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To: mishedlo who wrote (38645)	10/6/2005 6:36:03 PM
From: Sultan	Respond to of 116555

Not quite what you asked but reletaed.. Tracking the Elusive Hot Spot Gizmos, Web Sites Claim To Find Wi-Fi Networks; How Well Do They Work? November 5, 2003 Coffee shops, airports, restaurants and other establishments have been setting up Wi-Fi wireless Internet connections, or "Wi-Fi hot spots," for quite some time now. That's exciting news for anyone with a Wi-Fi ready laptop, because you can just stroll into these places and get onto the Internet, for a fee, or even in some cases free. The problem is finding the hot spots. Wi-Fi locations aren't well advertised, and there's no universal sign or symbol identifying them. Occasionally, you'll see a sign in a coffee-shop window, like the T-Mobile signs that are posted in many Starbucks branches. But for the most part, wireless hunting is luck of the draw. I often arrive in an airport and have to take out my laptop, boot it up and then let my computer tell me if a Wi-Fi network is present. To see if we could take some of the guesswork out of this wireless trial and error, my assistant Katie Boehret and I tested two methods of finding Wi-Fi hot spots: Web sites that let you search for locations and a device that "sniffs" for Wi-Fi and notifies you when a signal is near. This device, the Kensington Wi-Fi Finder, costs $29.99 and seems like it would come in handy for those of us who have to rely on our computers to tell us when Wi-Fi is present. Unfortunately, the Wi-Fi Finder flunked too many of our tests. The silver-colored Wi-Fi Finder measures the size of a credit card, but a bit thicker, and has a button and three lights on one side. When you press the button, the device is supposed to detect Wi-Fi hot spots within 200 feet. When it finds a hot spot, one, two or all three of its lights glow green according to the signal's strength. If no hot spots can be detected, one red light glows. Katie tried the Finder on her porch, where her laptop detects a "very low" Wi-Fi signal from a neighbor's wireless network. About five seconds after she pressed its button, two green lights glowed, meaning that it interpreted the signal as one of medium strength. That was a little exaggerated, but still pretty useful. Then she tested the Finder at a Starbucks near our office, and the device glowed red, despite the fact that multiple laptop users were tapped into the shop's T-Mobile wireless network. I tried it at a different Wi-Fi-equipped Starbucks miles away and got only a red light or a single green one, even when I was inside the store. I tested the Wi-Fi Finder in my office and at home, where I have two different kinds of Wi-Fi gear -- Apple at work, Windows at home. Despite their branding, both of these networks are instantly recognizable to any laptop within a couple of hundred feet. Windows laptops have no trouble with the Apple network at my office, and Apple laptops have no trouble with the Windows network in my house. But the Kensington gadget was clueless about them. It showed a red light or an intermittent green light at distances well short of its advertised 200-foot range. Only when I was practically on top of the wireless transmitters in both locations did the Wi-Fi Finder show an unmistakable detection signal. We cannot recommend the Wi-Fi Finder. Next, Katie tried out a few popular Web sites that claim to help you locate Wi-Fi hot spots in your neighborhood. Some of these Web sites, such as FreeHotSpots.com and WiFiFreeSpot.com, were created specifically for finding free wireless hot spots. The term "free" usually means that the network was set up by an individual who wants to share. We logged onto the WiFiFreeSpot.com site and found free networks listed in every state except South Dakota. In addition, hot spots around the world were listed, including some in Canada, Europe and Asia. We selected our home town of Washington, D.C., and found seven free hot spots listed alongside corresponding addresses and phone numbers and, in some cases, Web sites of the hot spots' operators. To test WiFiFreeSpot.com's accuracy, Katie visited two of the listed coffee shops, bought a couple of chai lattes, and a minute later was checking her e-mail. Another site, HotSpotList.com, lists all hot spots in your area, not just the free ones, though those are listed as well. This site has a section that lets you type in your exact address to search for nearby spots, but when Katie typed in her home address and our office address, nothing came up. Instead, we used the "browse by region" method. Our search of Washington, D.C., retrieved 63 hot spots, including the ones we had checked out from WiFiFreeSpot. The "Networks" section tells you which of several big commercial Wi-Fi networks each hot spot is using -- such as Boingo, Wayport and T-Mobile. Five of the 63 spots listed on HotSpotList.com were listed as "Independent," meaning they don't require a fee. But the most comprehensive Wi-Fi locator Web site that we tested was Intel's intel.com/go/hotspots site. If you can ignore the plethora of advertisements for Intel's new Centrino chip set, you'll find this search engine quite useful. After you type in your specific address, a list of nearby hot spots is retrieved. The list displays the provider and pricing information for each location, as well as details on how to register for the service at that spot. Intel found over 100 hot spots within a 10-mile radius of Katie's apartment, including the two we had spot-checked for accuracy. Both WiFiFreeSpot.com and HotSpotList.com allow anyone to submit a hot spot for the site by filling out a brief form that asks questions about the location. They do not guarantee the accuracy of the listings, but claim that user feedback helps weed out any nonworking spots. So, next time, instead of wondering if your local hangout is Wi-Fi equipped, just look it up.

To: mishedlo who wrote (38645)	10/6/2005 7:18:04 PM
From: CalculatedRisk	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 116555

BLS: Numbers tomorrow will be worthless ... NEW YORK (Dow Jones)--Hurricane Katrina was the most costly natural disaster to hit the U.S. economy in terms of property destruction and disruption of economic activity. In this regard, it's not surprising that the Labor Department will make an unprecedented change in the way it compiles the jobs data for September that will show a negative effect, but may increase uncertainty about the economy's true health. The closely-watched payroll employment data are estimated each month from a sample of some 160,000 businesses and government agencies covering roughly 400,000 worksites. But the widespread disruption to normal activity - and most importantly the evacuation of New Orleans - raises the prospect that collection of this data for September will be faced with huge problems. The Labor Department has explained how it intends to handle the data gathering in the affected area and has tried to indicate how these policies could affect the September jobs report. As reported by Dow Jones Newswires on Friday, the Labor Department's Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) will make special estimates for jobs in the Hurricane Katrina-affected region, which may result in understating employment. Where possible, the BLS will use employment data for an affected worksite from the headquarters outside the area if the local contact can't be reached. But it pointed out in a special notice that "if there are sample units that BLS is unable to contact in the most heavily impacted disaster areas (Labor) will assume that the business is not operating and therefore has an employment level of zero. This carries some risk of overstating employment loss." This is different from how it typically handles non-reporters, which ironically is often a special problem in September. Usually, if the payroll sample for a particular industry has 10,000 reporting firms in it but in a particular month the number falls to 9,900, BLS calculates the percentage change for the 9,900 that reported in both months and then extrapolates that change for the full 10,000 sample. This is typically a problem in September because of late-reporting school districts and has historically resulted in a tendency for the month's employment totals to be revised up. The likely geographic concentration of non-reporting firms this September makes the usual adjustment for late-reporting firms inappropriate. Some jobs in the most affected areas certainly were lost. In fact, there are eight counties in Alabama, 31 parishes in Louisiana and 47 counties in Mississippi the the Federal Emergency Management Agency designated as "most affected." There are 145,341 worksites, or 1.7% of the national total, located in these areas accounting for 2,424,194 payroll jobs, or 1.9% of the national total. Expectations Of Large Declines An extremely partial survey of nine economists who have made preliminary forecasts yields a median estimate of a decline of 168,000 in September payrolls in contrast to the increase of 187,000 averaged over the 12 months through August. One economist who has made a forecast of 220,000 job losses for September is Dave Greenlaw of Morgan Stanley in New York, who explained how he arrived at that estimate. "We are guessing that about 400,000 individuals lost their jobs and did not receive a paycheck during the September survey period," he said. The firm's expectation for payrolls growth ex-Katrina is 180,000 - about in line with the trend over the past year and a half. Greenlaw recognizes that any people who did remain on the payrolls - even if they did no work - would be counted among the employed.