Wi Fi

Your choices in San Francisco hotels are overwhelming. The prices can be too. So during our staff visit to the City by the Bay, we looked for reasonably priced hotels that had charm, location or both. We came back with 14 ideas on places to bed down. It's not a complete list, but it is eclectic, like the city itself. Mystic Hotel. This property, which opened in April, stands on a tunnel-adjacent block of Stockton Street that you'll never see on a picture postcard, yet it has style, as do the Burritt Tavern bar and restaurant downstairs.

Starting May 21, Staples Center, Nokia Plaza and the rest of the at LA Live complex will offer free Wi-Fi. “We are incredibly excited to launch our own Wi-Fi network designed and powered by our partners at Verizon and that we are able to provide our guests with a high-quality connectivity Wi-Fi experience,” said Lee Zeidman, who is senior vice president and general manager of Staples Center, Nokia Theatre and LA Live. Wi-Fi will be available throughout the entire arena including seats, suites and locker rooms, officials said.

After you open a Snapchat image, it disappears. But with the right software, those images can be restored, according to a data retrieval company. Decipher Forensics of Utah says it can extract and restore images sent to Android smartphones on Snapchat even after they have been opened. The company, which specializes in retrieving data that has been deleted, said it can do this by using specialized forensics software to go into the folders used by the Snapchat app. Once it has located the image files, Decipher Forensics then edits the file name in order to restores the images.

Going to a large sporting event usually means you won't have Internet connection until you leave the stadium, but Los Angeles' Staples Center will no longer have that problem. The arena, which is home to the Lakers, Clippers and the Kings, has been outfitted to provide attendees with free Wi-Fi courtesy of Verizon Wireless. Thursday night's NHL playoff game between the Kings and the San Jose Sharks will be the first time users can try out the building's new wireless network. That means the next time you want to check in on Facebook or Foursquare, send out a tweet about Blake Griffin's monster jam, or publish an Instagram of Kobe Bryant, you won't have to wait until your data network gets unclogged.

You probably have a mobile phone with a Bluetooth radio in it, and you may have a Wi-Fi network as well. Soon, you could be using a third wireless networking technology in your house. It's called ZigBee, and it eventually might find its way into more devices than Wi-Fi and Bluetooth combined. In the near term, you're likely to see it show up in the smart meters that utilities have begun to use and in the remote controls of high-end televisions. In the not-too-distant future, you could be using ZigBee networking to control the lights in your home, monitor your elderly parent's health or turn off your air conditioner during periods of peak energy use when no one's home.

The definitive iPhone app for learning about and touring Normandy, France, and D-day sites. Name: Normandy D-Day 1944 Available for: iOS What it does: Offers practical travel tips as well as historical information for visiting the five invasion beaches as well as 100 other locations throughout Normandy. The information is categorized and color-coded by topic: museums, battlegrounds, memorials, cemeteries and historical interest. Cost: $4.99 What's hot: The content was written by journalists who specialize in battlefield tourism, and every location has been visited and researched by the developer On the Spot Locations.

Before flying off to the Democratic National Convention in North Carolina last week, Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa touted the news that Los Angeles International Airport now offers free Wi-Fi service in its terminals. It's good news for travelers, but LAX -- the nation's third-busiest airport -- is not breaking new ground. Several large airports across the country already offer free wireless Internet, including Mineta San Jose International Airport, San Francisco International Airport and Long Beach Airport.

The social network is testing a project called Facebook Wi-Fi that provides free Internet access to customers who have a Facebook account and "check-in" at participating businesses. Businesses such as retail stores and coffee shops near Facebook's California headquarters in Menlo Park are using a router provided free of charge to test out the Wi-Fi program, a Facebook spokeswoman told The Times. When customers come in to a business' location and attempt to access its Wi-Fi network, they can do so by simply using Facebook's "Check In" feature.

Despite the fear of identity theft and threats from computer viruses, the use of public wireless Internet has jumped by 240% in the last 12 months, a new survey has found. The top log-in sites were coffee shops and restaurants (75%), hotels (54%) and airports (38%), according to an online survey of 377 people by the nonprofit Identity Theft Resource Center in partnership with Private Wifi, a firm that develops online protection software. Still, Internet users are aware of the risks of using public Wi-Fi.

Ever wanted to know what your dog was doing all day without having to set up a complicated video camera system? People Power, a Palo Alto software company, has released a mobile app that can easily turn an old iPhone, iPad or iPod Touch into a security camera. The company's free app, Presence, makes it possible for users who have Wi-Fi to set up one Apple device as a video camera and another as a monitor. For instance, a dog owner could take an old iPhone, turn it into a camera and then watch the pooch on an iPad at work.

Need Wi-Fi? Then "check in. " A feature introduced Thursday by Cisco and Facebook allows businesses to give customers access to their Wi-Fi networks when they post that they are at the retail location, or "check in," on the social network. The idea is simple: Rather than charge customers for Internet access, businesses can instead trade their wireless connection for some exposure on Facebook. "Essentially, Facebook Wi-Fi gives people a simple way to access Wi-Fi at local businesses, and it gives local businesses a way to connect with their customers," a Facebook spokeswoman told The Times.

Sometimes happiness is Wi-Fi or a comfy seat rather than just a cheap flight. Name: RouteHappy.com What it does: This website considers more than just ticket price to find you a more pleasant flight. It has computed "happiness scores" for billions of flight combinations across 4,000 airports, 750 airlines, 180 types of planes and 2,200 airline, aircraft and cabin types. What's hot: All the added info. After your flight search result comes up - make sure to scroll over the individual visual cues such as "overall rating," "roomier" for seat pitch, "on demand" for entertainment details and "plugs" for power outlets - click the "more" button for a full page of detailed info.

In a move that could improve the quality of Apple Maps, the Cupertino tech company has purchased WiFiSlam, a Silicon Valley start-up that specializes in indoor mapping. Apple paid $20 million for the acquisition, saying it “buys smaller technology companies from time to time,” according to the Wall Street Journal . Apple, however, did not disclose its plans for the start-up. The 2-year-old WiFiSlam has developed technology that makes it possible for phones to detect users' locations inside buildings by using Wi-Fi signals.

The definitive iPhone app for learning about and touring Normandy, France, and D-day sites. Name: Normandy D-Day 1944 Available for: iOS What it does: Offers practical travel tips as well as historical information for visiting the five invasion beaches as well as 100 other locations throughout Normandy. The information is categorized and color-coded by topic: museums, battlegrounds, memorials, cemeteries and historical interest. Cost: $4.99 What's hot: The content was written by journalists who specialize in battlefield tourism, and every location has been visited and researched by the developer On the Spot Locations.

Most major airlines offer wireless Internet access on some or all of their aircraft. But now airlines are battling over which has the fastest Wi-Fi at 35,000 feet in the air. New York-based JetBlue Airways announced last week that later this year, it plans to offer its passengers a satellite-based Wi-Fi service that is “significantly faster” than other onboard Wi-Fi. Airline executives showed investors a demonstration last week that suggested its new Internet service, powered by Excede, was more than twice as fast as three Wi-Fi competitors'.

Airline travel fees - including charges to check a bag and to board early - have become so prevalent that travelers almost need an advanced degree in mathematics to calculate overall trip costs. Last year at least 36 airline fees increased, and 16 others were redefined, bundled or unbundled with other services, according to a recent study by the consumer travel website Travelnerd. One bright spot in the Travelnerd study of 14 U.S. airlines is that most fee increases were only $5 to $10 each.

Southwest Airlines, the nation's biggest carrier of domestic passengers, doesn't provide its customers with high-tech entertainment systems or in-flight movies, like many of its competitors. But the Dallas-based airline will soon offer professional football and baseball games, at least for passengers who travel with Wi-Fi-enabled laptops or other portable devices. Row 44, the in-flight Internet provider for Southwest, last week announced a deal with the NFL Network to provide live streaming football games, video highlights and analysis for passengers who pay the $5 Internet connection fee. Row 44 has cut a deal to broadcast Major League Baseball games as well.

A pair of high-tech companies is launching the first free, ad-supported, in-flight wireless network, clearing the way for passengers to shop for Paula Abdul's Reach for the Stars Bracelet from the Home Shopping Network or an automatic pet feeder from SkyMall while soaring at 30,000 feet. To be fair, the free wireless network, dubbed SkyTown Center, also will let travelers watch live television, play games and check out information about their destination city. But the real goal of the service -- offered under a partnership between the airborne Wi-Fi provider Row 44 and the online media company JiWire -- is to squeeze a few more dollars from big-spending business travelers.

Your smartphone carries a lot of things that an identity thief would love to have: stored passwords to online accounts, banking information, email addresses and phone numbers. How can you make sure your phone's private data stays private? Adam Levin, cofounder of the Identity Theft 911 website and former director of the New Jersey Division of Consumer Affairs, offers these tips: •Lock your phone with a password. It's the most basic security step, but one that some people skip. Yes, a hacker could break in anyway, but they may not want to bother.

United Airlines has been one of the last major airlines to jump into the business of offering on-board wireless Internet. But it's trying to make up for its tardiness. The Chicago-based carrier offers Wi-Fi in about 3% of its fleet of about 700 planes, one of the lowest rates of any major carrier in the nation, according to a recent study. But United recently became the first U.S.-based international carrier to offer satellite-based Wi-Fi Internet for passengers traveling on long-haul overseas flights.