TechBytes: The Simplified Wireless Router

March 31, 2010— -- A new device aims to take the frustration out of setting up your home network. The company behind the super simple Flip video camera is introducing a wireless router today. Cisco's Valet promises to automatically connect your wireless devices by using a USB key that plugs into your computer and sets everything up in the background. There are two models: one that costs $99 and another with a bigger wireless range for $150.

If you go online to complain about your General Motors car, you may hear back from corporate headquarters. GM has a new team of customer-service agents who scour social networking sites such as Twitter and Facebook. They hunt for complaints about their vehicles and reach out to those customers, offering them help. The initiative is part of GM's efforts to be more proactive in dealing with customers now that it's out of bankruptcy. And it's doubling its effort next month, adding new agents and more computing power.

At least one university is embracing the iPad before anyone there even lays a hand on the device. Seton Hill University in Greensburg, Pa., said it will give every full-time student an iPad beginning in the fall. Incoming freshman will also receive a MacBook laptop. It's part of the university's goal of creating dynamic classrooms, aimed at giving students the technological skills they will need in the workforce.

Happy birthday to a piece of office equipment we love to hate. The photocopier is turning 50. Xerox shipped the first one in 1960. The revolutionary machine changed the way we work, and even turned the name Xerox into a verb, the same way Google has become one today. The company doesn't even make a copier-only machine anymore. Most offices have Internet-connected, multi-purpose machines. But you still have to worry about the occasional paper jam.