Seeking a replacement solution to those old walkie-talkies you use around your large mansion has arrived in the form of some Wi-Fi enabled handsets. The Ascom i75 Messenger, though mainly targeted towards office and medical settings, could serve you well at home as well.

The Ascom i75 Messenger delivers what Ascom describes as “advanced messaging and highly versatile telephony as well as push to talk capabilities.” It has a virtual SIM-card which lets you hop from one handset to another in case of failure of the one you are using.

You can make your own long-distance WiFi accessory from various items, but Hawking Technologies has another option if hacking isn’t your thing. The Hi-Gain Wireless-300N is a high-gain dish adaptor that will hook up via USB and can apparently extend wireless range by up to 600-percent. Supporting WiFi in b, g and n, they also claim to give you up to twelve times the data.

They are calling it “the most powerful 802.11n USB network adapter on the market”, and it supports WEP, WPA and WPA2 encryption. Another selling point is the dual-antenna. The idea is that you can avoid signal interference by pointing it away from other electronics, though I’m not sure that’s a big problem for most people.

The last notebook I bought was a Dell XPS M1330. Part of the reason I opted for that machine was that I could get a Verizon wireless broadband modem inside the machine. The reason I wanted Verizon was that they would allow me to pay a day rate to use the wireless Internet service rather than paying $70 a month for something I would use a few times per year at most.

I have always wondered why if we can have pre-paid cellular phone service, we can’t have pre-paid wireless Internet? I guess I wasn’t the only who wondering about that, today Slingshot announced that it would be launching a wireless broadband pre-pay service in the US starting in June 2008.

Last week we talked about the completion of Aircell’s coast-to-coast network for providing Internet access to passengers on commercial airlines. This service marks the end of one of the last locations that we can’t get broadband access. You would think if a company could set up a coast to coast network for providing in-flight Internet that we could roll broadband out to rural areas of the country as well, but I digress.

Aircell announced today that it has received two FAA certifications needed before its service can become operational. The first certification is a Supplemental Type Certificate that permits the installation and operating of Aircell’s network on commercially operating Boeing 767-200 aircraft. What’s not clear to me is if that is the only aircraft that is approved to operate the network.

I generally travel a few times per year on business. Once in January to CES in Vegas, E3 in LA in the summer and sometimes to an auto show in the winter. Since I am a through and through Internet guy and spend most of my day online, being on a flight without web access for several hours isn’t a welcome thought for me.

If you are like me and want Internet access while on flights you will like today’s news. Aircell announced today that it has completed its coast-to-coast wireless network to provide seamless, border-to-border coverage providing Internet access to commercial flights in the US.

Personally I find little need for a Wi-Fi detector these days since my phone and my notebook both do a good job of finding open networks. If I can’t find it with one of those I’m not going to be able to use the wireless network, anyway. There are however a number of uses and apparently still a demand for such detectors however, and Canary Wireless has recently launched a second generation model of their Wi-Fi network detector witt he Hotspotter HS-20.

The HS-20 has some simple operation in a small package to pick up as many as 20 Wi-Fi networks at a time. A button on the side turns on the device and it immediately starts scanning for networks. After a few seconds it will display a list of networks that it found, including those that are secure and/or have no SSID broadcasted.

AT&T notched a huge feather in its Wi-Fi cap today as it announced a partnership to add its wireless network as an access option at Starbucks locations. This in effect brings over 7,000 new locations into the AT&T network.

Under the terms of the partnership AT&T and Starbucks will offer two hours of free wireless Internet access per day for Starbucks Card holders. This offering, which will kick in beginning this spring, will also be offered to over 12 million AT&T Internet customers in the more broad form of unlimited access. A similar offering will also soon be made to AT&T Wireless customers.

Revo, a British radio maker, launched the Blik Wi-Fi clock radio late last year providing a clock radio that can pick up local FM stations or over 6,000 internet radio stations around the world. The device connects wirelessly to your home Wi-Fi connection and will list the internet radio stations alphabetically organized by country or music genre.

The Blik can also stream in audio content from the digital audio stored on a PC or Mac through the Wi-Fi network, and can connect directly to an iPod providing simple speakers for your player through the Blik M-port. And of course it works as a clock radio with an alarm, waking you up to your favorite local or internet radio station. It also features a wireless infra-red remote, a jack for headphones and an interesting design that comes in black or white.

AT&T plans to soon make its nationwide Wi-Fi network free to users…provided you are one of its 10 million plus broadband subscribers. No specific date was given for when this offer would be made valid, though the company’s “higher-speed” broadband customers already get this feature.

AT&T, in its announcement, said those who subscribe to its broadband services with downstream speeds of up to 1.5 Mbps, 3.0 Mbps, or 6.0 Mbps will soon be able to get online for free at any of its over 10,000 wireless hotspots. These include locations in retail stores, restaurants and airports. The service provider says this will deliver “an annual saving of $60 for AT&T broadband customers.”

A new game for the Nintendo DS called Metro-Wardive, uses the built-in Wi-Fi to detect hotspot activity around you as usual, but in this case it uses it to generate a unique gaming environment. Wardive captures the wlans in the immediate area like a wardive-tool and creates a game, by reading the names of the hotspots in your immediate area and turning them into enemies which try to take over your wardive-cristal. You fend them off with your touch pen, put your shields up and don’t just stay in one spot for very long.

The idea is to take metro-wardive for a walk through town and see how many enemies are hiding in the area you are in or pass through. Each time you play it captures different data and creates a new level for you.

Say you have a group of people who need all to access the Internet wirelessly. A tech company using the brand iBox2Go has come up with a way to let you do this from about anywhere - an “Internet in a Box” kit. It is called iBox2Go and prices range from around $200 to $350 a month plus wireless charges.

The iBox2Go solution consists typically of a router with wireless connectivity, a high speed wireless modem card, external antenna and wall charger. The kit comes in three configurations depending upon your needs. The included wireless modem card ties you into Sprint and will work either in the special router or directly in your laptop computer.

As part of the announcements at the MacWorld keynote speech today, Steve Jobs introduced the new Apple Time Capsule - a appliance designed to help facilitate wireless, automatic data backups from all the Macs in your home. The device works with machines running the Leopard OS along with the Time Machine software to automatically create back ups of everything on your Mac computer, hourly if you would prefer, and from multiple different Macs.

The Time Capsule coincides well with the launch of the MacBook Air since one of the common needs for an optical drive is to back up data. Since the Air doesn’t have an internal CD or DVD drive the Time Capsule makes a nice solution to provide wireless data backups to the notebook. The integrated software lets users look through history for lost files or even restore the system to a previous point in time.

Haier America (?!) this week used CES as its platform for getting into the wireless MP3 player market. It unveiled a new line up of flash and hard drive based portable media players which make use of online services like Rhapsody to collect content wirelessly. This players are called the ibiza Rhapsody and it is available now in at least a 30GB hard drive model.

The ibiza Rhapsody players for Haier let you, in summary, have “Wi-Fi enabled access to unlimited digital entertainment possibilities. With the ibiza Rhapsody, consumers can now enjoy the Rhapsody digital music service, AOL Video and other digital content from just about anywhere there’s an available Wi-Fi hotspot.” You can also directly subscribe to a variety of podcasts from the player and enjoy an integrated FM radio.

Get the full details after the jump.

In addition to a few other neat robots, WowWee has introduced Rovio, a new “telepresence” robot that’s outfitted with the latest in micro-GPS technology from Evolution Robotics. Rovio has a Wi-Fi-enabled Web-cam that allows you to patrol your home while you’re away, via an Internet-enabled PC, console or mobile phone.

This one is an interesting looking robot. With the new GPS system you can drive the robot with shortcut “go-to” commands. For instance, “go to the dining room”. This makes it easy to control the robot remotely over the Web or even from your mobile phone. It also has what they call a “patrol mode” where it automatically sends you pictures of locations you want to check.

Linsys has a new wireless gaming adapter they are showing off at the annual CES conference this week in Las Vegas, boasting it as the first dual-band wireless-N gaming adapter on the market. The WGA600N rids the need for stringing CAT-5 cable from your router across the house and into the room with your game console(s) by providing a fast wireless adapter to connect them.

The new gaming router from Linksys will connect to the ethernet port of your Xbox, Playstation or Gamecube and bring online gaming or head-to-head matches with other games to your console without having to string the wires. The adapter can then connect to older 802.11a/b/g networks if needed or gets higher bandwidth when its available through a wireless-N network. According to Linksys the setup is pretty simple too, with no drivers needed. Just plug the adapter into the Ethernet port of your console and it will find the network and connect up.