For the many, many people that have emailed me about Windows 7 and Windows Vista: I have dusted off the code, which apparently I last edited in 2006, and I am now working on a new NetStumbler release that should make you a bit happier. In fact, this release will make many people much happier. Here are some of the long-awaited features that I will include:

1. Use of native WLAN APIs on Vista and Windows 7; please note, though, that the scan results will refresh only about every 20-30 seconds :(
2. Support for Garmin USB GPS, bluetooth GPS
3. Support for kismet drones as data sources (yes, you read that right)

Things I would like to do, but haven't quite finished yet:

1. GPS from gpsd (half done, not very tested)
2. Geographic map display (works, but is disappointing until you can stick a background map on it)
3. A text output format that doesn't suck (the existing text format is the way it is for lengthy historical reasons)
4. Ability to run within Wine on Mac and Linux (this was working, I don't know why it broke)
5. Split the old and crufty NDA-ridden code out into its own binary distribution and open source the rest (this will take a while)

For those of you that are keen to try this new version, stay tuned. Don't expect replies to all your emails. For those that want it right now: no you don't, it's too crashy.

Congratulations to Helium Networks on the launch of their Wireless Recon product. Wireless Recon includes dedicated mapping hardware and software that combine to give you speedy and accurate site surveys. If you've used NetStumbler, then the SiteSense client may look rather familiar to you.
Read the full press release here.

Making effective use of available materials: you can build a cantenna from plastic water bottles, window screen mesh, cheap coax cable, and valve stems.

Brad Templeton suggests extending beacons to include additional local information (lat/long, address, factoids, directions, hotspot info, etc). This is a great idea; I look forward to adding support for it into NetStumbler.

Everybody and their dog seems to be weighing in about Municipal Wi-Fi. Of course, they all have axes to grind and are taking the sides you would expect: the incumbent ISPs, telcos and cable companies are against it (sometimes in the form of poorly veiled "grassroots" organizations), while the community groups, potential users and equipment manufacturers are for it. No surprises, nothing to see here, though the outcome might be interesting.

Softpedia has awarded NetStumbler 5 stars and a Softpedia Pick Award.

According to a very well written and thorough article in the Virginia Journal Of Law & Technology, what we've been saying for over 3 years has been determined to be true: WarDriving is not a crime.

Wow. Slashdot increased my traffic by a factor of 16.
Thanks to netstumbler.com, fastbone.com, Hosted Zone Web Hosting and Mercy Hosting for taking some extra bandwidth!

Since I released NetStumbler 0.3.30, I have experienced birth, death, illness, new job, and increased bandwidth costs. None of these will be helped by the arrival of both NetStumbler and MiniStumbler versions 0.4. Download and enjoy. Sorry it took so long.

There has been much speculation that I've stopped working on NetStumbler and MiniStumbler, but I am working on it. The new version is coming soon. Really.

I've been starting to get emails from people wondering if I'm still alive. Well, I have been just a little too busy to do anything with NetStumbler, but things have quietened down enough that I am working on version 0.4 again. It will will work better and on more cards than ever before. A new MiniStumbler will come with it, and it will work on the Dell CF cards as well as Prism CF and PC cards.

No dates yet, because you've seen what happens when I try to predict them :-)

There is now a Netstumbler mailing list. This list is intended for news and general discussion of NetStumbler, but not for FAQs or general wireless discussion.

To join, send mail to imailsrv@c2security.org with subscribe netstumbler yourfirstname in the body of the message. Many thanks to the folks at www.michiganwireless.org for hosting the list.

The list is archived at http://www.mail-archive.com/netstumbler%40mail.c2security.org/.

Amazon is selling the Viking 256MB CompactFlash Card for about $40 (price varies daily) after rebates.

The folks here at the NetStumbler engineering laboratory got some WiFi Speed Spray. We found that the manufacturer's claims are not quite accurate. The bandwidth of our test equipment, rated at 42 bogobits per second, was not improved, and indeed the spray appears to have caused the laboratory's LAN to launch a denial of service attack on itself. We did find, however, that the spray is good for giving your vehicle that "new car smell". Also it works on children and pets, giving them that "newborn baby smell" and "cute puppy vomit smell".

Finally, there's a well written paper about the characteristics of various WLAN scanning tools.

Thomas Marius Milner was born today, and is in excellent health. His two older sisters are very happy.

I will not be doing any Netstumbler-related work (including answering e-mail) for some weeks, while my family welcomes our new addition.

People have been asking what's going on, so here's an update. A number of things are stopping me getting much work done on [Net|Mini]Stumbler. You may not know that I work on this in my spare time when I have nothing else to do.

My third child will be born any time in the next week or two. Those of you that have children will be aware how frantic things get approaching the birth, and how much time is needed to adjust afterwards. To make things even more busy, a third of the people in my department were laid off last week. This has resulted in an increased work load. So, less time available for writing my own software, and replying to your lovely emails.

This site will give you the most current information available about the development of the NetStumbler and MiniStumbler software.
The general idea is that this will be a highly condensed version of the information that you find at netstumbler.com.
There's not much here yet, so check back soon.