GADGETS GALORE          - 18/ 1/ 2005      <--Prev : Next-->

GADGETS GALORE

"Wireless" is the buzz word of the 21st century, you have not reached the in crowd electronically if you are not totally "wireless."

Now to the uneducated, being "wireless " means that you can open your computer and tap into random wireless airwaves instantly, wherever you are thus giving you access to e mail and internet at the "wave" of a hand.

Homes should be wireless, offices should be wireless, hotels and airports should all be wireless and by the turn of the next decade we will all be totally wired, I gather, wherever we may be in the world.

HeeHoo emanates from a family of gadget and gizmo geeks. (Except for the little sister who is a tad electronically challenged).

If there is a new gadget on the market, HeeHoo must have it immediately if not sooner and his latest gadget (apart from his electronic rain gauge !!) is a tiny beeper which locates wireless airwaves.

Rather on the lines of one of those metal detectors that you see people using on beaches to find metal objects, this new gadget will find wireless beams wherever they are. And if you are lucky you can tap into them either for free or by the swipe of a card !!

Heewhoo cannot function without his e mail, it is rather like an extension of his being, where HeeHoo is, there is his computer , and there MUST be internet access in order to be able to make him complete.

His idea of a holiday is not to inspect the beaches and museums, not to visit galleries and shops, but to find a spot where there is wireless internet access, where he can work all day and all night if he so pleases, and to thereby find his own particular brand of happiness.

Starbucks is a good wireless spot in most parts of the world, and bliss is to be had not only in copious cups of Starbucks coffee, but Bliss is also to be found in the use of their internet facility for a modest fee.

But if there is no Starbucks around one can covertly take clandestine advantage of someone else's private airwaves, which I gather are transmitted for quite a nice radius around the neighbourhood.

Shee Hoo and her motley crew while on Summer School in London last year, found that if they placed the ironing board out of their 3rd floor apartment window, and then placed their computers precariously right at the end of the ironing board, they could pick up a wireless signal of the hapless fellow who lived across the courtyard to them !! Its not really thievery per se, they tell me, just ingenuity !!

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