Impressive usage numbers from St. Cloud: Florida network shows high utilization by citizens of the free, municipally built networks. 4.6m hours logged, 25 petabytes of information transferred, 77 percent of households registered, 20,000 users on 14,000 devices.
Least likely places to find Wi-Fi: Washington Post's Rob Pegoraro finds Wi-Fi in a remote cabin he and his wife rented during a ski vacation. Readers chime in with their own connectivity stories, including a couple that carries out research in Antarctica.
Grain of rice antenna for 2.4 GHz: Fractus offers Micro Reach Xtend, a 3.7mm by 2mm antenna for the 2.4 GHz band--Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, and Zigbee.
Colorado buses to add Wi-Fi: Roaring Fork Transportation Authority would include Internet access on a new bus system. The system would be used for public access and operational purposes, such as dispatch and location. 4m passengers (that's passengers times trips, actually) rode the current system last year. Wi-Fi would be rolled out over five years. The full bus system won't be in place until 2017. Aspen and its county are considering an unrelated large-scale wireless network.
Boston Wireless Initiative ties in student laptops: Dorchester middle school will give every student a Wi-Fi enabled laptop, and actually train teachers--sometimes not included in these programs--in how to integrate connectivity into what they're teaching. There appear to be pre-thought-out benchmarks for success. Oh, and the Boston network hasn't been built yet, but the kids will be ready when it is.
iPass aggregates user data in Wi-Fi Hotspot Index: The index looks at usage patterns of 1m users per quarter across a network of 76,000 hotspots in 68 countries. O'Hare saw the most use worldwide, which reflects iPass's audience of large corporations; iPass users probably spend a lot of time changing planes in Chicago.
Johannesburg, S.A., asks for broadband bids: The city proposes to have a firm build a network as the city prepares for the 2010 Fifa Soccer World Cup. The city covers 1,644 sq km with 3.2m people and 1m households. Only 85 percent have electricity. They'll first ask for ideas and then issue a tender.
Archos adds 7-inch Wi-Fi media player: 800 by 400 pixels and 5-by-7-inch form factor, with an 80 GB drive; $550 when released in mid-March. The content can be retrieved from a $100 settop box.