More Than 4,000 Products Wi-Fi CERTIFIED™ by the Wi-Fi Alliance®

Austin, Texas - November 12, 2007 - The Wi-Fi Alliance today announced that more than 4,000 products have been Wi-Fi CERTIFED™ since the testing program began in March of 2000. Growth in the diversity of Wi-Fi-enabled product types, including consumer electronics and dual-mode mobile phones, as well as next-generation 802.11n draft 2.0 products, have led to the certification of more than 1,000 Wi-Fi® products over the last 15 months.

Wi-Fi CERTIFIED testing has grown at a rapid rate as manufacturers of networking and consumer Wi-Fi enabled products seek the Wi-Fi Alliance's "seal of approval" for industry-wide product interoperability and security. Contributing to this growth is the launch of the Wi-Fi CERTIFIED 802.11n draft 2.0 program in June of this year. The Wi-Fi Alliance has certified 140 products for 802.11n draft 2.0 since the program began. This is nearly three times the number of products certified for 802.11a/b/g in the first three months of their respective testing programs.

ABI Research predicts that by 2012, 90% of Wi-Fi chipsets shipped will support 802.11n. The increasing market adoption of this next-generation Wi-Fi technology is helping drive the 802.11n draft 2.0 certification rate.

"Wi-Fi has become a ubiquitous technology that is part of our daily lives, whether we are connecting at home, at work, at an airport, at a park, or at a local coffee shop. Wi-Fi CERTIFIED brings more confidence that Wi-Fi products will work together and have the latest security protections on board," said Karen Hanley, senior director of the Wi-Fi Alliance. "By offering Wi-Fi CERTIFIED products, manufacturers and telecom carriers help ensure higher customer satisfaction, which ultimately improves their bottom lines."

Market forecasts indicate rapid growth of Wi-Fi technology is set to continue into the future. ABI Research predicts as many as 1.2 billion Wi-Fi chipsets will ship in 2012. Of those shipments, more than 500 million are estimated to be in mobile handset devices and 326 million in consumer electronics. The research firm also predicts that in 2012, the Wi-Fi industry will generate more than $19 billion in Wi-Fi products in services.

"The 4,000 Wi-Fi CERTIFIED products milestone illustrates the growing awareness and value of the Wi-Fi CERTIFIED brand as well as manufacturers' commitment to provide users a positive experience with Wi-Fi-enabled products," said Stan Schatt, vice president and research director, Networking, ABI Research.

Consumers and enterprise users of Wi-Fi products can find a comprehensive list of the more than 4,000 Wi-Fi CERTIFIED products -- phones, gaming devices, cameras, laptops, access points and more

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VoIP

Voice over Internet Protocol, also called VoIP (pronounced voyp), IP Telephony, Internet telephony, Broadband telephony, Broadband Phone and Voice over Broadband is the routing of voice conversations over the Internet or through any other IP-based network.

Companies providing VoIP service are commonly referred to as providers, and protocols which are used to carry voice signals over the IP network are commonly referred to as Voice over IP or VoIP protocols. They may be viewed as commercial realizations of the experimental Network Voice Protocol (1973) invented for the ARPANET providers. Some cost savings are due to utilizing a single network to carry voice and data, especially where users have existing underutilized network capacity that can carry VoIP at no additional cost. VoIP to VoIP phone calls are sometimes free, while VoIP to public switched telephone networks, PSTN, may have a cost that is borne by the VoIP user.

Voice over IP protocols carry telephony signals as digital audio, typically reduced in data rate using speech data compression techniques, encapsulated in a data packet stream over IP.

There are two types of PSTN to VoIP services: Direct Inward Dialing (DID) and access numbers. DID will connect the caller directly to the VoIP user while access numbers require the caller to input the extension

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iPhoto '08

The new version of iPhoto ditches the old idea of "film rolls" for "events," collections of photos themed by day or time. Events are automatically generated by date, with some flexibility as to where to draw the lines; you can then merge or split events to make them more accurate. Think of them as the raw material for albums. Once you have, say, 176 photos in your "Miami Trip" event, you can flick your mouse over the event's thumbnail to "skim" through the included pics, or expand the event to full screen to pick out the photos you want. The date-focused events also take the place of a timeline. Skimming through and merging events was speedy, even in my 20,000-photo library. I ran into only one problem: iPhoto relies heavily on EXIF data from your digital camera, and if the camera put the wrong dates on your photos, pictures will be spewed all over your timeline; fortunately, it's possible to batch-change dates by hand. Still, I'd recommend making sure the date is right in your camera if you're going to be upgrading to iLife '08.

iPhoto '08 keeps iPhoto's basic, easy-to-use editing tools (including a blemish remover and flexible sharpness and noise-reduction filters) and adds a new one: a "straighten" command that lets you rotate a photo freely until it's right.

The '08 version expands iPhoto's printing and sharing options, too. New printed book options include a spiral-bound softcover, there are new greeting-card styles, and there's a one-touch button to publish to a slick AJAX-enabled gallery on your .Mac account or to autogenerate iWeb pages.

On the Windows side, Sharpcast and Phanfare do similar tricks, and Sharpcast is free. But no other program brings together all the pieces of management, printing and sharing in something quite so fun and easy to use. For Mac users, there's no better option than the new iPhoto

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