Each week Ross Rubin contributes Switched On, a column about technology, multimedia, and digital entertainment:
Neither Sony nor Nokia have Microsoft at the top of their buddy lists, and their product lines don't contain much overlap; but the Japanese electronics giant enlisted the help of Nokia's longtime Scandinavian rival Ericsson when it made its serious push into the mobile phone space. Hence, it's easy to see how convergence often makes for strange competitors, and this year Sony's latest stab at it came in the form of the Mylo, which entered the WiFi-enabled portable connected media device alongside an updated software suite for Nokia's 770 internet tablet. While on their surface the products have many similar capabilities and share a price of $349, their form and philosophy are strikingly different.

To remove any confusion, neither of these devices are cell phones per se; they don't make voice calls using cellular networks and are thus not purchased with calling plans. Also, in contrast to the PDAs of yore, neither of them has an integrated personal information manager. In fact, to its detriment, the 770 comes with no PC software at all.

The appeal of these – forgive me, Webster – WiFliances is plain from the company's perspective. With cell phone carriers moving most of the handsets in the US, companies are hamstrung in terms of the kinds of communications capabilities they can offer to consumers both by bandwidth limits and carrier fiat. However, are these products right for consumers? For one, they certainly have more appeal if you spend most of your days in an extended guest-friendly hotspot network or "hotzone" such as a university campus or a metropolitan WiFi network like the one Google is now offering in Mountain View, CA.

From the sound of things it would seem the island nation of Singapore will soon be the latest country to get the 802.11 treatment, having all of its near 700 square kilometers blanketed in WiFi. That would make Singapore the third nation that we know of to completely covered, joining Mauritius and Macedonia, with Estonia not far behind. A government report, "Intelligent Nation 2015," already notes that Singapore currently averages one WiFi hotspot for every square kilometer, so combined with upcoming WiMax technology, Singapore is aiming to be one ginormous hotspot by the end of the year. That's a pretty ambitious project, mind you, even for a country as well off as Singapore. Of course, this report also states (no joke), that they'll have 4G cell phones, "Fibre to the Home," the "Semantic World Wide Web," and "Embedded and Wearable Computers" by 2015, which by our estimation would make them among the most advanced civilzations around. If they do manage any of those, we may just have to open up an Engadget Singapore bureau pretty soon since that FIOS certainly ain't getting hooked up in our cribs any time soon.

[Via CNET]

Starting in March 2007 the Wi-Fi Alliance will start certifying next-gen WiFi products, which puts us at ease a little bit. As CNET reports, the ultimate goal is, of course, to make sure that all the prelim 802.11n stuff out there plays nice with each other, which currently can mess up existing legit WiFi networks. For those of you who haven't been keeping score at home, 802.11n has been fraught with total confusion since the beginning. Back in May 2006, the IEEE rejected the first 802.11n draft by a wide margin, failing to garner a simple majority, let alone the required 75 percent supermajority. Later that month, Glenn Fleishman at Wi-Fi Net News told us that Task Group N received around 12,000 comments on the proposed draft -- compared to the 2,000-some that most drafts generate -- which is another very bad sign. Unfortunately though, it still looks like the real deal officially official final ratification won't be done until 2008. The short version? Just to be safe, stick with your current WiFi setup until there's a new man in the White House, ok?

[Via Wi-Fi Net News]

Setting up a secure wireless network is no easy task, due in part to the array of confusing, conflicting, and sometimes even downright ineffectual (we're looking at you, WEP) solutions to the problem. Enter the WiFi Alliance's WiFi Protected Setup, or WPS, a program slated for release later this year that aims to ease the process of securing home users' wireless networks and is intended to play nice with any WiFi-enabled consumer electronic device (say, a DAP or a camera), as long as the device passes a mandatory lab test first. Tapping into the home user's "I don't care how it works, as long as it does" mentality, WPS will make secure connections as simple as pushing a button on the WiFi-enabled device and the router that it is connecting to, although a PIN-based method is also part of the specification. The new system is similar to Buffalo Technology's Airstation One-Touch Secure System, however, unlike AOSS, WPS is an entirely non-proprietary specification that will fit right into the heterogeneous world of WiFi. Lets just hope wireless chipset and consumer electronics manufacturers get behind WPS and show some love to the peeps that don't know their WEPs from their wallets.

[Via The Register]

More bad news for MIMO fans (if there is such a thing): Glenn Fleishman over at Wi-Fi Net News is reporting that an IEEE member has informed him of a delay in the timetable for expected approval of the final draft of the 802.11n Wi-Fi standard, from sometime this summer to late fall or even early winter. Fleishman's source claims that Task Group N received around 12,000 comments on the proposed draft -- compared to the 2,000-some that most drafts generate -- which is yet another bad sign following the group's earlier failure to garner even a simple majority in favor of the current proposal, much less the 75% supermajority needed for passage. With draft approval seemingly several months off at the least, it could be a year or even a year and a half before a final 802.11n standard is ratified, meaning that those folks who are already snatching up pre-N gear will have to wait even longer to find out if their hardware ends up being compatible.

[Via Ars Technica]