The growing number of public hot spots for 802.11b …
MobileStar is one of the more agressive commercial entities expanding the penetration of 802.11b wireless around the country. They have recently partnered with IBM to assist in the deployment. I am still questioning the business model, and think that our team is going to really have an impact on their efforts … keep your eyes open here for more news on our 802.11b project!

More detail on MobileStar’s national deployment plans from EE Times: this article explains in greater detail how MobileStar will proceed.

[80211b News]

Clothing as Solar Cells? Yep …
A friend of mine here at Novell, Jesse Pretorius, sent me this link that is an article about some research where fibers are being made which could be woven into fabric … allowing the fabric to generate power! This could be used for clothing, sails on boats, or almost anything cloth. This is a great breakthrough for the wearable computer fashion industry!

Fashion for Wearable Computers …
I have been putting together my own wearable computer over the last couple of years, and it’s getting real close now. One of the items that I have been looking at is the clothing that will contain a wearable PC. This is really going to become fashion, as demonstrated by Charmed and Levis … they get it! Even Nokia and the other cell phone vendors understand how electronics are becoming fashion as described in this article.

There are a couple of ways that this can be done, such as modifying existing clothing, or using a vest under a jacket. I have been looking at a couple of different sources for vests, including camera vests and fly-fishing vests. At our recent Novell Brainshare conference, Erin Quill and I did a presentation [Session IO148] on our work with Wearable Computers and using Novell’s ZENworks to manage them. We called the presentation Automated Management and Configuration of a Wearable Computer Workforce … it was a blast! One of the people that was attending our session was Mike Avery, Reviews Editor for Network World. He was wearing a really cool camera vest made by Domke, and he bought it here. I’m thinking that I am going to have to go buy one of these … it really seemed to have all of the pockets that I am after, and it’s a mesh vest for summer usage … cool stuff!

A PC in my car? Yep … I’m working on it now …
I like this article, and it reinforces what I already believe … PCs in the car! As a part of my research into Wearable Computers I have been playing with a permanent PC installed in my car. I’m using a very small Intel chipset-based PC, and just recently started to buy some LCD Monitors that I can run off of 12vdc. I have been running Microsoft’s Streets and Trips, and using a serial-port GPS unit. I’m also going to put a bunch of my MP3s on it, and of course my 802.11b interface. When I pull in the garage, my car will be on my home wireless network, and so the Internet also … I can upload/download MP3s, maps, etc. Now I can’t wait until gas stations start to provide free 802.11b wireless Internet access while filling up …

In-Car Comm Systems to Explode. Attractive to wireless operators, carmakers [allNetDevices Wireless News]

Cool Wearable Monitors
So I am heavily working on building wearable computers. Not WinCE devices, or PDA type devices … but full blown PC clones that can be embedded into clothing! I just thought of a really cool way to provide the displays for wearable computers … I can use standard LCD Monitors! I found out that most of the LCD Monitors for computers are now running off of ~12vdc power … and are fairly low power consumption. I’ll be posting more about what I find!