Networking

If you want to share your broadband Internet connection throughout the house, the obvious first choice is a wireless network. But wireless isn't always practical. Sometimes you need wires—like when you have a desktop computer with no WiFi adapter in another room, or there's radio interference blocking the WiFi signal in parts of your home. Or maybe you just aren't getting enough bandwidth for moving around big chunks of data like high-definition video and music files.

Your home wireless network could be broadcasting your personal data to anybody who passes your house. And Google might have already collected some.

Google admitted yesterday that its Street View cars—the vehicles that collect ground-level images for Google Maps—had been a bit more agressive about collecting information about the neighborhoods they drove through than Google had intended. 

If you're an iPhone owner and find yourself hitting the wall with your monthly minutes on phone calls, there's a new application that gives your iPhone a second phone number and flat-rate calling to numbers in the US and Canada.  Even better, it can even turn an iPod Touch into a mobile phone—as long as there's a WiFi signal around.

Here's another reason to use social networking sites responsibly: they could make or break your efforts to find a job.

Forbes reports that 90 percent of recruiters research use Google to research job candidates online, and 46 percent had rejected a candidate based on what they found in that search.