900 Issues and a Free Ebook on Wi-Fi

We like to announce some major infrastructure change when we hit a milestone like our 900th issue, but we weren’t able to align our schedule with the numbers this year, largely because we had a window in August that allowed us to launch our site redesign in early September (see “Designing a Modern Web Site for TidBITS,” 2007-09-10). We had hoped to roll in some refinements that we have in the works for this issue, but those plans fell victim to the need to prepare Take Control content for the coming of Leopard, presumably later this month. So we’re throwing numeric neatness to the wind for our 900th issue, but we didn’t want to leave you empty-handed.

So as a little something to commemorate the occasion, we’re giving away an ebook version of “The Wireless Networking Starter Kit, Second Edition,” which Glenn Fleishman and I wrote in 2004. It’s a bit out of date in places, of course (which we’ve addressed by publishing “Take Control of Your 802.11n AirPort Extreme Network” and “Take Control of Your Wi-Fi Security“), but a lot of the book remains accurate, interesting, and useful. You’ll find information about troubleshooting wireless networks, basic home networking, long-range
wireless networking, and a lot more. It’s a 13.6 MB download, and has a full set of bookmarks and internal links to make PDF navigation easier. For another perspective on this release, read Glenn’s “An Electronic Book Giveaway: 2003, a Disaster; 2007, a Pittance” (2007-10-09), in which he muses about how the bandwidth landscape has changed since he nearly bankrupted himself by giving away an ebook.