Scannify: New Android App from Connectify

Discover, manage, and connect to devices on your Wi-Fi network!

Scannify is an easy-to-use application that allows you to see and interact with your whole personal area network, right from your Android mobile device. With the flick of a finger, this powerful app shows you every computer, tablet, smartphone, and all other devices connected to your Wi-Fi network. Simply select a device, and Scannify displays all services running on the host that are available to your Android phone or tablet. Now you can see who’s on your network, share files with a desktop PC, or use your smartphone as an iTunes remote, all from this one convenient app.

Scannify even allows you to drop widgets right onto the Android desktop. This exciting feature gives you one-touch access to frequently used peers and services. Just navigate to the Android desktop and hold your finger down on an empty space to activate the Android desktop menu. Then select ‘Widget’ and choose the Scannify widget from the desktop menu. Now you can make custom widgets for any device on your network. For even quicker access, create widgets that directly launch host services like Remote Desktop directly from your Android desktop.

Head over to the Android Market to download Scannify Lite. With this version, you can discover all of the devices on your Wi-Fi network, and even connect to web services running on remote machines. Upgrading to Scannify Premium unlocks powerful features while also removing ads from the user interface. The Premium version of Scannify will allow you to not only see who is on your Wi-Fi network but also connect to services such as:

• Web (HTTP and HTTPS)
• Music streaming (DAAP, all versions of iTunes prior to 7.0, and most other non-iTunes music software)
• File sharing via FTP, TFTP, or FTPS
• Remote Desktop (VNC)
• Remote Shell (Telnet and SSH)

Download Scannify today, and get the most out of your Personal Area Network!

Connectify and the Eye-Fi

I recently had a “chocolate and peanut butter” moment about the power of Connectify and the Wi-Fi Personal Area Network.

If you’re not familiar with the Eye-Fi card, it's a SD memory card with a built in Wi-Fi radio.  As you take pictures with your camera, it automatically connects to your WiFi network and uploads the pictures to either your PC or an online photo-sharing site.   Your camera does not need to be aware of the Eye-Fi or network at all: it’s just saving pictures to an SD card, the same as always.

A truly neat device for anyone who is into photography… except that it needs to be bound to your WiFi network. Since it’s just an SD card with no user interface, to change networks when you go from place to place it needs to be connected to your PC to change settings.  Also, because it doesn’t have a browser, it can’t navigate through the splash screens and captive portals of a hotel or coffee shop Wi-Fi network. And of course it can’t use a wireless Internet card from carriers like Verizon, so it’s really only useful in your home.

Connectify fixes that however.  Setup a Connectify network on your laptop, and bind the Eye-Fi to that network.  Now, wherever you go, if the Eye-Fi can reach your laptop, it can transfer the pictures:

 You connect straight to your PC, it can drop pictures right into your Pictures directory with no Internet sharing at all.  Right now I’m snapping shots from my Canon SD1200, and they are simply appearing in my Picasa Photo Collection, seconds later.  No cables, no import, no syncing - I just snap photos and seconds later there it is in my collection.  It’s more than just easy, it’s actually fun.  It’s likely that at my next party, there will be a projector to show photos as they are taken in real-time by a camera passed around the room (which, depending on the party, could be pretty scandalous).

If you’re trying to get them onto the Internet (say Flickr or MobileMe) it can use your laptop’s Internet connection, even if it’s isn’t one that an Eye-Fi normally knows how to use. At a coffee shop,  just navigate through their splash screen on your laptop’s browser, and then it’s done, the Eye-Fi will be on the Internet.  You can even transfer them via a tethered cellphone or a wireless Internet card.

To the Eye-Fi, nothing changed: it’s just getting on the same Wi-Fi hotspot that it was originally bound to, and it doesn’t notice if it moves, or if your connection to the Internet changes, its connection didn’t change at all.

You can take it with you

As you might imagine, I have quite a few Wi-Fi devices and I end up carrying a lot of them on my business trips. I am reliant on Connectify to make them all work on the road.  But what happens when I’m home?  What if my laptop is off?  What if I take it with me and my family wants to use the wireless printer?

I have come up with a solution that works with every device I have:  I set my home Wi-Fi router and my Connectify hotspot to both have the same network name (SSID), security settings (WPA2-Personal), and password (some devices call it a key or passphrase).  You can find these settings in any router’s web application for setting it up, and of course, the Name and Password are in the Connectify application.  Set them to anything you want, just make them the same.

Then when I'm home the Internet I share with Connectify is my home WiFi network.  Since they look exactly the same, all of my other devices connect to whichever one is closest.

So, I can take devices like my Wi-Fi phone, Wireless Printer or Eye-Fi enabled camera from home with me and can work just fine at any hotel or coffee shop, since my laptop is making the network look exactly the same to the devices.  Or I can go home and shut off my laptop and they go through my Linksys router.  Or, if I go home and leave my laptop on, it automatically acts as a wireless repeater to give me better coverage in my house.

It’s my Wi-Fi Personal Area Network, whether I’m at home or on the road.