Wireless pocket snifer

One of the things I really like about a PDA with built-in WiFi, is that you can carry it in your pocket, and have it sniff for wireless networks. When travelling, and wanting to avoid the huge costs of cell-phone based connections, or even commercial HotSpot sertvices, this is a nice way to find a place to connect.

My Palm Tungsten C, will even vibrate in my pocket, when it comes across an open network, thanks to the excellent NetChaser software. The problem with that is of course, that WiFi tends to drain the battery of a PDA pretty quickly, and also that the Tungsten C is a bit expensive if all you're going to use it for is identify networks, before opening up your laptop for some real work ;-)

Enter Kensington
Kensington and their newest product the WiFi Finder. It is a small pocket-sized device that has 3 LEDs that will indicate the presence of a wireless network, and show it's signal strength. Of course, you'd still have to open up your PDA or Laptop to find out whether i is actually possible to connect to the internet through a given wireless network, but it does save you a lot of battery power innthe meantime.