Downloads

It's great to have a wireless connection on the road, but it's even better when your wireless connection tells you about your physical surroundings. Loki (now in beta) is an Internet Explorer plug-in that tells you about your immediate locale, just like a GPS device does. Using Skyhook's Wi-Fi Positioning System to define your physical location, this browser toolbar retrieves items of interest that are relevant to your whereabouts.

Loki's Channels offer several options each for events, mapping, movies, shopping, traffic, and more. The quality of the search results depends on the services under the channels. (For instance, restaurant search service Yelp incorrectly states PC World's offices are located directly on top of a gin distillery.) However, it's handy to have all the channels in what amounts to useful bookmarks in the toolbar, and most of the channels are more successful at pinpointing items specific to the correct ZIP code.

--Laura Blackwell