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.

Sometimes it seems like we have been ripped off in regards to the future we were promised so long ago. You know, how we were supposed to have humanoid robots in every home and hover cars all over the skies. Those things are coming for sure, it’s just alot slower then we thought. At least the video phone is here and getting better all the time.

Creative’s WiFi Video Phone seems just like those futuristic video phones we’ve seen in movies and TV. It will allow you to have typical audio conversations as well as video conversations. Some of the specs are: WiFi, Integrated webcam, 7-inch display, H.264 video, VOIP, Audio and video out, Contact list, as well as a Calls list. No info on pricing or availability, but it should be fairly soon.

Finding a Wi-Fi signal won’t be a hassle anymore with this watch, plus it actually manages to look good. It will give you the wi-fi signal strength at the push of a button. The strength is displayed as a number from 0 to 8 and lets you know if you need to move a little closer to the access point.

The Watch also has some other features like an alarm and countdown timer, plus a bright EL backlight. To me it’s main selling point is that it actually looks good while finding Wi-Fi. It’s not just a weight for your wrist that’s been hit by the ugly stick and given a strap. The price is a very respectable $30. Never be without Wi-Fi again.

Samsung and T-Mobile are teaming on a new mobile phone which supports the latter’s HotSpot @Home service for placing calls over 802.11 wireless networks. The Samsung Katalyst is priced around $80 with rebate and service plan.

The Samsung Katalyst is a slider style cell phone which lets you make calls over wireless Internet networks such as those found on your home network or at T-Mobile Hotspots. The call can be carried over to T-Mobile’s regular network when one leaves a wireless zone. One can instant message with others on several different networks using the Katalyst and also make use of wireless Bluetooth technology for hands-free communication.

JetBlue recently announced that they along with Yahoo and RIM will be offering internet access through Wi-Fi connections during their flights. The airline is currently going to run a trial of the service giving passengers free, in-flight access to their Yahoo email and IM services and allowing Blackberry users access to email and IM as well, but phone calls using the mobile devices are still prohibited. If the trial goes well JetBlue expects to give full Wi-Fi access to passengers, making those long trips much more tolerable and productive for many business travelers. Even though cell-phone use is still not allowed passengers could possibly make VoIP calls through services like Skype.

Since JetBlue made their announcement other airlines have also now announced plans to offer Wi-Fi internet access to passengers during flights. American Airlines (AA) has released information of their intent to partner with AirCell to provide broadband speed internet through Wi-Fi connections to its passengers. Testing has already began and the service would start on some transcontinental flights and eventually spread to all AA flights if the trials work out. AA says they will offer the Wi-Fi service for $10 fee as apposed to a free service as JetBlue is planning, but for many business travelers the amount of work that could be accomplished on long flights would far outweigh the small fee. They hope to have access available to all passengers as soon as 2008.

If, for some reason, your laptop doesn’t have an 802.11 wireless card installed or you find yourself still banging around with 802.11b, you might want to consider this gadget from Asus. This computer gear manufacturer is has announced the Asus WL-160N, a wireless USB-based solution with 802.11n functionality.

The Asus WL-160N connects to a PC through a USB 2.0 connection to offer its host the latest 802.11n draft 2.0 specifications as well as being backwards compatible with 802.11b/g speeds. It’s described as the world’s smallest 802.11n USB 2.0 card, making it fairly portable inside a laptop bag. It uses MIMO technology to get a throughput of over 100Mbps.

Today hField technologies announced the release of a new version of their Wi-Fire long range USB Wi-Fi adapter that is now compatible with Windows Vista. The Wi-Fire adapter works with any 802.11 b/g and provides a high gain directional antenna so you can pick up Wi-Fi signals from a lot further away than most adapters and often get faster transfer speeds.

According to hField, the adapter can pick up Wi-Fi signals from as far as 1,000 feet away, which is about 3 times the distance most other standard adapters. The device is fairly small measuring only 3×4 inches and can stand alone or be mounted on the top of your notebook. It can also be folded up to store easily in your notebook case.