Tool Kit: Keeping Wi-Fi Always Within Range

An important business report could go unfinished. Access to a customer list could be cut off. And any number of items you’re accustomed to using on a laptop computer could be rendered unreachable.

But there is a growing list of options, including turning your cellphone into a Wi-Fi hot spot or buying small independent devices, to ensure a constant link to the Web.

Start with the basics. Before buying a hot spot device or paying for a plan that adds this sort of capability to a cellphone, consider the coverage area for data. Review a map that shows how well the services provided by, say, the Clearwire network, which is owned by Sprint, work in certain areas.

This map is usually on the carrier’s Web site or at its store. Network speed is important, too: a 4G network is faster than 3G, for example, and while 4G is about the fastest available, some 4G networks are faster than others. This is important, as the Wi-Fi options can be dizzying.

One of the newer and more novel options is a mobile hot spot from Karma. As the name suggests, owners of a Karma device are encouraged to share their Wi-Fi hot spot with anyone within range, including strangers. There is a reward for this generosity: 100 megabytes of free data if someone else logs in and signs up.

“Any new customer that buys our hot spot is also immediately an evangelist of our service by emitting an open Wi-Fi signal,” said Robert Gaal, Karma’s chief executive.

The Karma service uses the Clearwire data network. It offers coverage in 80 cities and provides a 4G connection. The Karma device ($79) is compact, and the first gigabyte of data is free. After that, each gigabyte costs $14, on a pay-as-you-go plan, with no time limit for using the data. That gigabyte can accommodate the downloading of about 170 music files of typical size.

FreedomPop also takes an unusual approach. After buying the FreedomPop Photon mobile hot spot ($99), users get up to 500 megabytes of data a month. While that’s not enough for downloading lots of videos, it’s plenty for basic e-mail and simple Web browsing. After that, monthly plans cost $18 for two gigabytes of data and $29 for four gigabytes. There is no contract and users can switch among plans as needed. The device gets six to eight hours on a battery charge.

As with Karma, the FreedomPop device provides a 4G connection from the Clearwire network. For $4 a month extra, the network’s full speed is unlocked. Otherwise, downloads are capped at about half speed.

The company recently began offering a device called the FreedomPop Overdrive Pro ($40), which provides a larger area of coverage by using both 4G and 3G networks. The 3G network coverage is provided by Sprint, and a plan with two gigabytes of data is $20 a month.

Chances are, smartphone owners already have a hot spot in their pockets. Most newer models of the iPhone, Android phones, BlackBerrys and Windows phones have built-in hot spots. Enabling the feature, known as tethering, is straightforward; on an iPhone 5, for example, select Settings, then General, then Cellular. To wall off interlopers, you can secure the connection with encryption and a password. But a word of warning: using the hot spot feature puts additional strain on the battery, so don’t stray too far from the charger.

The major carriers offer the hot spot feature in their smartphone plans. T-Mobile includes it at no extra cost in its Simple Choice offering. Plans start at $50 a month and include 500 megabytes of high-speed data use on the phone or in tethering. That also includes the phone’s talk and texting services. The data can be increased for an extra $10 a month for each additional two gigabytes, to a maximum of 12.

Verizon includes the hot spot feature in its Share Everything plan at no extra cost. A plan with one gigabyte of data costs $50 a month, plus $40 for the phone’s other services, like talking and texting. It provides access to Verizon’s 4G LTE network for both the phone and tethering. Users can move up to two gigabytes for an extra $10, or four gigabytes for $20.

AT&T’s Mobile Share plans include the hot spot feature, starting at $40 for a gigabyte of data plus $45 for the phone’s talk and text services. A $70 option, with four gigabytes of data, and several others are also available.

Sprint charges an add-on fee to use the phone for tethering; $20 a month for two gigabytes of data, or $50 for six gigabytes. That’s in addition to the data plan and other services for the phone. The same plans are available for tablets, allowing users to turn an iPad or Android tablet into a hot spot. Other carriers also offer the hot spot feature for tablets.

Stand-alone devices are another option from the major carriers. Some have a contract while others are month-to-month or pay-as-you-go. Verizon offers the Jetpack 4G LTE Mobile Hotspot MiFi 5510L at no cost with a two-year contract (four gigabytes for $50; 10 gigabytes for $80).

Unlike the Karma and FreedomPop Photon devices, it has a screen that shows information like remaining battery life, connection speeds and number of devices attached. AT&T and Sprint also offer MiFi devices with different features and pricing.

T-Mobile offers the Sonic 2.0 Mobile HotSpot LTE, the company’s first mobile hot spot for its 4G LTE network. It has a screen, supports up to eight Wi-Fi-capable devices and costs $150 (or a $30 down payment with $5 monthly payments for 24 months). Data plans start at 500 megabytes for $20, or two gigabytes for $30, and other increments up to 12 gigabytes for $80.

The other option is to hunt down public access points. If no free option is within range, Boingo, with more than 600,000 hot spots worldwide, may have one nearby.

The company offers a variety of plans at boingo.com/wifi-plans. Customers of Comcast, Cablevision and other providers of home Internet access can use more than 100,000 public hot spots in many major cities. Subscribers of most Comcast Xfinity plans can use the hot spots at no additional cost (more information is at cablewifi.com).

AT&T offers free access at Starbucks and other locations. And apps like JiWire’s Wi-Fi Finder, which can find both free and fee-based hot spots, can also display the locations of hot spots while a phone or tablet is offline.

So don’t fret. With the correct tools and planning, you’ll never have to be in a wireless desert.

Bits Blog: Google to Sell Its Own Version of Samsung’s Galaxy S4

Justin Sullivan/Getty Images Hugo Barra of Google said the company would sell a version of Samsung’s Galaxy S4 running its own “stock” version of Android.

11:46 a.m. | Updated This post was updated to add the price of Google’s version of the Galaxy S4 phone.

Samsung Electronics, the biggest phone maker in the world, has been instrumental in making Google Android the most popular mobile operating system. But the search giant still wants to have Android its own way on Samsung’s new flagship phone, the Galaxy S4.

Google on Wednesday said it would sell a version of Samsung’s Galaxy S4 running its own “stock” version of Android, not Samsung’s modified version. The device will go on sale in Google’s online store, called Play, on June 26, according to Hugo Barra, vice president of product management for Android. The phone will cost $650 and will come unlocked.

“This is Google’s take on Android, and it feels really awesome on the Galaxy S4,” Mr. Barra said in front of an audience at the company’s annual developers conference, called Google I/O.

It’s unclear what Google’s strategy is behind selling Samsung’s phone in its own store with a high price tag. Google’s past efforts to sell phones through its own online store — without the support and promotion of wireless carriers like AT&T and Verizon Wireless — have not been successful.

Jan Dawson, a telecom analyst at Ovum, said Google was probably selling the Samsung phone with its own version of software to quell common complaints that the Nexus phones that Google sells are often not ideal — they have had poor cameras or they have lacked compatibility with the latest fourth-generation wireless network, for example. The Samsung phone with Google’s stock version of Android could appease influential people in the Android community, which would improve the overall image of the operating system, he said.

“This is a way for Google to say, ‘We’re going to make one of the best Android devices out there available unlocked with stock Android’ to negate those complaints once and for all,” he said. “It’s never going to be a huge seller, but it resolves a common complaint for a disproportionately influential part of the base, which will have wider-reaching benefits for Google and the ecosystem.”

Coverage of the annual Google I/O conference for developers, May 15-16, 2013.

Concerns Arise on U.S. Effort to Allow Internet ‘Wiretaps’

Surveillance can be a tricky affair in the Internet age.

A federal law called the Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act allows law enforcement officials to tap a traditional phone, as long as they get approval from a judge. But if communication is through voice over Internet Protocol technology — Skype, for instance — it’s not as simple.

That conversation doesn’t pass through a central hub controlled by the service provider. It is encrypted — to varying degrees of protection — as it travels through the Internet, from the caller’s end to the recipient’s.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation has made it clear it wants to intercept Internet audio and video chats. And that, according to a new report being released Friday by a group of technologists, could pose “serious security risks” to ordinary Internet users, giving thieves and even foreign agents a way to listen in on Americans’ conversations, undetected.

The 20 computer experts and cryptographers who drafted the report say the only way that companies can meet wiretap orders is to re-engineer the way their systems are built at the endpoints, either in the software or in users’ devices, in effect creating a valuable listening station for repressive governments as well as for ordinary thieves and blackmailers.

“It’s a single point in the system through which all of the content can be collected if they can manage to activate it,” said Edward W. Felten, a computer science professor at Princeton and one of the authors of the report, released by the Center for Democracy and Technology, an advocacy group in Washington.

“That’s a security vulnerability waiting to happen, as if we needed more,” he said.

The report comes as federal officials say they are close to reaching consensus on the F.B.I.’s longstanding demand to be able to intercept Internet communications. Companies that say they were unable to modify their operations to comply with the new wiretap orders would be subject to a fine, according to the plan. The White House has yet to review it.

Neither the F.B.I. nor White House officials have provided technical details of how the Web service providers would comply.

Law enforcement officials regularly seek information from Web companies about the communications of their users, from e-mail messages to social network posts and chats.

Microsoft, which owns Skype, reported receiving 4,713 requests in 2012 from law enforcement, which covered just over 15,000 Skype accounts; the company said it released only “noncontent data, such as a Skype ID, name, e-mail account, billing information and call detail records” if an account is connected to a telephone number.

Skype is a Luxembourg company, even after its acquisition by Microsoft, of Redmond, Wash. United States wiretap law does not apply to the company.

Along with Mr. Felten, who served as a technologist with the Federal Trade Commission until recently, the report’s authors include the cryptographer Bruce Schneier and Phil Zimmermann, who created what has become the most widely used software to keep e-mails private.

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: May 18, 2013

An article on Friday about a report criticizing the F.B.I.’s proposal to intercept Internet chats described the report’s authors incorrectly and misspelled the surname of one of them. The authors included 20 computer experts and cryptographers, not a dozen lawyers and cryptographers, and one of the authors is Phil Zimmermann, not Zimmerman. The article also erroneously included one person among the authors. Peter Swire, a former White House privacy lawyer, did not participate in the writing of the report.

Bits Blog: New Apps Arrive on Google Glass

Jeff Chiu/Associated Press Google hopes that apps will make Glass, the company’s Internet-connected glasses, more functional.

Google Glass, the company’s Internet-connected glasses, will soon have seven new apps, including breaking news alerts from CNN, fashion features from Elle, Twitter, Tumblr and Facebook posts and reminder notes from Evernote.

Google announced the apps, which it calls Glassware, Thursday at its I/O developers conference, the largest assembly yet of people wearing Glass in the same place. They join Path and The New York Times as the only apps so far available on Glass. The glasses also offer Google services like search and maps, connect to users’ cellphones for text messaging, take photos and record video.

Just as apps transformed smartphones from cellphones into devices that have become essential to daily life for many people, so Google hopes that apps will make Glass more functional. Still, Google is moving slowly and cautiously in opening Glass to developers. Apps have limited access to Glass users’ data, for instance, and for now, cannot include ads.

Google wants developers to experiment with building apps tailored to Glass, as opposed to just transporting mobile apps to the new device. Glass is different than phones because it is in a user’s line of sight and has a smaller screen. So notifications, for instance, could easily be disruptive or unwanted.

Google has given Glassware developers four pieces of advice: keep it short and sweet for the small screen, make sure alerts are relevant, send timely information people need on the go and make tasks easier and more seamless than they are on other devices.

CNN’s app, for instance, lets people choose which types of news alerts they receive (politics but no sports, for instance), and the time of day at which they are delivered. Then they can read or hear aloud a short summary and watch a video clip.

Google A screenshot from the Elle app for Google Glass.

Similarly, Elle’s app allows people to choose the sections of the magazine they want to see on Glass, swipe through photos from a story, hear a section of a story read aloud, add stories to a reading list for later and share stories with friends. At Elle, there is a team dedicated to taking monthly magazine content and turning it into real-time updates that make sense for Glass, like posts from the Elle Dispatch blog.

Google A screenshot from the Twitter app for Google Glass.

So far on Glass, photos are shareable only through Google Plus. With the Facebook app, Glass users will be able to share photos taken with Glass on Facebook. Twitter’s Glass app lets people tailor their stream to only receive posts from certain people and transcribe new posts using voice. Tumblr’s app shows a user’s full feed or just select updates.

When people are using Evernote on the Web, they will be able to send notes, like a grocery list, to Glass, so it’s accessible when they need it.

Another new app was built by three of the developers who received an early edition of Glass. It’s a game called Ice Breaker that some people could say bridges the divide between the physical and digital worlds — and others might say creates some socially awkward situations. Glass users see a notification of someone who is also playing the game nearby, and the people introduce themselves and take a picture of one another, rate their conversation and earn points.

The Glassware will be available to people who signed up and paid $1,500 for an early edition of Glass. Though other developers are beginning to build apps for the device, there is not yet an app store where anyone can offer such apps.

Coverage of the annual Google I/O conference for developers, May 15-16, 2013.

Amtrak Upgrades Wi-Fi Service on Trains

Amtrak’s Wi-Fi has been the target of technology jokes since the railroad introduced the service, with some passengers comparing it to dial-up services like America Online or Prodigy. But others have praised the service, saying it allows them to be productive while traveling between cities, unlike airline travel. Because of the technical difficulties of maintaining a strong Internet connection on a moving train, the increase in speed would still be less than most people experience at home.

The railroad said the broadband upgrade was complete on the high-speed Acela trains that travel the more than 400 miles between Washington and Boston. Several state-supported routes in California, including the Capitol Corridor, Pacific Surfliner and San Joaquin routes, have also been upgraded.

Amtrak said it would roll out the upgrades to all remaining Amtrak trains equipped with Wi-Fi, including the Northeast Regional, by late summer.

“We continue to place a strong focus on improving customer satisfaction, and this upgrade is delivering the improved speeds and connectivity required to maintain a competitive edge,” Deborah Stone-Wulf, Amtrak’s chief of sales distribution and customer service, said in a statement.

Amtrak said Acela passengers have already noticed an improvement in the Wi-Fi service aboard the trains and have been commenting through social media.

But not all the social media chatter has been positive.

Shelton Mercer, chief executive of TwitChange, an Atlanta-based Web site that brings celebrities and fans together for good causes, wrote on Twitter last month, “#Amtrak ‘Wi-fi’ should be renamed ‘Why-Try.’ ”

Amtrak responded to some negative Twitter posts, saying the upgrades would strengthen its Wi-Fi network and increase the amount of bandwidth available for tech-savvy passengers who have become accustomed to being connected while traveling.

Sara Wachter-Boettcher, an author and Web consultant in Lancaster, Pa., called the service an infuriating luxury. On a recent trip home from teaching a workshop in New York, she said, she was desperately trying to catch up on e-mail. But the Wi-Fi on the train booted her off every few minutes, she said, and she had to resort to a combination of her smartphone and laptop to keep working.

“On the one hand, we’re lucky to have such pervasive Internet access,” she said in an e-mail. “On the other, it’s frustrating anytime something that should work doesn’t.”

Unlike most airlines, Amtrak said it would continue to provide free Wi-Fi service. The railroad said that Wi-Fi was available on trains that serve 75 percent of Amtrak passengers, and that it routinely supported 30 percent to 50 percent of passengers on a given train.

But Amtrak also said it would continue to limit some Internet activities.

To ensure that all passengers have an opportunity to use the Wi-Fi service, Amtrak said, it would still restrict data-heavy activities that could slow the service down, like streaming video sites like Netflix and music sites like Pandora. The railroad also restricts file downloads larger than 10MB.

Even with the upgrades, Amtrak will continue to face some challenges with its wireless service. High-speed service is not available everywhere, and because the railroad uses different carriers along its routes, including Verizon and AT&T, service could still be interrupted or slowed as the Wi-Fi signals switch between the carriers. In addition, as the speed of the service increases, so will the number of people trying to use it, potentially slowing it down.

Still, Amtrak seems confident that passengers will have a better Internet experience aboard its trains. In a news release announcing the upgrades, the railroad suggested the following Twitter post: “Productivity on @Amtrak #Acela just got better. Their onboard #Wi-Fi is now powered by 4G technology.”

Foxconn Audit Reveals Workweek Still Too Long

The auditors, supervised by the Fair Labor Association, said Foxconn was still working toward lowering the average workweek to the 49-hour cap. And labor unions at the plants that are supposed to represent the workers’ interests are still dominated by management, the group said.

Still, the average workweek has come down sharply from the typical 60 hours or more that has been common practice at the Chinese suppliers of Apple and other technology companies.

Although the auditors declined to be specific about the length of the Foxconn workweek, Apple has said that it has been working to reduce the long hours put in by workers at its suppliers, which are mostly in China.

In a statement on its supplier responsibility Web site, the company said for more than a million workers in its global supply network that it tracked in 2012, “the average hours worked per week was under 50.”

An Apple spokesman, Steve Dowling, declined to discuss the specifics of the Fair Labor Association audit, which he said was done independently of Apple. In a statement, Foxconn said the F.L.A. report confirmed the company’s recent improvements in its operations. “We will continue to build on that success as we work toward compliance with the F.L.A. Code,” the company said.

But Mr. Dowling said Apple has been working closely with its suppliers and conducting its own monitoring to improve conditions at the factories that make its products, and the company has posted public progress reports.

Foxconn, part of the Taiwan-based company Hon Hai Precision Industry, employs about 178,000 workers at the three factories inspected. It has about 1.2 million workers at plants making products for Apple, Hewlett-Packard, Dell, Microsoft and other technology companies.

Foxconn has been under intense scrutiny for several years because of working conditions inside its factories. Investigations by The New York Times, outside groups and Apple’s own supplier responsibility officials have found illegal amounts of overtime, crowded working conditions, under-age workers and improper disposal of hazardous waste. Industrial accidents have injured and killed Foxconn workers, and the company also experienced a wave of worker suicides.

Labor and consumer activists have pressured Apple, one of the most profitable companies in the world, to do more to improve conditions for the people who make its products. The monthly earnings of Foxconn workers making Apple products are currently about $500.

Apple joined the Fair Labor Association, or F.L.A., in January 2012, and asked the group to audit its suppliers, beginning with Foxconn. The labor group has periodically inspected Foxconn factories in Guanlan, Longhua and Chengdu since February 2012 and interviewed thousands of workers. Apple pays for the audits.

After the first inspection, Apple and Foxconn agreed to an action plan of 360 items to be completed by July 1, 2013. As of January, 98.3 percent of them had been achieved, the group’s report said.

Most of the items were “housekeeping issues,” said Auret van Heerden, chief executive of the F.L.A., in an interview Thursday. “Those things they plowed through.”

But Foxconn has also addressed more substantive problems, Mr. van Heerden said. For example, in fire safety, the company added more escape routes and cleared choke points after the auditors asked it to test the evacuation of buildings during shift change, when plants are most crowded. “We were, in a way, looking for trouble,” he said.

He noted that Foxconn has also overhauled many processes, including using robots instead of people to polish the aluminum backs of iPad cases and water to capture and dispose of the resulting dust. An aluminum dust explosion in May 2011 at Foxconn’s Chengdu factory killed three workers and injured more than a dozen others.

Critics of the F.L.A. and Foxconn said the most recent audit played down problems found by other investigators, such as unpaid overtime and Foxconn’s use of unpaid interns.

“Over all, the F.L.A.’s reporting on Foxconn continues to be unjustifiably rosy,” Scott Nova, executive director of the Workers Rights Consortium, a university-backed group that monitors apparel factories worldwide, said in an e-mail.

Steven Greenhouse contributed reporting.

Times Site Is Attacked by Hackers

Archives at the New York Public Library cross-referenced with long-awaited 1940 data provide eye-opening results.

Stuck without a lyric in sight, a songwriter ponders the intricacies of a little bird’s brain.