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It’s hard for me to believe this, but Wi-Fi Networking News is seven years old on Sunday, 6 April 2008: Folks, there are times when I feel a little bit aged. Turning 40 a couple weeks ago didn’t give me that feeling. Have two children (1 and 3 2/3) has a bit (mostly when I’m achey from too much carrying and too little sleep). But finding that my “other child,” Wi-Fi Networking News is a grand spanking seven years old has, in fact, made me stoop just a little bit.
I started Wi-Fi Networking News under the less euphonious name 802.11b Networking News back in April 2001 after spending months researching what became a front-cover article in Circuits, the then-separate tech section of The New York Times. The first post is still live, as are all the nearly 4,800 others.
(I had help: Nancy Gohring wrote part-time for WNN for a couple years when we had a bit more traffic; she took a full-time job for and still works for IDG News Service, which I am now slightly affiliated with through my new hardware regular blog at PC World.)
Since starting, I’ve covered extensively the growth of the hotspot market, the rise and fall and rise again of municipal networks, the change in consumer equipment from expensive and slow to cheap and fast, the growth of the enterprise market, the phoenix-like in-flight calling/broadband market, and, more recently, cellular and WiMax technology.
Enterprise coverage was once a central part of Wi-Fi Networking News, but it became clear a few years ago that as equipment was redesigned to be integral to the enterprise, that my ability cover and test gear was too limited, and the need for true enterprise experience was necessary to write about it. This disappointed a lot of enterprise readers and equipment makers who wanted me to keep writing about corporate hardware.
The focus over the last few years on municipal Wi-Fi was not just necessary—few people besides me were covering it in depth—but also represented the only significant news in the Wi-Fi world outside of the development of 802.11n/Draft N gear. It’s only recently that WiMax, cellular data, spectrum auctions, and in-flight broadband have picked back up to become stories that you all want to know about—because they’ve become real technology you might work with. As the city-wide Wi-Fi arc played itself out, I’m covering it less because there’s less of interest; it’s going to become routine and the province of city CTOs and CIOs.
While writing this site, I try to have opinions, but not an agenda. I try to keep an open mind, though I do descend into cynicism, often well founded, but perhaps too readily employed. I’ll try my best to keep myself honest and cheery in the years to come.
The biggest trends I expect to see develop in 2008 to 2010 are in these key areas:
Appliances. I expected 2007 to be the year that Wi-Fi was in everything: cameras, games, phones, and tchotchkes. Instead, Wi-Fi has only gradually spread, with a few gaming consoles, and many handsets and smartphones gaining or extending their use. It may be that I missed a trend: cameras in phones may become so good by 2009, that we don’t need a camera with Wi-Fi at all (Wired reports today on several 5 megapixel cameraphones shown at CTIA this week). It’s also likely that if WiMax gets a foothold, we’ll get handhelds probably in 2009 that sport high-speed connections for all kinds of high-bandwidth purposes, like live uploading of streaming video.
Video over wireless. I look at this category as not just another instance of broadcast, like Qualcomm’s MediaFLO which is really TV to the cell phone; rather, we’ll see ways in which Wi-Fi, WiMax, and cellular data are used to push stored and streaming media to all sorts of devices. I look to Starbucks, Apple, and AT&T to lead the way on cached media in stores that can be filled up at local network speeds: download a full-length, HD movie in a few minutes in a Starbucks from the iTunes cache rather than 3 hours at home.
Radio over Wi-Fi. Internet radio via Wi-Fi music players seems like a trend—buying a boombox you can tune in wherever you are, or using a handheld MP3 players—but even with many devices, I don’t feel a sense that it’s caught on quite yet. If Apple puts Internet radio over Wi-Fi into new iPhone/iPod touch firmware, it’ll likely take off; Nokia allows a third-party program for its N series for Internet radio over Wi-Fi already.
Cellular data/mobile broadband. I admit to being wrong about the potential of cell data, due to the overhype from the carriers and the horrible pricing relative to throughput and availability of the 1xRTT and GPRS systems. As cell data networks have matured into true broadband—slow, but broadband—media, the hype has lessened, disclosure has improved (no more “unlimited” usage, eh?), and the value has increased. We’ll see more of the same with faster flavors of GSM networking and WiMax’s deployment. The networks will become faster and cheaper and less restrictive.
For a good sense of what people are still reading on Wi-Fi Networking News, here are the titles of the top 10 articles since I switched to Google Analytics in Sept. 2006:
A few observations. Security remains key in people’s minds: Security articles from 2004 are still being heavily viewed in 2008. Linksys is definitely high in people’s minds for particular problems: Change the default password, buy a Linux (not VxWorks) embedded router, report problems with various models. Oddly, the wireless speakers and wireless printers articles are short stubs that are pure blog: they link to longer articles elsewhere. The Best Wi-Fi Signal Finder Yet story is 4 years old and still gets 1,000 page views a month. The invisible hand—nay, the long tail!—works in archives as it does everywhere.
Will I still be pounding away 7 years from now on this site? That seems about as unlikely as the last 7 years, which means it will probably happen. Traffic has dropped off over the years from the time in which Wi-Fi was a great (and expensive) mystery to today when there’s more information and less confusion about it. As long as there are any questions to be answered, I’ll keep writing.
Posted by Glennf at 3:10 PM | Comments (0)
Thanks to those who took the time to fill out the poll; I’m still reading results: If you haven’t answered my poll about how you like this site and what I should cover, follow that link. I received responses from probably fewer than 1 percent of regular readers, but they were pretty enlightening. Those who chose to respond rarely pay anything or much for Wi-Fi when they’re out and about, and nearly universally would like me to cover muni Wi-Fi with less attention.
You’ll get your wish on both counts! Yesterday’s Starbucks/AT&T deal means there’s more Wi-Fi (starting in second quarter) than ever before in the U.S., at least, that’s going to be free or cheap; and the implosion of the municipal Wi-Fi market means it’s no longer superheated (or supercollapsed), and I’ll be writing less about every city and project, and more about what works and where.
Posted by Glennf at 3:04 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
We’d like to gauge your interest in the kind of coverage that Wi-Fi Networking News offers: Tell us how you use Wi-Fi and what you think about our content by filling out the poll below.
powered by Google Docs Terms of Service - Additional TermsPosted by Glennf at 6:57 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Don’t check your monitors, wireless readers; we’ve gone all inverse: After six years of something close to the same color scheme on Wi-Fi Networking News (and the family of related sites), I have finally acceded to two realities. First, many readers—dozens not thousands—over the years have begged me to produce a less-dark design to improve legibility. For a while, I toyed with the ability to choose your own color scheme, or some such. But that was complex and wishy-washy. What convinced me to change to a dark-on-pale approach was (second reality) that virtually all readable news sites and blogs on the Web choose a white or off-white background with dark type. There’s a reason for that.
The switch has been flipped! Now back to our regularly scheduled programming.
Update: That’s inverse, not perverse. If you’re not seeing the new dark-on-light design, try emptying the cache of your browser, or hitting force reload (Alt or Option plus the Reload button in most browsers) to bring in the new styles and images.
Posted by Glennf at 4:08 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Our new junior editor will specialize in hospital Wi-Fi: Filed from the trenches, please welcome Rex Warner Fleishman, the latest member of the reporting team of the future. Using the latest advances in medical technology, Rex has already had pictures of himself beamed to all corners of the globe through free Wi-Fi provided at the hospital from which he started his beat yesterday morning. (Mother and child are resting comfortably; postings by dad will be light for a few days.)
Posted by Glennf at 1:30 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
This is one of those Dilbert situations: if you read Wi-Fi Networking News via email and you’re a Yahoo subscriber anywhere in the world, we have a problem: Okay, so I am aware that I can’t notify you very easily that there’s a problem when you receive these notes via email. But I just discovered via massive bounces from all Yahoo subscribers to the email version of Wi-Fi Networking News—the daily posts sent individually or as a collected digest each night—that Yahoo is using silent rejection on my email.
(Update: I was contacted by Yahoo, and they said they’ve tweaked their settings for my email server. Thanks!)
Despite using double opt-in methods of subscription and having received no complaints that I’m aware of from people trying to unsubscribe in the years of running the email distribution list for this site, Yahoo “deferred” every message sent to my double opted-in subscribers, did this for several days, and now has bounced all these messages.
As a matter of good Internet policy, all these subscribers accounts are now in suspension on my site to avoid any concern of sending mail after a mail server has said that the delivery has entirely failed.
Yahoo, like most large Internet companies, has little useful information about how to contact them when this kind of problem happens. If you have ideas (or work with or for Yahoo), let me or them know. In the meantime, I feel like a little part of my world has just disappeared!
Posted by Glennf at 12:56 PM | Comments (4) | TrackBack
You’ve asked for it, and here it is: I’ve finally created an RSS 2.0 newsfeed that combines all six blogs that I update on wireless data: the flagship Wi-Fi Networking News site you’re reading here, and five others on cell data, public safety wireless, WiMax, voice over wireless LAN, and 802.11n/MIMO. This single feed will allow you to keep tabs on what’s happening across these fields. None of the other blogs sees as much activity as Wi-Fi Networking News, but they each feature a specialty that seemed to crowd the “Wi-Fi” definition too much. You can subscribe to the feed by copying this link and pasting it into your newsreader; some browsers may let you simply click the link to subscribe.
Posted by Glennf at 9:11 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Welcome the latest addition to the Wi-Fi Networking News set of sites: You might notice a small change in the list of six sites at the top of this page—WNN Europe has been replaced with Public Safety (Wireless) News. The new site will be devoted to the rapidly emerging category of gear and networks that are used for first responders: fire, police, rescue, and specialized responders. Many municipal wireless networks are already in use that operate exclusively for public safety purposes; public access doesn’t exist or is a distant second item. More networks will have the dual purpose, with public safety having priority.
WNN Europe is gone but not forgotten. The archives will remain active. In the time that site has been launched, we’ve posted under 200 items, and it’s been increasingly clear in recent months that there are few Europe-only stories, but rather stories that span other categories.
Posted by Glennf at 2:17 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
I’ve hired a PR firm: The folks at newly formed Mobility PR will be representing Wi-Fi Networking News, but not quite in the way you might think. Fundamentally, I get enough press. I’m a reporter. I’m quoted. It’s all good. What I need is to make the site reach more people so that I can devote more resources to producing more independently reported and researched sites. That’s what the folks there will help me with.
Mobility—which has a pretty funny blog already—comprises three folks, two of which I’ve known for a while. John Sidline was an executive with iPass, an access aggregator, who I’d met with and discussed the industry with a number of times. Melissa Burns was on the team that handled iPass for The Hoffman Agency, and I’d had many positive encounters with her as well.
I’ll be careful to disclose any conflicts of interest here as I attempt to always reveal when I have a relationship with a firm or person I write about.
Posted by Glennf at 1:48 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
The experiment worked well last weekend; let’s try it again: This open thread allows you to post comments on any Wi-Fi topic.
Posted by Glennf at 7:12 AM | Comments (4) | TrackBack
We’re trying an experiment in participation: Here’s an open thread in which to comment on anything Wi-Fi related. Feel free to post. It’s moderated (we have too much comment spam and other problems to do otherwise) but anything germane to Wi-Fi will be posted. Enjoy.
Posted by Glennf at 10:09 PM | Comments (17) | TrackBack
A Wi-Fi Networking News advertiser wants your help: They’re trying to figure out more about the kinds of ads they might run on our site, and if you’ve got about 3 minutes (my score in filling it out), follow the link and answer a few questions. I can’t tell you the advertiser’s name as that would skew results!
Posted by Glennf at 12:58 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
The Wi-Fi Networking News sites have been slightly redesigned: Most of you won’t notice any difference, or very little, but we’ve redesigned our six sites to make them more compliant to Web standards. For the not-so-technically minded, one advantage of our new design is that you can print any page from browsers that support CSS styles for printing. (Try it and preview the results.)
Another advantage is that this site should work much better in portable and mobile devices, as well as display on older browsers with fewer problems. Browsers released in the last three to five years should display this site nearly as we intend. (If you see something strange, hit reload or empty your browser cache: the CSS file is named the same.)
I should also note that the various news services like Google News that appear to scrape our site instead of using an RSS feed to determine new stories now produce the correct results for what’s new! Our RSS feeds continue available and unchanged from before, as well as the email lists you can subscribe to at upper left.
We’ve also moved the navigation among the six sites that comprise our various efforts at covering wireless data news to buttons at the top of the page below our nameplate and banner ad. Previously, we used a sidebar that contained brief snippets from the other sites, but we haven’t found that people are clicking through.
Posted by Glennf at 1:27 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Senior editor Nancy Gohring moves to IDG News Service: I bid a fond farewell to these Web pages today to Nancy Gohring, who has been the senior editor of Wi-Fi Networking News for two years, and the driving force behind WiMax Networking News and WNN Europe, as well as the three other subject-specific sites we added early this year. Nancy moved to Dublin, Ireland, around New Year with her husband when he successfully received a transfer to the European offices of his firm.
Nancy was on contract here at WNN, and I can tell you as a current freelancer, that the freelancing life has its ups and downs—and is trickier when you’re six to nine hours later than the market you’ve been covering for a decade. Nancy’s new job as one of the IDG News Service’s European correspondents will allow her a greater scope of coverage and travel in her current time zone. I’ll be linking regularly to her stories from our sites. (For instance, here’s her first article about Kent’s new broadband wireless via Telabria.)
From all of us here at WNN—that’s just me, now—our best to Nancy in her new job.
Posted by Glennf at 1:22 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
We’re taking a brief holiday here: We’ll be back late next week with more news about wireless in general and Wi-Fi in specific while our crack staff—me and Nancy—take our continentally separate vacations. Don’t do anything newsworthy while we’re gone.
Posted by Glennf at 12:31 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Apologies on multiple blank messages: We had a list glitch as we transition to a slightly revised mailing system that will handle lists for multiple blogs…you heard me, multiple blogs. More news soon, and my apologies for shipping you four empty messages.
Posted by Glennf at 8:44 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Comments without real attribution are unlikely to be approved: I’ve seen a small contingent of comments appear on this blog recently—which requires moderation for those comments to be publicly posted—that accuse me of idiocy for not fully understanding Verizon Wireless’s EVDO plans, among other subjects. While I like critique and am willing to allow comments that take an opposite stance to my own, I’m unlikely to ever approve a comment with a fake return address and no name that calls me a moron.
The issue, in part, is that the phenomenon of sock puppets, which I believe was coined in the Usenet newsgroup world. A sock puppet is someone (or some company’s) alternate identity that chimes in, “Hey, Bob, what you wrote? I totally agree! You rock!” I’d expand that definition to include posts that take a strong stance that lack any credentials. (Another category: posts that call me an idiot because of typos rather than saying, “You might want to fix this typo.”)
Anonymous posts that have something interesting to say that advances a subject through logical analysis have a high chance of being approved. Anonymous posts that have ad hominem attacks and advance a position by repeating it don’t. Overall, re-enabling comments on this site has been very useful, and dozens of comments have been added.
One of the great attributes of the blogosphere echo chamber is that if you start your own blog and point to a news site or another blog with a comment, your comment gets incorporated into that item’s fabric. I won’t tell anyone it’s my ball and glove and I’m going home, but, rather, there are an infinite number of balls and gloves and playing fields, and I encourage everyone to have a forum in which they can fully express their opinion without moderation.
I believe I’m seeing sock puppets because there are some sites that have written really scathing or interesting rebuttals to posts here at Wi-Fi Networking News, and I love reading those because there’s a real person willing to identify themselves behind it. I might not approve comments for this site that look anything like those other blogs’ remarks, but that’s the great thing about the infinite forum that is the Internet.
Posted by Glennf at 7:17 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Our colleague and WNN’s senior editor heads to Ireland: Nancy Gohring heads in a couple of weeks to Dublin, Ireland, for the indefinite future. Her husband successfully beat down the competition for a Dublin-based position with his multinational employer, and the two of them leapt at the opportunity to live in a place even colder in winter than Chicago, their home before Seattle.
Nancy will be reporting from Europe for Wi-Fi Networking News and other publications, and we plan to expand our focus beyond our narrow provincial continental U.S. confines in the process.
In celebration of her near-term arrival in Dublin, Eircom has added 50 free hotspots to the city. On a recent trip there, Nancy had some difficulty finding any locations at first, but received incredible help from residents who have cemented the friendly and sharing nature of that city.
The Eircom hotspots are connected to payphones—45 of them of in that configuration—with five more to be turned on by the end of the year. The company has a goal of 250 hotspots nationwide in 2005. Eircom will be offering service for free in 14 Republic of Ireland McDonald’s outlets.
Service will be absurdly expensive in three to four months: €10 for one hour and €20 for 24 hours. The adoption curve remains low in Europe, apparently, and this is obviously one of the reasons. Comparable service in the U.S. typically varies from always free to US$4 or US$5 per hour up to US$10 per day for whole network access (T-Mobile).
As the article notes, “A report by the Broad Group has said that even though prices in Europe are trending downwards they are still above those in other regions. The report has noted that hotspot use has increased as prices have decreased.”
Posted by Glennf at 11:23 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
If you’re the kind of person who uses an RSS aggregator, listen up: I’ve reformed the feeds we offer for Web-based syndication via RSS and similar formats. Glance to the upper right of any page on this site, and you can now use an aggregator to subscribe to our feeds in RSS 0.91, RSS 2.0, RSD, and Atom formats.
If you don’t know what an aggregator is, please follow the link to a Yahoo category that will help explain it. I’ve added a link as well to download Podcast receivers so that you can listen to the audio interviews we’re going to start producing for the site, starting with our first, yesterday.
Posted by Glennf at 12:18 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
In the spirit of trying something new, I’ve created a discussion group using Google’s new Groups 2 Beta which anyone can join and any member can post. I’ve heard in the past people would like a forum for more direct discussion. Please visit and join to start talking about wireless networking.
|
Wi-Fi News |
| Browse Archives at groups-beta.google.com |
Posted by Glennf at 9:59 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
After a little testing, comments are back up: We’ve been testing whether we could allow comments once again at Wi-Fi Networking News without being overwhelmed by comment spam or other problems. It looks like the answer is yes. We’ve removed the limitation that you can only post with a TypeKey account. It’s easier to comment if you have a free TypeKey account, but you can post without one.
Posted by Glennf at 9:35 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
We’re going to try to allow comments on postings again: Several months ago, I posted a note about why we were disabling the ability to add comments to posts at Wi-Fi Networking News. The reasons were threefold: comment spam, often pornographic in nature, intended to improve search engine rankings of various sites; off-topics posts by people who didn’t understand what the site was about; and posts that critiqued the site directly instead of the item commented on. While we like feedback, we’ve made it clear that the forum for that is through us to email (or on another blog, for that matter), not in our comments.
We’re using Movable Type to run our blog, and the company behind it, Six Apart, has made available a system known as TypeKey which is a centralized, free registration system for commenting. The idea is that you sign up via TypeKey and verify your identify via email. It doesn’t prove you’re who you say you are, but they at least have a valid set of tracking information about you. With a TypeKey identity, you can post to our site.
I have trepidations about offloading this function to another party, however much I trust them and their infrastructure, but it’s the best solution I’ve seen for allowing reasonable commentary. We’ll experiment with this, and based on the kind of comments we get, see where we go from here.
(Please note: there’s a small problem with the template that tells you that your comment is pending: it’s slightly unreadable. I’ll fix that as soon as I can, but it doesn’t prevent posting comments.)
Posted by Glennf at 8:54 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
The new list is running: For those of you subscribed to the Wi-Fi Networking News mailing list, the new list is running, and new unsubscribe and list information will appear in the message you receive that has this post from the site.
To subscribe the list, enter your email at left below the hotspot search box.
Posted by Glennf at 4:09 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
We’re switching mailing list hosts: For those of you who receive Wi-Fi Networking News via subscription, we’re changing our mailing list host from an outsourced provider to an in-house operation. This should be entirely transparent to you and should allow us more customization in what we deliver.
For more details on our list and how to subscribe (and how to change your membership from digest to individual messages or vice versa), read our page about the mailing list.
Posted by Glennf at 10:30 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
We’re now cooking with T3s: Wi-Fi Networking News’s virtual home moved from a 768 Kbps SDSL line, which had served it nicely, up to a co-location facility that has dual T3s and several 10s of Mbps available on demand. If anyone notices a significant difference in speed, performance, or other details (for better or worse), please let us know.
Because our site is designed to be mostly text-heavy, not graphics intensive, its more likely that during busy times, you’ll get the site right away instead of waiting moments for a page load.
Posted by Glennf at 8:03 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Where did the comments go?: Unfortunately, three types of misuse of the comments feature on this site have forced me to turn off comments on new posts, and to shortly disable the ability to comment on older posts, too.
Type 1 is comment spam, an unfortunate growing trend in which spammers, who are finding email a harder row to hoe even as they send out more, are posting comments on highly-ranked Web sites with links to their product sites or offers. This increases their rank at Google. I’ve installed some filters, but it still takes 30 to 90 minutes of my time each week coping with the comment spam, plus the couple of hours of installing the filters. The folks behind Movable Type, which powers this site, are working on approaches. (I’d prefer a “confirm via email” posting method that would at least allow an email return loop for accountability.)
Type 2 is misguided folks who don’t understand the site or how they got here who are posting strange queries about trying to understand Wi-Fi, purchase or sell items, or reach individuals who are the subjects of the story. This is probably an outgrowth of Google.
Type 3 is meta-comments, or comments about the nature or quality of this site. I don’t mind feedback, but I don’t feel that it’s appropriate to critique this site on this site. Email (or one’s own blog) is a better method. I had a great exchange this morning with someone whose mind I don’t think I changed, but who had a reasonable critique of my approach on a post. I like to hear that stuff; I don’t like to have it displayed on the site. That’s my preference for keeping the site on topic and on focus — and not airing dirty laundry.
The combination of these three types mean I’ll disable comments for now. Please do email us with comments and feedback, and I hope to re-enable comment posting in the future.
Posted by Glennf at 11:32 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
This site is purely informational. Any information you provide via the site, such as — but not limited to — an email address, your name, your time zone, and your preferences for salty foods remain strictly between me (the site operator, Glenn Fleishman) and you, the person who provided the details. I won’t sell, barter, lend, loan, tease with, give away, or otherwise share any information provided by you in any form to any one ever.
I may disclose some figures in aggregate, such as overall numbers of visitors or a distribution by timezone or location. No aggregate details will disclose any individual information about any user.
Advertisements served on this site use technology that might track user behavior across this and other sites. We do not share any information we gather from you with advertisers or advertising technology sites. Nevertheless, they may, and they each have their own privacy policies and disclosures.
The intent is: nothing about you will be revealed to anyone else in any form ever by us, but this policy is subject to change at any time. However, it won’t retroactively affect any details provided before the change. Last modified 2/6/2005.
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