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Kermit sings a different tune: Rainbow disconnection?: A reporter tries to nail down the New York Times story of a few weeks ago of a grand alliance for a national Wi-Fi/cell convergence network involving Cingular, Intel, and other players. He gets nowhere, and concludes that if the alliance exists beyond hype, it may be much farther off than suggested. (The other option, I hate to say, is that the Times reporter has sources deep inside these firms willing to talk more openly -- or to hype more openly.)
Balticization of Wi-Fi: The city of Tallinn, Estonia, is full of Wi-Fi. A beautiful sentence ends the home page, describing Wi-Fi's appeal: That’s the good thing about compelling technology: you don’t have to think too much about it. We did. It’s that simple, and it works. Estonia has a warm spot in my heart because it is a hop, skip, and a Latvia away from my father's grandparents' homeland: Lithuania. [via Warchalking]
Mac legend Andy Ihnatko weighs in on warchalking: Andy's a very funny guy but also has a great perspective. About warchalking, he focuses on the community it could help create. (Amusingly, too, Andy's name is misspelled in the byline as Ihntako. There's nobody in the computer industry whose name is as often and inconsistently misspelled.) [via Warchalking]
Canary song: connecting islands: Alejandro Camara Acevedo wrote in noting that a 70.5 kilometer (km) link was just established on Aug. 3 between Tenerife and Gran Canaria i the Canary Islands, which is part of Spain. His email noted that this link beat previous records in Spain (not sure who is tracking these records) of 35 km and then 54 km, the latter broken by the ACRI (Asociación Canaria de Redes Inalámbrica or Canarian Asociation of Wireless Networks) just a few weeks ago. The event was marked with a video conference using a 1 Mbps streaming connection, although Sr. Acevedo noted that two days earlier, a 5.5 Mbps streaming connection worked. (This seems problematic: I'm not sure you can actually get more than 4 Mbps throughput even on two devices sitting next to each other.)
Sr. Acevedo writes, The hardware used during the event was 1 Dell and 1 Asus computer laptop both with D-Link wireless cards and two 24db grid antennas. He adds, The world record was organized by a party of Internet users belonging to ACRI and a group of Linux users that happened to be in a computer congress in Gran Canaria. The association's aim is to link all seven Canary Islands with wireless technology; a backbone is being built at the moment and several access points are already active.
A Bluetooth-like Wi-Fi device for serial connections: Perhaps they didn't get the memo, but OTC Wireless is introducing late this year a Wi-Fi serial replacement. Ostensibly, you plug the Wi-Fi device in on one end, although the article makes it send like you might need to attach one to either end. No pricing is noted. The company says zero configuration, so what happens when you have two of these devices running? A Bluetooth serial adapter would solve the same problem more gracefully, but doesn't come with the distance (perhaps ever) or ubuiquity (yet).
The latest ocean piracy: Bernie Dunham, the fellow behind the MacMania Geek Cruises's Wi-Fi network on the Holland-America Line's Volendam, reports in the third person on his blog about the Royal Carribean line's sudden change of heart regarding his use of Wi-Fi for his Wi-Fi 2002 training cruise. Bernie notes quite lucidly and objectively that although the cruise line is citing security concerns in not allowing him to use his networking equipment (for which he is paying hefty satellite access fees), they will be offering their own branded, fee-based service.