Subtweeting, probably. (Photo: Flickr)

Now social media editors can finally afford to leave their desks and shower. The MTA is announcing later today that it's rolling out cell and Wifi service to 30 additional subway stops, including Times Square, Columbus Circle, and Rockefeller Center. Prior to today, the only stations that offered the free service included the C & E platform at 23rd Street, two stops on the L line, and several platforms at the 14th Street station.

Other stations that went online today include stops from 18th Street to 96th Street on the West Side. The rollout was expected to debut by the end of 2012, but it was delayed because of damage from Superstorm Sandy. The network is being built by Transit Wireless, which currently only has deals with AT&T and T-Mobile, so those using other telco networks are SOL for now. (There's always the Wifi to piggyback off!) (Update: Verizon Wireless emailed us writing that the company is working to "finalize an agreement" with the MTA to bring cell service to some stations.)

Today's announcement is phase one of the MTA's and Transit Wireless' grand plan. Stations in Queens and Midtown Manhattan are expected to be wired sometime in 2014, followed by the East Side and the Bronx the year after. It's part of the transit authority's promise to have all of its 400+ stations wired by 2016.

Now, if that "totally harmless" gas that the MTA is releasing soon is Bahama Breeze scented, then we might never complain again.

This is the best pic. (Photo: Indian Colleges)

If you're a computer-savvy college student, one way to illustrate that your university wifi network is terribly insecure is to write letters to the dean expressing your concerns. Another way is to simply hack the network and have all traffic redirect to gay porn.

The News Herald reports that a 26-year-old student attending Florida State University Panama City is now facing felony charges after hacking into the school's wifi network and sending everyone who accessed it to notorious shock site Meatspin.com. The student, Benjamin Blouin, wanted to make a point about the dangers of having an open wifi network. Now that he subjected scores of students and faculty to the horror of Meatspin, the university has decided to require students to login in order to use the network.

Mr. Blouin was quite satisfied with this outcome, despite the fact that he's facing jail time. "“That’s how it should be,” he told The News Herald. “That’s how it is on every campus.”

Just another story for @_FloridaMan.

Let us praise the lowly tater. (flickr/graibeard)

The list of things that go well with potatoes is almost endless. We can prove that by noting that now that list even includes wifi. Boeing engineers, in an effort to improve wifi transmission during flight, have been using tons of potatoes to test connectivity and signal distribution.

Boeing uses truckloads of Idaho's finest because humans apparently have a lot more in common with potatoes than just a tendency to sit there on the couch:

The tubers mimic the way the human body responds to electronic signals, so engineers at Boeing's Test & Evaluation Laboratory used the spud-filled plane to try out the new methods without requiring hundreds of people to sit in the aircraft.

CNN reports that once engineers were satisfied with their tater-based testing, they checked their test results with slightly less starchy actual human beings.

The tests all relate back to operational safety. A Boeing spokesman told CNN that "an engineer who is concerned with getting every passenger a really good network signal can see if the weak signals are propagating through the airplane with enough power to provide" passengers with usable wifi.

The potatoes used in the tests are donated to food banks.

So the next time you eat fries while Instagramming your snack via in-flight wifi, spare a thought for the eminently useful and noble spud.

(Photo: Caters News Agency)

The Gmail app for iPad and iPhone got an upgrade. [Gmail Blog]

Despite the cluttered app market, half of all revenue from the app store goes to just 25 developers. [The Register]

Techstars company Karma has launched its $79 4G mobile hotspot that rewards users for sharing their connection. [TechCrunch]

If the Curiosity Rover can last eight more years, it will get a friend. NASA plans to send another rover to Mars in 2020. [BBC]

Why walk or drive to work when you could trampoline? [The Guardian]

So close to this, you guys. (Photo: Pinterest, duh)

Actually, being in the billion dollar startup club kind of sucks. [New York Times]

Any person with children who purchases a computer in the U.K. will be forced to apply anti-porn safety controls to it, because there's absolutely no way kids who want to look at porn will be able to get around that. [Daily Mail]

Cisco balls so hard they just dished out $1.2 billion in cash for Meraki, a wifi startup. [TechCrunch]

How did nerds impact the election? Turns out 30,000 Redditors registered to vote after President Obama linked to a voter registration page in his AMA. [The Atlantic]

According to U.S. search results, Americans care more about Twinkies than the Israel/Gaza conflict. We are all the worst. [Virtus Machina]

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The august and proper BBC News has taken a look at a new and lurking scourge found in thickly settled neighborhoods throughout the world: passive-aggressive wifi names.

Many wifi users stick with something simple, like "Home" or the name of their router ("NETGEAR01"), but wifi networks in some neighborhoods reveal a world of what the BBC aptly terms "bite-sized self-expression."

The BBC reports that these expressions may be used to embarrass or complain about the neighbors:

"'We can hear you having sex' apparently appears with a degree of regularity across Britain and Ireland, according to OpenSignalMaps."

However, wifi names are also being used to express political affiliation.

OpenSignalMaps has a large database of wifi names and has also found that many wifi users choose names that act as digital bumper stickers broadcasting political opinions, particularly opinions about President Barack Obama. Some examples include: "BARAKobama," "DEFEND_AMERICA-FIGHT_OBAMA," "Al-Qaeda HQ. Obamas an Idiot."

OpenSignalMaps surveyed these sentiments and discovered that in the United States, 401 Obama-related wifi names revealed positive feelings about the president and 355 appeared to show a negative opinion.

Based on wifi-name selection abroad, the president is apparently very popular overseas, with 100 percent wifi popularity in countries like India and Brazil.

Obama's wifi popularity abroad won't be much help come November 6th, but at least no one has found a wifi signal near the White House that says something like "We can hear the Obamas having sex."

Sorry y'all. (Photo: News.au)

Oh, to be a fly on the wall in the meeting when Tim Cook decided a product he'd overseen was terrible enough to warrant a public apology. The (faux?) humility, the palpable disappointment.

In a letter published to the Apple website and addressed to customers, Mr. Cook apologized for the frustration that the widely-panned Apple maps has caused.

However, tech journalists everywhere are still waiting for an apology from Mr. Cook for having such a boring story dominate the news cycle, as well as giving Google a reason to act ever more smug.

In the letter, Mr. Cook wrote:

At Apple, we strive to make world-class products that deliver the best experience possible to our customers. With the launch of our new Maps last week, we fell short on this commitment. We are extremely sorry for the frustration this has caused our customers and we are doing everything we can to make Maps better.

Mr. Cook said the team is working furiously to improve maps, but suggested alternatives while they're working on them. This has to be the first time an Apple CEO has recommended using a competitor's product. "While we’re improving Maps, you can try alternatives by downloading map apps from the App Store like Bing, MapQuest and Waze, or use Google or Nokia maps by going to their websites and creating an icon on your home screen to their web app," he wrote. Awkward.

Meanwhile, Mr. Cook has yet to address iOS 6's reported wifi issues, which have left some customers unable to connect to networks. The Verge pointed us to a long thread on the Apple help forums where many users lament their newly upgrade device's inability to get wifi. No word on when that will get fixed.

Hear that? It's the rattling ghost of Steve Jobs preparing to haunt Mr. Cook forever.

Pics or it didn't happen. (Photo: Instagram, via TechCrunch)

TechCrunch reports that the fancy-pants Four Barrel Coffee--which doesn't deign to offer Wifi--recently posted a list of rules for patrons. It was promptly posted on Instagram. The luddite baristas then posted an updated list of rules, adding, “No posting this on Instagram, you hipster.” The sign was, once again, promptly posted on Instagram.

If someone posts a screenshot of the TechCrunch post on Instagram, then the entire Internet will disappear in a cloud of self-referential smoke.

(Photo: Shutterstock)

These days, newspapers will seemingly stop at nothing to boost their bottom line. Those Weekender ads are notoriously obnoxious, and we're getting awfully tired of deleting the identification key at the end of a New York Times URL to get around the paywall. But the Wall Street Journal has finally devised a marketing scheme that we can get behind: instituting free wifi throughout our fine city (oh, and in San Francisco).

According to PaidContent, the Journal plans to blanket 70 percent of Manhattan, as well as a chunk of three other boroughs and two neighborhoods in San Francisco, with thousands of free Wifi hotspots. The paper hopes that by providing free Internet to the city's always-on citizens, they'll increase brand recognition and hopefully nab more subscriptions.

PaidContent also notes:

The paper will also garner valuable customer data since non-subscribers must register to access the WiFi. Existing subscribers can simply log-in using their accounts; this too promises to deliver a trove of marketing data about the places that Journal readers frequent.

The Wifi will reportedly be available "through September." Afterwards, you'll probably be stuck fighting for a seat at Starbucks again.

(Photo: Fan Pop)

Just because you want to simulate living in ancient Galilee times doesn't mean you won't want to check your email while doing so. Kfar Kedem park in Israel has outfitted donkeys with wireless routers so that users can check into "My Ass" on Foursquare. Ah, ain't the future grand?