Nearly all smartphones, particularly more recent ones, have the ability to connect to a Wi-Fi network such as a public hot spot or even a home internet connection. However, the problem arises when you need to access the internet but there’s no Wi-Fi connection within range – what do you do?

There are several apps available from app stores on Android and iOS that can help you access the internet when you need it most, whether they turn your mobile into a modem or guide you to the nearest hotspot.

JiWire Wi-Fi Finder

This app does pretty much what it says on the tin – it finds Wi-Fi connections. There are nearly half a million Wi-Fi hotspots around the world, yet when you need one, you can never find one.

The Wi-Fi Finder app allows you to search for free and paid hotspots that are in your area, call the location, and even get directions to it. Available for free on Android and iPhone.

Wi-Fi Fixer

If you find that you often have problems with blocked, disabled or disconnected Wi-Fi connections then this app is the perfect solution.

It maintains your Wi-Fi connection automatically and works around the bugs blocking your internet access. Available for £0.60 on Android

Y5 Battery Saver

Leaving your Wi-Fi connection open drains your battery leaving you caught short when you need to call a cab home or check emails.

However, this little app turns your Wi-Fi connection on and off automatically when you save that specific connection, meaning that you don’t have to worry about switching Wi-Fi on and off all the time or a drained battery. Available for free on Android.

MyWi

Sometimes you will find yourself miles away from the nearest Wi-Fi hotspot, you will need to tether your smartphone. The iPhone app MyWi allows you to create a Wi-Fi hotspot immediately, allowing you to connect your laptop/computer to a connection straight away.

This app has been voted the best tethering app available but it does come at a cost. Available for $19.99 on iPhone

Guest Author: This is a guest article from Choose, a site that can help users find mobile phone deals as well as the best broadband deals in the UK.

There are now a multitude of options for those looking to get internet access with 3G and the one you choose has consequences in terms of price and ease as well as the for the eventual speed of your connection.

Using Simple SIM For 3G Connection

The first option is simple: if your device is a 3G enabled mobile phone, smartphone, tablet or netbook then you can probably just stick in a SIM and get going.

A SIM card has the lowest upfront cost of any of these ways to get online – it’s usually free, in fact – and ongoing costs tend to be low too, particularly if you get data as part of a contract.

Whether you go for PAYG or pay monthly it’s also one of the most efficient ways to get online since there’s no device to fiddle about with. SIM is no good if you want to connect multiple devices all at once, though. For that, see the MiFi section below.

The other downside is that larger, older computers and laptops tend not to be 3G-enabled. However, if you have a mobile phone that is, tethering means you can connect them remotely by SIM (see last section) or, particularly if you want to use more data, there’s always a USB device.

Is USB Good For 3G Connectivity?

USB modems are the traditional way to connect a computer to 3G mobile broadband.

The downside is that there is usually a small upfront fee for the device but the upside is that this (and connecting via MiFi, below) is the cheapest way to get online with a fairly large data allowance.

Allowances tend to go up to 15GB a month, as much as many home broadband connections, while SIM contracts usually only offer a few GB, rarely more than 3.

Is An External 3G Modem [MiFi] Good Enough?

A MiFi device or external 3G modem as it’s sometimes called does one job: it picks up 3G signal and converts it to a WiFi signal. That means, just like using a wireless router at home, MiFi users can connect multiple devices all at once.

But there are two problems:

The first is that mobile wireless broadband offer a fairly slow connection and converting that signal into an even more inefficient signal makes it slower still.

The second is that there’s a much higher cost for MiFi than with any other way to get online using mobile broadband. If you go PAYG expect to pay at least three times what you would for a USB and when signing up for a contract bear in mind that the price of the ‘free’ device is built into the monthly cost.

Tethering Your iPhone 3G As a Wireless Modem

Finally, here’s another sneaky way to connect a few devices.You might already have heard ways to tether your iPhone 3G to your laptop or tips to use your iPhone 3G as a wireless modem. Using a 3G-enabled mobile phone to connect a computer to mobile broadband via WiFi or USB is known as tethering. However, note that some mobile carriers have rules against tethering so check before you connect.

Guest Author: This is a guest article by Julia Cook, who is a staff writer for Chooseisp, a site that helps users to compare broadband deals and decide between providers like Sky or Virgin.

Choosing the best high-speed Internet service (ISP) should be as easy as it sounds but this has posed a big problem for people. When talking about getting good internet access in their locality some people don’t even know where to start from and not to talk of getting the best internet access in their locality.

Tips on Choosing the Best High Speed Internet Connection

Getting the best internet access in your area can be as easy as taking water if you know the right steps to follow. And if these steps are wonderfully followed, you will be glad you followed them. If you are among those that don’t know where to start from when talking about getting good internet access in your area, then this post is for you. In this post, I shall be analyzing to you some points to take into consideration in order to get the best internet access in your locality.

Compare The Internet Service Provider’s Price

Many people don’t think of what it would cost them on the long run before jumping for an internet service provider. To find the best price on Internet Service and to get a good internet connection/access, as there have been hundreds of them out there, you need to exercise some patience so that you don’t regret you actions in the future. The importance of considering the price of an internet access is not because of the immediate but of the future.

You might have a deep pocket now and feel that you can afford anything but you need to put it to mind that whichever internet access you go for now is what you are going to use tomorrow. Before you go for that internet access you saw its advertisement on TV, sit back and think if you would be able to pay for the subscription fee in the next twelve months without hitches.

Know What You Need

Another important thing you need to put to heart when about to choose an internet access is your need and not just what you want. To know what you need is very important because the reason you are going to get that internet access is because you need it and not just because you like it.

If you don’t know what you need an internet access for it will be better for you to sit back and think of what you want to do on the internet first. Do just need it to chat with friends? Or do you need it to watch videos? You just have to know what you need an internet access for and you are good to go.

Do Your Homework; Do Some Research

It is important to do researches about a service before you go for it. The little you heard about that internet access is not enough to make you sure about what you can benefit from it. Once you hear about an internet access try to do some researches about it. and also don’t forget to make sure that their broadband connection is secure. Don’t just trust anything you see or hear from people or advertisements. The research you do on your own will go a long way to help keep you on safe sides.

Read Reviews By Critics

Every internet access out there must have criticisms and reviews — speed of connectivity, security, reliability, ease of access, price — look for these points in the reviews. Criticisms about whatever internet access you are aiming to shop will give you some critical guidelines against making serious mistakes. And whenever you read or listing to criticisms about a particular internet access, you have to compare it to other forms of criticisms and look at the favorable aspects of it because most criticisms might not be true as they seem to.

Guest Author: This is a guest article by Paul who helps you find out who are the best internet providers. Like Paul you can also write for us and get more visitors and earn as well!

While Wi-Fi has made it common to connect to the Internet wirelessly, a mobile broadband router makes it even easier to connect and share a connection with others on the go.

Using such technology allows several users to share one high speed 3G or 4G Internet connection anywhere there is an accessible Wi-Fi signal. Mobile hotspots, which are self-contained devices featuring an internal rechargeable battery, offer true plug-and-play wireless Internet access, typically for up to five people, on one connection.

Wireless connections aren’t new. We’ve been using them at home and at work for several years. But the ability to take that connection with you, anywhere, can be a real boost. That’s exactly what you get with a mobile hotspot and router.

So how is the use of wireless mobile broadband routers affecting the sale of mobile hotspots? Not surprisingly, in a favorable way. And one that is expected to continue to increase over the next five years.

Mobile wireless is already a multi-billion industry. According to Anything Research, by 2015 wireless communication sales are expected to more than double compared to sales in 2010. This trend is due largely to the advance of high speed mobile routers which allow connections to be shared among families or groups of employees.

With nearly every high tech gadget from cameras to smartphones and everything in between being Wi-Fi enabled, it’s no wonder mobile hotspots have become so popular. Not only can such a connection be shared among several users, but it can be shared with any device that can connect wirelessly as well.

When you combine the advantages of Wi-Fi (easy high speed access and secure connections) with the advantages of mobile broadband (shared account and portable access), it’s easy to understand why the resulting “Intelligent Mobile Hotspot” has become so popular in such a short time.

With the introduction of mobile hotspot devices, the dream of being able to connect several devices or users over one single account has been realized. There’s no longer a need to search for public Wi-Fi. Now, users can simply plug in the hotspot, and connect to the Internet wherever they are via a wireless broadband router. The impact on sales is obvious. The impact on society is yet to be seen.

Every computer needs a firewall, especially ones that are used at work. For a big company, there is a more serious threat of someone from outside accessing information or giving your whole network a virus. Companies can use the firewall to control how the network is used by, for example, only allowing or blocking certain computers to access their web servers. Many companies use a thin client so they can control what content is pre-loaded and can be installed onto a work machine alongside their firewall.

How A Firewall Works To Keep Your System (PC) Safe?

There are several different types of firewalls and they each work a little bit differently:

Packet Filtering – This is a system where data enters the system through chunks or packets. The loose stuff that’s not connected (which is often the malware trailing along) is tossed out.

Proxy Service – With proxy service, the firewall gets the data from the internet and then sends it to the system that’s requesting it.

Stateful Inspection – This is a new style of firewall where it analyzes the packets of data by checking it against a database of known malware.

Your firewall also analyzes the data that comes from your computer to the net. It looks for similar patterns of data. When it receives data that doesn’t fit into these patterns, it keeps it out.

It protects your computer from all kinds of bad stuff. It’s a long list that includes viruses, spam, remote login, programs that contain hidden bugs (application backdoors), e-mail bombs, source routing, SMTP session hijacking and much more.

How To Get The Best Firewall For Your Computer?

There are two ways to go if you want to get a firewall. You can either download a free one from an open source community, or pay for a licensed program. Of course, the paid ones are better, but a free one will block lots of nasty stuff. The main thing you miss with a free one is the customer support and upgrades.

Here is a List of Top 6 Best Antivirus Protection (2011) Software

A great free firewall program is Comodo Internet Security. It’s known as one of the hardest working firewalls out there and was named as PC Magazine Online’s Editor’s Choice. The most popular paid firewall programs are Zone Alarm Pro 2010 and Outpost Firewall. Both have lots of handy features and are easy to use.

Guest Author: This is a guest article by Steven Papas who is the owner of VeryBestSoftware.net where one can find reviews for known Internet Security and Parental Control software as well as the Norton 360 5.0 coupon and Acronis coupons.

Vice president, Dadi Perlmutter, of Intel’s Mobility Group, hopes to ship an optical cable, called Light Peak, by 2010. Light Peak will first be introduced into the market as being able to transfer data at 10 gigabits per second. Future versions will be able to transfer data at 40 and 100 gigabits per second as the manufacturing process becomes cheaper.

There’s a reason that the Internet backbone is made of fiber-optic cables: photons transport bits of information faster than electrons. But while photons and fiber are the most efficient way of sending data across continents, it’s still cheaper and easier to use electrons in copper wiring for most data transfer over shorter distances. A single Light Peak cable will be capable of transporting multiple types of data simultaneously such as transferring data to a hard drive, connecting to the internet and transferring video.

Each end of the Light Peak cable will be connected to chips that contain light producing devices, encode data, and transmit data. The chips will also amplify data and convert the light to electrical signals.

Researchers are hopeful that silicon photonics will eventually replace copper wires on motherboards and microprocessors by making high-bandwidth connectors cheaper.

The first generation of Light Peak cables will use the same type of optical chips used in telecommunication devices today. Intel will be able to drive down the cost of these chips because the manufacturing standards are less stringent.

The lasers and detectors inside the chips are not required to be high performing. The chips don’t need to transmit data over great distances as required in the telecommunication industry.

Intel is currently working with other companies to form partnerships. Sony is supportive of Intel’s Light Peak technology, with more announcements coming.

Additional information can be found at Intel’s Tech Research