows and Ubuntu can at least help point you in the right direction.

Method #2: The Advanced, Flexible Way

If you're feeling more adventurous (or want to minimize how much you have to download directly from Steam), you can use the secondary method. There are two primary differences between this method and the previous one. For starters, the download is significantly smaller. Part of the reason for this is because once you install the OS, you still need to download Steam. What you're installing is mostly just a customized version of Debian.

More importantly, though, this method has an Expert Install mode. You can use this method to tweak a few settings. That being said, if you're not extremely experienced with Linux distributions and installs, you probably shouldn't mess with this.

To install SteamOS via this method, follow these steps:

1. Unzip the smaller, SteamOSInstaller.zip file to your USB stick.
2. Boot your machine from the USB stick.
3. Select the UEFI entry from the boot menu.
4. Select "Automated Install."
5. Once the install is finished, boot into the OS. You will be faced with a login screen. There is a default account with both the username and password are "steam". Log in with these credentials.
6. Double-click the Steam icon on the desktop to download and install Steam.
7. After this, you can log in to SteamOS via the login menu you used in step 5 (select "SteamOS" via the dropdown box) with the same credentials.

If you'd like to maintain the Debian installation and log in to SteamOS only when you need it, you can simply end here. However, if you'd like to commit all the way, follow Valve's instructions here from step 8 in the final section onward to make the final customization tweaks so that the partition is 100% Steam.

Method #2.5: A Note on Virtualization

Okay, so you've gotten this far and you're still not sure you want to take the plunge. That's fair. SteamOS is still a beta and it requires a fairly big commitment. If you'd still like to give it a shot, you can install SteamOS in VirtualBox. If you don't already have VirtualBox setup, our guide here will get you started.

The process for creating a virtualized SteamOS machine is a bit more complicated than the installs above, but this guide can walk you through the process fairly well. It builds on method #2 above, though instead of a USB installation, you'll create an ISO out of the installer. Keep in mind, though, that running SteamOS inside a virtual machine will probably result in some pretty poor performance and almost certainly won't be good for real gaming. This method is probably best for the idly curious who would just like to fiddle (and aren't content to play around with Big Picture and call it good).

Your LG SmartTV Is Spying On You : Logs Whatever You Watch Including Content From USB Drives To Remote Server

Your privacy is at great risk in this era of Internet of things, after revelation of spying backdoor's inInternet routers and Chinese Electric Goods we now have another revelation of spying by LG SmartTV's. Findings made by developer @DoctorBeet revealed how LG is spying on users watching habits including logging of file-names watched by users from there external USB disk drivers as shown below to remote servers. The communication is clearly sending out "unique device ID" (which could be traced back to you) along with the information about what is being watched and too completely unencrypted.

Everything you need to know about Apple's new Mac Pro

Hell finally froze over yesterday and Apple  announced a new Mac Pro at WWDC. At first glance, the new machine was as mysterious as it was terrifying to me and many other creative pros who have been waiting for ages for this thing to drop. But now that Apple has a full site page for the new machine and I've gotten some info from people familiar with its internals and with OS X 10.9, the Mac Pro has become less of a mystery.
But that's also what's freaking us out.

The design
At 16.8cm × 21.1cm for its cylindrical machined aluminum case, the new Mac Pro is tiny, and no other workstation-class Xeon desktop with a discrete workstation GPU -- or two, in this case -- looks anything like it. You get the feeling that the designers sat around coming up with ideas for the new Mac Pro and said, "if Darth Vader edited video, what would his computer look like?" Well... it would probably look like this.

Ars Technica

The inside is a truly amazing bit of engineering, organised in a tube-like shape with a triangular arrangement of the motherboard elements along the exterior walls of the "thermal core," a unibody-like heatsink that draws heat away from the GPU, CPU, and memory.

Even more unusually, the machine has only one (1) fan that cools everything, wind-tunnel style.

So the Mac Pro will, I suspect, be a ridiculously quiet workstation as well. This is Apple engineering at its best, and I won't have any concerns about using this for long sessions of V-Ray rendering or ZBrush sculpting. Detractors will say it's going to overheat if you do anything serious, but Apple knows these things need to run around the clock for days on end. It didn't put a dual workstation GPU in there and expect people not to use it extensively. More about that further on.

The new Mac Pro makes the previous generation look (thankfully) as outdated as it should, given that the machine it's replacing uses technology from 2010. All the expected modern technologies are here, plus some that will put the new machine ahead of many current competing workstations: dual Gigabit Ethernet, HDMI 1.4, Thunderbolt 2.0 with DisplayPort 1.2 support for up to three 4K displays, 802.11ac wireless, Bluetooth 4.0, 1,866MHz ECC RAM, PCIe-based flash storage, and dual AMD FirePro GPUs with up to 6GB of VRAM. The addition of Wi-Fi as standard is a nice addition, but it's kind of a gimmick considering the machine's lack of upgradeability.

Judging by the animation on Apple's site, the RAM also appears to be easily user-replaceable. Additionally, Apple opted to build in PCIe-based flash storage, and it appears to be on a daughter card.

Performance-wise, the move to PCIe-based internal storage as standard was really smart. Since SATA3 tops out at 600MBps, it's soon going to be the weakest link as the next generation of SSDs start to push beyond that range. Considering that Apple uses fast Samsung SSDs as standard in its laptops, I'm sure the company will slap a very fast SSD in the new Mac Pro. Expect companies like OWC to make Mac Pro-specific flash storage upgrades after the machine launches.

As far as the other technologies go, it's clear that Apple is pulling out all the stops to make the Mac Pro a serious professional's tool that won't get dated any time soon. Which is good, because the stuff inside it better last...

A truly epic lack of expandability
Ask any Mac Pro users where "small size" sits on their list of workstation needs and they will tell you it's down at the bottom, squarely between "should make my bed in the morning" and "covered in fur". The added desktop space will be nice to make room for those three shiny 4K displays that we can apparently afford, but "tiny" isn't on my list of wants for a workstation. Fortunately for me, "rack-mountable" isn't on there either, since cylindrical isn't the most server-ready format.

But the small size creates a potential problem. Aside from the regressive lack of any easily accessible ports on the front of the machine, the new Mac Pro has some serious expandability issues.

Internal hard drives
I'm personally on the fence about this one and see it as more of a nuisance than a showstopper. Most professional video people use external RAID arrays for their video work, and the new Mac Pro's six Thunderbolt 2 ports will provide more than enough expandability to accommodate them.

But I don't do much video work, and the four internal drive bays of the existing Mac Pro enclosure became a comfy standard for me and my work. Anything more seems like too many -- but zero extra drive bays is, to put it mildly, too few. Now I will be forced to replace my existing eSATA RAID enclosure since eSATA/Thunderbolt adapters are stupidly expensive and there are no PCI slots in the machine to accommodate an eSATA adapter card. Considering the still-high price of external Thunderbolt enclosures, the price of the Mac Pro better be reasonable, because it's clear that many of us will be forced to take this route as well.

I think that Apple is doing two things with this approach to expandability: one, it hopes to light a fire under third-party Thunderbolt supporters the way it did with USB and the iMac. Two, it wants to drive a wedge between professional video on the Mac (still the standard, regardless of how many times you troll me) and video editing on the PC. Many tools that were once PCI-only have been moved to an external Thunderbolt enclosure, much like how audio cards for FireWire and USB became the norm in mobile music. I'm sure that Apple's move with the Mac Pro was meant to help accelerate that trend so that the Mac Pro and MacBook Pro can share formerly PCI-based video hardware. For many devices, the 20Gbps bandwidth of Thunderbolt 2 will be fine for this purpose, but those will also cost more than a vanilla PCI card.

It seems that the price of the new Mac Pro keeps rising.

Four USB 3.0 ports
This is one of the worst culprits in the new Mac Pro's lack of expandability. It's not even reasonable to have less than six USB ports on a workstation. With such a limited amount of USB connections and internal expandability, the minimal profile of Apple's new Mac Pro will be predictably mired by a clumsy caboose of USB hubs and Thunderbolt devices.

No optical drive
Over a year ago, when I first considered the prospect of a tower without an optical disk, it seemed premature. I was doing periodical archiving of my portfolio to a Blu-ray drive that was also supported fine by Adobe Encore. I'd occasionally use the Superdrive to reinstall software from DVD. But today, even my MacBook Pro has a hard drive caddy where the internal Superdrive used to be. All my software archives are either on a hard disk or in the cloud. Autodesk doesn't send my Maya updates on DVD anymore since it's all done via Web, and if my machine's in need of an OS reinstall, Apple's OS even boots from the cloud or a USB stick.

Sure, the need to make a DVD backup for a client may come up, but I can just use my gaming rig's Blu-ray/DVD burner or use my girlfriend's external USB Superdrive (which she uses with her MacBook Air) on the Mac Pro. Well, hopefully -- rather stupidly, the drive doesn't work with my MacBook Pro. Apple, please unlock that thing, because the new Mac Pro is getting expensive enough as it is.

That GPU
So with the new Mac Pro, graphics pros get a mixed blessing: two workstation-class AMD FirePro cards with a boatload of memory and compute power... flattened like a pancake and screwed onto two sides of the Mac Pro's thermal core.

The good news is that the GPU in the new Mac Pro is the most progressive that Apple has ever been with a high-end video card -- it's obviously meant for professionals, unlike the 1GB reference designs that shipped with previous Mac Pros. And two of these GPUs are standard in the new machine. While there are no details on the base options, the maxed-out option is based on a dual FirePro W9000 with 6GB of VRAM apiece.

I don't care much that it's a FirePro since that -- with the exception of its ECC RAM -- is just a marketing term for the drivers and support you get with a professional GPU. If you've read any of my reviews of the Quadro for Mac or the HP Z820, I mention that the lack of a workstation card in current Macs is a non-issue since you already get support for professional applications with Geforce and Radeon GPUs in OS X, and developers like Autodesk work to certify their applications with those gaming cards in OS X. The flip side of the new FirePro card is that if you want to use the Mac Pro for the occasional game, you'll get full support and bug fixes for those too. Nothing really changes from an end-user perspective except the cooler name and the increase in VRAM.

The other potentially good side of the "workstation GPU" label of the FirePro is that Apple doesn't need to charge you the inflated price for two actual FirePro cards. Apple has obviously made an arrangement to buy the hardware for less than you would personally pay an OEM for two cards (which might tell us why two Nvidia GPUs aren't in there, considering how Nvidia let AMD take the PS4 and XBox One because the margins offered by Sony and Microsoft were too low to warrant the time and manufacturing effort). Since AMD and Apple aren't writing a completely separate driver for FirePros vs. Radeons, and because they don't need to build an entirely separate support network for the FirePro, there's no reason why these pro GPUs will include the huge markup that gets foisted on retail/OEM FirePro users. So you are, in theory, getting the best of both worlds: two beefy workstation GPUs, full support with professional applications, and a lower price tag.

As for what to expect performance-wise, it's hard to say since the last iteration of Radeon 7950 for Macs was a huge letdown for me. In my experience with apps like Maya and Cinema 4D, it came nowhere near the performance with pro apps that you see in Linux (fastest) or Windows (fast) with the same 7950. A dual 6GB GPU with OpenGL 4.1 support (coming in OS X 10.9) would do much to address my concerns about long-term shelf life for 3D on the new Mac Pro, but Apple and AMD need to address OS X's driver performance shortcomings, because they are significant. Once the hard work of getting tessellation and other OpenGL 4.1 features is done, I really hope they start honing GL speeds in OS X because the last thing I want is a slow video card with lots of video RAM and a fancy name -- for four years.

But many 3D users aren't even going to get to the point of using the new Mac Pro. The fact that the GPU is not user-replaceable remains a huge issue for people like me, and this is going to do a lot to send potential Mac Pro 3D users to Windows PCs. If there are only good/better/best purchase options, with the GPU and the CPU speeds linked for build options on the Mac store, which would further limit our options. I really hope there's some freedom on the configuration end, since I usually buy a top-end GPU but the mid-speed Xeon.

Crossfire for OS X
I spoke with one developer who has some knowledge of how dual-GPU support works for the Darth Pro, and it seems that OpenGL apps can leverage both GPUs with some extra work by the developers. That means that we could see Crossfire-like support for professional 3D applications in OS X (OpenCL compute apps don't need to be modified to use both GPUs' stream processors).

This is something that Windows professional OpenGL apps don't get in Crossfire/SLI setups, and the second GPU of SLI and dual-GPU cards goes unused in pro apps under Windows and Linux. With dual GPUs as a standard feature and the available APIs, this could persuade developers to do the extra work. But, being a long-time Maya beta tester, I know how companies like Autodesk work: they only fork their very cross-platform code when they have to, so there's little chance of this happening with apps like Maya or AutoCAD.

No Nvidia option?
The other thing that jumps out about the new Mac Pro is that Nvidia is completely AWOL and won't have any competing GPU config. This puts a lot of video and 3D professionals in a bad spot because many need CUDA support.

Apple may be trying to not-so-delicately nudge everyone to move their code from CUDA to OpenCL, but I've seen a first-hand failure of AMD's OpenCL support with V-Ray RT for Maya. Chaos Group built V-Ray RT on OpenCL, but after extensive work trying to get the GPU variant of its RT render engine running on AMD hardware and an effort by yours truly to light a fire under Apple and AMD, Chaos Group gave up and ported it to CUDA instead. So V-Ray RT's GPU mode only works with OpenCL and CUDA -- on Nvidia hardware.

If Apple wants OpenCL and AMD to be the answer to CUDA, the support needs to be there so this kind of thing doesn't happen again. As it is, I now have zero options for V-Ray RT GPU on the 2013 Mac Pro since the software doesn't work on AMD cards, and no Quadro/Geforce card is available for the machine. I'm sure some company will eventually build a Thunderbolt 2 Nvidia GPU-in-a-box for people who need CUDA, but to quote our own Peter Bright, "Thunderbolt 2 is equivalent to 2.5 lanes of PCIe 3 or 5 lanes of PCIe 2," so it's hard to say what kind of a performance hit that will incur for compute tasks with an external GPU.

"Time will tell" seems to be the running theme with the new Mac Pro design. With such a contentious redesign, it's hard to say if this is going to be Apple's Xeon version of the Cube or a truly revolutionary approach to workstation hardware. I'll be writing a full review and pulling no punches, so expect to see that around September or October, when the Ivy Bridge Xeon E5 Mac Pro ships -- presumably in a coffee grinder box.

Google quietly, selectively builds speedy Internet access

When Google announced plans in 2010 to jump into the broadband business, the companyreceived more than 1000 applications from communities hoping to be selected for Google Fiber, which promised gigabit-speed Internet at low prices or even free Internet for seven years if you chose a slower speed.

As we head into 2014, Google has delivered super-fast Internet to exactly one place,greater Kansas City; it's just now rolling out the service to Provo, Utah—where it purchased an existing municipal network for $1; and has announced plans for Austin, Texas, in 2014.

After that, who knows? Google has not released any further scheduling information.

But if you're Verizon, Comcast, or AT&T, you might be breathing a little easier these days, knowing that Google apparently is not planning to buy up all that unused dark fiber and compete in the residential broadband market on a nationwide scale—at least for now.

Why enter networking?

There has always been speculation about Google's motives, and, Google being Google, answers have been hard to come by. Is this just an experiment? Another attention-grabbing sideshow, like those mysterious barges floating in San Francisco Bay and Portland, Maine? Is Google trying to compete head-to-head against the incumbents? Or is Google trying to nudge the incumbents to step up their broadband game by introducing the specter of competition? After all, faster Internet means Google can deliver more ads to more end users, which is how the company makes its money.

As Google spokesperson Jenna Wandres puts it: "The simple answer to why' is this: it's for Google users. They keep telling us that they're tired of waiting for incredibly slow upload and download speeds that often take hours to just transfer an album of photos from one location to another."

According to Wandres, it's all about speed. She pointed out that Google developed the Chrome browser to make the Internet experience faster, but it can only be as fast as the Internet connections and the hardware and networks that support that infrastructure. So now, they're installing Google fiber, to make it faster.

"For the next big leap," says Wandres, "Gigabit speeds will bring new apps and talented developers to the table, who can and will take advantage of these remarkable speeds." She explains that organizations such as Kansas City Startup Village (KCSV)—an ecosystem of grassroots individuals working together to create an entrepreneur community—thrive in this type of environment; that is, an area where high-speed Internet allows developers to collaborate and share ideas.

Competition is good news

According to Forrester analyst Dan Bieler, Google Fiber "is good news because competition increases the pressure on carriers and cable providers to bring true broadband service to more households and businesses, if they want to compete effectively with Google. In my view, it is unlikely that Google fiber will target rural areas, but it's clearly an interesting option for Google to target higher-income urban areas as well as central business districts.''

"Competition is the main driver for improved services, and this will continue to be the case," adds Ian Keene, research vice president at Gartner. "But Google has discovered that rolling out its services is taking longer than they first thought. If they carry on at this pace, they will not be a threat beyond a handful of cities; not for the foreseeable future, anyway. However, where they are active, we will and have seen the competition fight back with improved subscriber offers."

For example, after Google announced plans to deliver gigabit Internet to Austin, AT&T announced plans to up its game in Austin. AT&T has promised to provide ultra high-speed gigabit Internet (called GigaPower) to its Austin users in December, with initial symmetrical speeds up to 300Mbps and an upgrade to the 1Gbps by mid-2014 (at no extra cost, of course).

But it's still too early to tell whether Google's efforts will prove to be economically feasible, or whether Google will continue to expand beyond the three locations already identified. "Google, like many others, has learned that the enormity of the costs involved in building broadband infrastructure creates a dilemma," says telecom analyst Craig Moffett. "It is extraordinarily difficult to earn a reasonable return on building an infrastructure to compete with cable. Verizon tried with Verizon FiOS and, after reaching only 14 percent of the country, eventually conceded that further expansion was just not economically justified."

Moffett explains that at least Google is giving it the old college try; but the markets they have chosen, so far, are all unique cases. "For example," he says, "In Provo, they're building on a network that was already there. In Austin, we'll get a better sense of what the economics might actually look like. At this point, I think it is reasonable to conclude that fiber-to-the-home deployments like these will remain the exception rather than the rule."

How it works

With more than 1100 applicants, Google could choose the communities that offered the most advantageous terms and conditions. These installations require access to utility poles, roads, and even substations in order to lay their fiber networks, so applicants had to be willing to expedite that process.  

In the case of Kansas City, Google only extends fiber to neighborhoods with a certain number of preregistered customers.

According to Wandres, locations must be fiber friendly, technological leaders, and residents must show a genuine willingness to work with Google; that is, to be flexible, move quickly, and cut through the red tape.

"It's a long process and requires a lot of work," Wandres says. "There must be a strong demand for fiber among the user base (for those who are excited about a technological hub) and for entrepreneurs who can advance the technology. In Kansas City, the Mayors' Bi-state Innovation Team came up with a playbook for how Kansas City could benefit from fiber. And there's another group now tasked with following through on those plans.''

In Kansas City, subscribers can get gigabit Internet for $70 per month or the gigabit service plus TV (200 channels, HD included) bundle for $120 a month. Both of these options provide free installation plus all the equipment necessary to enable the service to function, such as the network gear, the storage device, and the TV box. Additional benefits include 1TB (terabyte) of storage across Gmail, the drive, and Google+ photos and, for the bundle, one Nexus 7 tablet.

Kansas City residents who want Internet access, but may not classify themselves as power users, can get Google's free Internet service, which runs at 5Mbps. The free service does require a one-time installation fee of $300 (or $25 a month for 12 months), then the service is free for at least seven years.

"At the end of seven years, we will begin charging the market price for comparable speeds—which should be $0, as long as Internet speeds increase as much as we hope over the next few years," Wandres adds. "In other words, we think that in seven years, Internet speeds should be ubiquitously faster in America and, by that point, nobody should have to pay for a connection speed that is 5Mbps download/1Mbps upload."  

Brittain Kova, co-leader and communications pilot at KCSV says, "With regards to speed, nobody has been able to break the gig. We've tried. Downloading tons of files while gaming and running multiple videos simultaneously and we still barely see a dent. What companies are experiencing is an extreme amount of time savings; for example, www.sportsphotos.com, a company that moved to the KCSV from Springfield, Missouri, is now able to upload thousands of high resolution photos in a matter of hours; a project that in the past, took days, if not weeks to accomplish."

"In addition," says Kova, "Google fiber has been the catalyst that's brought the community together in ways that may have never happened, or certainly would have taken years to see the outcomes. It's bringing like-minded people who want to innovate and collaborate, who know we (KC) have a short window of time to do something big, and we're really leveraging this opportunity to do great things for the community as a whole. From households to startups, corporate and civic, we're all working together for the first time in years and it's exciting."

Based on the Google fiber city map, the Kansas City project is still in progress. Thirteen more cities in Kansas and six additional cities in Missouri are scheduled next for this service.

Next up, Provo, Utah

The situation in Provo is somewhat different, because Google purchased the existing iProvo city network for $1. So, Google didn't have to start from scratch, it just needed to upgrade the existing network, which was built in 2006.

In a recent blog post, Provo Mayor John Curtis said, "Unfortunately, while we've had the desire, we haven't had the technical know-how to operate a viable high-speed fiber optic network for Provo residents. So, I started looking for a private buyer for the iProvo network. We issued a Request for Qualifications and a Request for Proposal and even hired a private consultant to guide our efforts. [And now] under the agreement, Google Fiber is committed to helping Provo realize the original vision."

Provo's customer plan; that is, the monthly price for gigabit Internet or the Internet/TV bundle is the same as Kansas City ($70 or $120, respectively) except that everyone in Provo pays the installation fee of $30, not just the users who sign up for the free 5Mbps/1Mbps service. And, like Kansas, the free service is only free for seven years (or longer, based on the market price for comparable speeds after seven years).

How to live large on every battery charge

While it's easier to find outlets for charging your mobile device in vehicles and public places these days, there will always be the occasion when you need to nurse the battery in your laptop, smartphone, or tablet because you can’t charge it. Whether you forgot bring your charger, are stuck in the woods, or you simply want to revel in the un-tethered-ness of it all, here are some tricks for achieving longer run time.

Increase the run time on any device

Fact: your battery has a set amount of juice in it, and there's not a darn thing you can do to increase it (safely anyway). Ask Boeing, or Tesla CEO Elon Musk.

So if electrical capacity is finite, it's pretty obvious you'll need to reduce consumption to make it last longer. The only way to do that is to turn things down or off, just as you do with the lighting and appliances in your house. You knew that, but maybe you didn't know just how much stuff there is to turn down or off.

One of the disadvantages of a sealed phone, like the HTC One and the Apple iPhone, is that you can't swap out an expired battery for a fresh one.

The most obvious component that you can turn down, and leave off when not in use, is the display. Reduce the brightness as far as you can, and turn it off whenever you don't need it. Reduce the automatic shutoff setting. The more aggressive you are the more power you'll save. If you're in dire straits, manually shut it off as quickly and as often as possible.

The GPS circuitry and the real-time navigation software that use it are the most notorious power sucks in mobile devices such as smartphones. They stress not only the radio, but the CPU with graphics. If you're low on juice, memorize the general location and route, and then wait until you're close before you go crazy with the GPS app. Stick with just the voice cues if you can.

Bluetooth, cellular, NFC (near-field communication), and Wi-Fi radios are also major power drains. Turning these off when you don't need them can double your battery life. Airplane mode, which turns them all off, is intended to save your battery, which drains very quickly when your phone constantly is searching for signals that are non-existent at 35,000 feet. Note: if you have a phone that supports Wi-Fi calling (T-Mobile/Windows Phone 8), using the feature will increase battery run times, because the Wi-Fi radio uses less current.

Finally, while multitasking makes switching between apps quicker, it also uses more power. Even if an application isn't front and center, it still has to be serviced by the operating system, and it might be performing tasks in the background. Run only one app at a time when you're low on battery.

Tips for laptop users

So far, everything I've already discussed applies to any mobile computing device; however, there's a lot more you can do when the device in question is a laptop. In addition to dimming your display and turning off radios, there's a host of other hardware you can turn off, such as the back-lit keyboards, Firewire ports, Wi-Fi, serial and com ports, Web cams, sound and auxiliary video controllers, and your optical drive (if you laptop even has one). The power savings when disabling any one device might not be great, but disable a bunch and it can make difference.

To disable any piece hardware component that allows it (CPUs and drive controllers can't be), type "device manager" using the Windows find function (the box at the bottom or the Start Menu, or simply typing in Metro), or right-click on Computer, select Manage, and open Device Manager from the tree on the left. Right-click on any item to disable or enable it.

Temporarily disabling devices and services you aren't actively using can preserve your notebook's battery life.

Then there's the software. Oh, the software. I already talked about running only one application at a time, but applications are only the tip of the iceberg. You might be running dozens of convenient, but unessential background processes. Prime examples are software updaters, printer and scanner control panels, and online storage service apps. There are even a number of Windows features—such as search indexing—that can be disabled. To kill unnecessary processes, use the Windows find function as described above. But this time, type "task manager." Alternatively, right-click on the taskbar and select "Start Task Manager", or press Ctrl+Alt+Del and select the same thing. Once the Windows Task Manager dialog appears, select the "Processes" tab and peruse the process names and descriptions.

Generally speaking, you can safely kill any process with a third-party brand name in it (Adobe, Apple, Dell, Google, HP, Dell, etc.). Right-click over the program and select End Process Tree to kill it and any non-visible processes that it spawned. Don't worry, you're not doing anything permanent here, the process will reappear after you restart or log off and log in again. Hopefully, the time you take disabling stuff doesn't drain more juice that leaving them running will. It pays to familiarize yourself with this culling while your laptop is running on AC power, so you can do it quickly when it counts.

Use the Windows Task Manager to disable processes you're not actively using.

If you wish to disable background apps and processes so that they don't automatically return at restart, run msconfig.exe (use the Windows find function). You'll find items you can live without under both the Startup and Services tabs. If they prove important, you can always re-enable them. For more in-depth information and control over how services start (automatically or when required), run services.msc, again using the find function. Uninstalling unused applications is also a boon.

How to boost a battery’s lifespan

The tricks to maximize your lithium-ion battery's useful lifespan, i.e., the number of times you can recharge it before it no longer accepts one, are pretty basic. There are three things that will prematurely age a Li-ion battery: Consistently draining it to the automatic shutdown point, heat, and over-charging/over-voltage charging. That last practice is actually dangerous and can lead to fire or even explosions.

The number of recharge cycles you'll get out of your Li-ion battery drops with how far you drain it on a regular basis. You can get as many as 5,000 cycles if you only discharge it to the 90 percent level each time, and perhaps only a few hundred if you run it down to 10 percent. Don't go crazy trying to stay tethered all the time. But you might want to break the habit of waiting for the low battery warning before plugging in.

The more aggressive you are with your laptop's power plan, the longer your battery life will be.

Habitually leaving your Li-ion powered device in a hot car or near another heat source can significantly reduce its recoverable capacity (the amount of charge it can absorb). You could easily reduce a four-hour run time to three hours in a couple of months doing this. Touch chargers, which are only about 80 percent as efficient as wires, turn the other 20 your into heat. Stylish and convenient as they might be, using a touch charger could reduce your battery's lifespan.

Avoiding heat doesn't mean that freezing your devices or batteries will make them last forever. As a matter of fact, Li-ion batteries will not accept a charge if the ambient temperature is below freezing. Hybrid and electric cars that use Li-ion batteries keep them warm in cold climates. Basically, your battery is most comfortable at what you probably think of as just a little cooler than comfortable--60 degree Fahrenheit.

As to the over-charging/over-voltage charging issues, you're pretty much at the mercy of the device, charger, and battery manufacturer. Li-ion batteries have charge controllers that mostly prevent bad things such as overcharging and over-discharging from occurring. But mistakes happen, so if you notice an undo amount of heat in either a charger or the device being charged, stop using it until you find out what's going. Check with the vendor. If it burst into flames, quickly move it to an area where it catch anything else on fire, if you can do so safely, and get away from it. The byproducts of the combustion can be corrosive and toxic.

When you store a lithium-Ion battery, try to store it at 60 degrees with somewhere around a 40 percent charge. The charge will prevent the battery from going to sleep and never waking up. This is why you quite often get a new mobile device that's already partially, but not fully charged.

The Bottom Line

It all boils down to this: To extend run time, turn stuff down or off. To extend a Li-ion battery's lifespan, don't consistently drain it to low levels or expose it to heat on a regular basis. Store it at 60 degrees at a 40 percent charge. Batteries are all about freedom, so try to nurture good habits without killing the joy.

May your batteries run long and linger (and be recycled properly).

Ooma Office review: This VoIP-based phone system makes small businesses seem big

Every business must interact with its customers via the telephone at some point. And it won’t matter how great your employees are, or how superb your product might be, if your customers have a bad experience trying to reach the right people on the phone.

A full-featured phone system capable of handling multiple phone lines, conference calls, voicemail, and other features can lend a small office a larger and more professional air. But getting all these features can entail a significant capital expense involving custom equipment and professional installation. And a platform that supports remote workers can render the system even more complex and expensive.

Ooma has a better idea. The company has developed a business-oriented version of its very successful home-based VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) system. Ooma Office is a full-featured virtual PBX (Private Branch Exchange) that can support multiple phone lines, five extensions, and 15 virtual extensions at a very low cost (for both the equipment and the service).

IMAGE: MIKE HOMNICK

The Ooma Office starter kit includes three physical extensions and up to 15 virtual extensions. You can add two additional extensions (the Linx modules shown above, plus the telephone handsets you provide separately) for a one-time cost of $50 each.

This being a VoIP system, you probably want to know about voice quality before you read any further. You needn’t worry: It’s excellent. I can’t say the same of the synthesized voice of the virtual receptionist, but there is an alternative. More on that later.

How much does it cost?

The Ooma Office starter pack includes a central Ooma base station, two Linx modules, one phone number (you can port your business’s existing phone number for free), an online fax, and three physical extensions (one for the base station and one for each Linx module). The Linx modules communicate with the base station using the DECT 6.0 wireless protocol, so you don’t need to worry about them sucking up your Wi-Fi network’s bandwidth, or having just the right infrastructure for power-line networking.

The hardware costs $250, plus a subscription fee of $10 per month per user and $10 per month per phone number. The system will support two additional Linx modules at a one-time cost of $50 each. Buying additional phone numbers lets you map them to extensions, so that callers can reach your employees directly without going through the virtual receptionist.

You will, however, need to provide your own conventional handsets for the system (as fancy or as plain as you like, wired or wireless. Just plug one into the base station and one into each Linx.) You’ll also need broadband Internet service (since that’s how VoIP works). Calls within the U.S. and Canada are free. International calls are billed against a prepaid account (prepayments are made in increments of $25).

Features and functions

Now that you have a grasp of how much Ooma Office costs, let’s take a look at the features it offers, and how well they work. Incoming calls can be routed to a virtual receptionist, or if you purchase additional phone numbers, you can route them directly to the extensions you assign. The virtual receptionist can greet callers with custom messages created with a text-to-speech converter, or with audio files that you record and upload.

The receptionist’s synthesized female voice is good, but not great. Most businesses will likely prefer to record their own greetings—both for that personal touch and to make sure people can understand everything the virtual receptionist needs to say. But you’ll need to provide your own mic and recording software to do this. You can also upload on-hold music in the form of an MP3 or WAV file, but you’re limited to a stingy file size of just 5MB.

Callers are greeted by a virtual receptionist that will help direct their call to the right employee or department.

The virtual receptionist has separate menus for business hours and after hours, and you can assign commands to each of the 10 buttons on a phone (0 through 9). For example: “Press zero to talk to an operator,” “For Sales, press 1,” “Press 4 to reach [employee name],” “Press 5 to dial by employee name,” “Press 8 to leave a general voicemail,” and so on. If you prefer, you can configure the system so that incoming calls bypass the virtual receptionist, and are instead routed to a specific extension.

The system is very flexible at setting business and off hours. You can define a different schedule for every day of the week. You can also define a holiday schedule, and you can even define multiple time intervals for each day. But you can record only one greeting for business hours and one for after hours. An office that’s closed for lunch from 12:00 to 1:00 each day, for example, can’t record a message to inform callers that it’s only temporarily closed.

Each phone connected to Ooma Office has its own three-digit extension. Incoming calls can be directed to these extensions via the virtual receptionist, users with physical extensions can use these numbers to call each other (outside workers with virtual extensions cannot), and all workers can transfer calls to each other—including to workers working at remote locations and using virtual extensions.

Users with physical extensions (that’s everyone under the same roof) can call each other using their internal phone numbers. Calls can be transferred to both physical and virtual extensions (those are employees at other locations).

Each extension also has its own private, PIN-protected voicemail, and voicemail messages can be converted to text and emailed to the person assigned to that extension. If you have employees who travel frequently or who work outside the office, calls to their extensions can be automatically forwarded to another number, such as a cell phone. These virtual extensions can still be assigned voicemail accounts.

If you establish ring groups, multiple extensions will ring at the same time. If you have several sales people in the office, for example, you can program the virtual receptionist to announce “Dial 1 for sales,” and the call will be simultaneously routed to several extensions, including virtual extensions. Whichever extension responds first, takes the call. The system is very easy to program using a Web-based interface.

Ooma Office supports three-way conference calls, placing calls on hold, and call waiting. The last major feature I’ll cover here is the conference bridge. This enables a business to host its own conference calls for up to five participants. This feature is protected by a PIN to prevent unauthorized users from dialing in (the same PIN is used for all participants), but it does consume one of the available extensions.

This product is too limited for operations with more than a handful of employees, but operations with one to five employees—especially virtual businesses with employees who work remotely or who travel frequently—will find lots of value in Ooma Office. It can make a small business seem big, and it save small businesses lots of money on phone bills.