Grant Laird, Jr. Blog

http://www.netstumbler.com

In past couple of months, several friends mentioned about NetStumbler and I wasn’t paying attention till Dave’s Thing Blog bought it up again last week. I figure its time for me to give it a try!

Interestingly, NetStumbler is very small program – I installed it on my laptop with wifi equipment and did little experiment with it. I turn laptop on & load NetStumbler while I was driving on the way home – it wasn’t long one – maybe 2 miles long. It already picked up over 30 different “hotspot” from apartment, commercial and suburban area. Roughly 40% of those hotspots are not secured or “locked” at all. Hopefully those people will wake up and turn it into locked to prevent sniffing except few of them letting it open on purpose.

Anyway, NetStumbler is also good tool to test your own wireless hotspot at home. I tested it at home and noticed it would show my name of wireless router but otherwise it’s locked like it should be. I went ahead and made little more modification on my router to make it extra security.

What else is cool about it – it also support Global Position System (GPS) and I have old GPS that support serial only. *Sucks* Maybe I need to look and see if I can get USB-based converter for it.

This program is simply scanning & logging hotspot information into system. Nothing else.

NetStumbler is a tool for Windows that allows you to detect Wireless Local Area Networks (WLANs) using 802.11b, 802.11a and 802.11g. It has many uses:

• Verify that your network is set up the way you intended.
• Find locations with poor coverage in your WLAN.
• Detect other networks that may be causing interference on your network.
• Detect unauthorized “rogue” access points in your workplace.
• Help aim directional antennas for long-haul WLAN links.
• Use it recreationally for WarDriving.

Bottom line, if you use wifi frequently – you should install this program and as well as read their forum. A lot of useful information that will help protects your computer wirelessly.

Grant W Laird Jr.
http://blog.grantlairdjr.com

NetStumbler
http://www.netstumbler.com

Start Slide Show with PicLens Lite

Sprint Relay Service now offering its service in New Zealand. It is not first time, they ever offers outside USA. I know they are working hard to grow more elsewhere in the world — it is huge gaps out there. No questions about it. Congratulations!

Also, Sprint traditionally hosts its “Sprint Walk” in Austin every year — they earned approximately $14,000 last weekend and all money goes to local deaf-related charities. I know community are deeply grateful for all what you have done. It would be nice if they would do it elsewhere like Dallas and Houston area. Maybe someday…

Another thing, Sprint has awesome relay service internet-based program on T-Mobile Sidekick I/II. I’ve used it number of times and it’s great. Only bad thing, it doesn’t support alphabet letters in it. I tried to call 1-800-T-MOBILE and it won’t let me do it. I can’t think of converting to numbers so forget it. I ended up calling with AIM-based IP Relay and it works fine. Just little flaw — I hope they will read it and make some action.

Also, I hope Sprint will release similar version for AIM-based relay service like MCI or Hamilton some day.

Grant W Laird Jr.
http://blog.grantlairdjr.com

Sprint Walk Raises $14,000 for Austin Deaf and Hard of Hearing Organizations (DeafToday.com)
http://www.deaftoday.com/v3/archives/2004/11/sprint_walk_rai.html

New Zealand Relay Services for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing Now Available From Sprint (DeafToday.com)
http://www.deaftoday.com/v3/archives/2004/11/new_zealand_rel.html

Sprint Relay Wireless for Sidekick and it’s free! (DeafNetwork.com)
http://www.deafnetwork.com/cgi-bin/dada/mail.cgi?flavor=archive&id=20041118183117&list=dn

Raise money for local deaf charities (DeafNetwork.com)
http://www.deafnetwork.com/cgi-bin/dada/mail.cgi?flavor=archive&id=20041122064432&list=dn

Start Slide Show with PicLens Lite

Back in early 1997 during pre-dot com boom, I got so interested in “Mosaic” (name of browser program back then) and trying to learn this Internet thing. At this time, very few website existed – believe it or not. I remember typing apple.com and it went to one of the personal website which finally moved to Apple Corporation after lengthy battle in courts.

Anyway, at this time, it is completely NEW but same time, it is very expensive and time consuming – for example registering domain at Network Solutions which cost $35 a year and there is no such thing as good HTML editor like MS FrontPage or Dreamweaver back then. I had to learn HTML code by reading other website and start my own one under ISP free personal homepage. I even type whole HTML codes on notepad – Image that!!

Read the rest of this entry »

Start Slide Show with PicLens Lite