San Francisco to Build Solar Paneled Bus Stops with Wi-Fi

San Francisco is planning on building solar paneled bus stops that offer Wi-Fi. Each stop will cost about $30,000. It sounds more expensive than it actually is when you consider that all of the power that is not used by the stop's billboards and Wi-Fi will be delivered to the city's power grid.

San Francisco’s high-tech bus stops will channel an estimated 43,000 kilowatt-hours per year into the city’s grid. Built-in Wi-Fi routers will help the city create a comprehensive wireless Internet network.

The new shelters’ LED lights use 74.4 watts—four and a half times more efficient than the 336 watts used by the old shelters’ fluorescent lighting.

The city's Municipal Transportation Agency is hoping to install 360 of these stops by the year 2013. [Popular Mechanics]

AT&T Offers Free Wifi Hot-Spot Auto-Authentication

iPhone 3.0 users will have access to free auto-authenticated wifi hot-spots. Basically this means when you walk into a Starbucks, your phone will be connected to the wifi.

iPhone Rumors Continue

The latest rumors for the new (now improbable?) iPhone is that it will support HD video and have Apple TV-like behaviors. The upgrade to supporting HD video is a obvious upgrade to make. But the Apple TV behavior is very interesting.

What this could mean is that the iPhone or iPod Touch could act as a make-shift Apple TV. They envision plugging your iPhone into an Apple AV Dock connected to your HDTV. This would then be able to stream video over Wi-Fi from your computer's iTunes library. This added functionality would skip the time-consuming step of syncing HD videos to the device itself and replicate some of the behavior of the Apple TV.

[MacRumors; image via Gizmodo]

Time for March Madness...on Your iPhone

CBS Sports has announced that they will stream the NCAA tournament games live on the iPhone or iPod Touch via a new app. The app will cost $4.99 and will require you to be on a wi-fi connection.

I know, who the hell is going to pay for it? But that's not the point. The fact that it can and will be done is very cool. I don't expect anyone to pay 5 bucks to watch games on their iPhone or iPod Touch. Especially when you can go online and watch all of the games for free. And, chances are, wherever you have wi-fi, you'll have a TV or computer to watch the games anyway. Either way I'm very excited for 2 things. First that live streaming is taking place on the iPhone and second, for March Madness!

The app itself, will have other features besides just streaming the games. You'll be able to find new stats and breaking news as they come in. If you don't have wifi access, you can still listen to the game over your EDGE or 3G service.

When the tournament is over on April 6th, the app will expire. So, who's willing to pay 5 bucks to watch NCAA action on the iPhone? [Apple Insider]

Now What!

Researchers at the University of Tokyo developed paint that blocks WiFi signals. Useful for people who don't want others stealing their wireless connection. [story and image via Crave]