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Cell phones interfere with brain waves? I often write about studies that show no connection between electromagnetic radiation and health, so it’s only fair I highlight credible ones that suggest a connection. In what appears to be two well-conducted and well-controlled studies, cell phones appeared to affect alpha waves (related to one’s focus on external v. internal stimulus and sleep), and delta waves (related to deep sleep). While no particular health result was measured, both studies, Scientific American explains, demonstrate a connection between EMF and mental behavior.
Zipit gives away text messaging for a year, changes prices, options: The Zipit Wireless Messenger 2 (Z2) was introduced in Dec. 2007 with a number of interesting features for a messaging appliance targeted at teens—and their fretting parents. With no Web portal, the $150 device included unlimited Wi-Fi on Wayport’s McDonald’s network (now nearly 10,000 locations), and support for popular IM clients. It also included SMS with major cell carries, charging $5 per month for 1,500 incoming and 1,500 outgoing messages. Uptake must have been poor, as the manufacturer announced today that purchases until 31-July-2008 would include a year of free text messages. The company also modified its plan without noting that fact, increasing messages to a “reasonable personal usage” of 5,000 incoming and 5,000 outgoing messages per month. There are no overage charges. The service will now cost $30 per year instead of $5 per month for new purchasers starting 1-August-2008. That’s a 50-percent price reduction (over $5 times 12), but it’s often much cheaper to bill annually in advance.
Wi-Fi Alliance cited in WSJ as model for multipartner alliance: An interesting analysis in the Wall Street Journal’s Business Insight section points to the Wi-Fi Alliance standards based, no-company-on-top approach as one that led it to win out through both technology and organization over other standards that might have taken precedence. I’ve been stunned over the years how a group that has a board comprised of the most powerful and competitive interests in this market segment, and which has hundreds of much smaller members, has managed to keep alive the notion of interoperability for the greater good of the industry and customers. 802.11n’s long delay certainly threatened harmony—especially with some ugly proprietary slap-ons to 802.11g—but the alliance continues to keep the technology in equilibrium, while still allowing individual companies to differentiate their products with little difficulty.
Posted by Glennf at 1:26 PM | Comments (0)
Long Island unwirer E-Path loses local contract: The small Florida firm that signed up to build out Wi-Fi across two counties in Long Island—and hasn’t seemingly raised funding yet to build even the pilot stage—has had its contract to build Delray Beach, Flor.’s network terminated. “This has been an unfortunate waste of staff time,” one city commissioner is quoted as saying, even as the city now turns to figure out how to find another contractor. E-Path had previously seen its Trenton, NJ, deal terminated when that city couldn’t agree to purchase services on the network that would be built.
Posted by Glennf at 1:06 PM | Comments (0)
The New York Times thoughtfully examines the growth of free or fee in one hotspot: The article looks at how venues are now having the best of both worlds, providing free Wi-Fi or Internet access in exchange for loyalty or viewing ads, while also offering a pay option for those who choose to avoid advertising or exceed the free offer’s limits. Starbucks is a notable example, given that Starbucks Card users (who buy something with the card or charge it monthly) get two consecutive hours of free use every day in AT&T managed locations. The hotel market is murkier; the writer missing mentioning Wyndham’s switchover to free Internet access when you join their no-cost loyalty program, mentioning the smaller Omni chain’s similar move. The article also notes a few free airports, but doesn’t get the picture there, that airport costs and captivity are so high, it’s unlikely that premium airports will switch to ad-support, even with the example of Denver and Las Vegas in hand.
The Cloud partners with Devicescape for no-configuration connections: The Cloud will use their software and service to allow its users to connect to its hotspots and those of its roaming partners. There are 10,500 locations in The Cloud’s own network. Devicescape’s software is available for computer operating systems, as well as several mobile platforms. While Devicescape’s software works across many networks without their direct promotion, the distribution of their package by the Cloud gives Devicescape more leverage with equipment makers, and makes use of The Cloud much easier for that network’s customers, increasing retention and ostensibly signups.
Ruckus alleges patent infringement by partner NetGear: Ruckus Wireless did license its patents to NetGear for two models of the WPN824 router released by NetGear, but alleges in its lawsuit that NetGear released a subsequent model that wasn’t covered by the deal. I rarely mention legal matters, but this is a unique case: hardware is involved and an existing partnership. The outcome could be expensive for NetGear if it’s found to infringe, because this model (I don’t know about the particular version) was one of the best-selling Draft N routers.
Posted by Glennf at 10:13 AM | Comments (0)
A Miami Beach reader noted my Florida links yesterday, and wondered why that city’s $5m IBM network isn’t live: The network contracted was awarded in 2006, completed 6 months ago, and the reader can get great signal strength. But no Internet feed. Anyone in Miami Beach know?
The brilliant xkcd comic takes it to the next step: Wireless zero config? Try overzealous wireless config. 
Microwave oven may have disrupted reader’s Wi-Fi: Rob Pegoraro over at the Washington Post notes that a friend of his discovered through the process of elimination that his microwave oven was acting as a big interferer with his Wi-Fi network. The oven in question eventually started smoking and burned itself out, and its removal resulted in the network working fine. All microwave ovens produce low-intensity 2.4 GHz radio waves when in use; they don’t leak the high-intensity signals that are reflected to agitate water molecules and heat food. But Wi-Fi uses such low signal strength to encode data that microwave ovens can be enough of an interferer to slow networks down. They won’t cook you though, unless you crawl inside and close the door.
Posted by Glennf at 2:02 PM | Comments (1)
Out-of-sight, out-of-mesh: PacketHop announces first 802.11s mesh standard products based on the likely-to-be-approved current draft. The mesh standard is about endpoints, and I’d entirely lost track of it; it has nothing to do with how metro-scale devices mesh way up on poles. 802.11s mesh should allow end-point devices to form their own loose associations, which could improve throughput and range across parts of a network. Latency increases when you have a mesh network, because devices require more hops to reach a gateway, but depending on how smart meshes are about tokens and limiting power, they can exchange data at higher speeds among themselves without a central chokepoint. PacketHop, acquired by SRI International, is offering their technology as something hardware makers can integrate, rather than as a set of chips or a reference product.
Stalled-Fi in Florida: The Sun Sentinal newspaper looks at stalled, dropped efforts at city-wide Wi-Fi in Palm Beach County. Boynton Beach had a network early on, in 2005, but the city dropped the operator in March 31 due to complaints over maintenance. Delray Beach (E-Path) and West Palm Beach haven’t advanced.
Minneapolis Wi-Fi requires booster for best use: This isn’t an enormous surprise, or anything, and one of the consultants on the Minneapolis project said that USI Wireless starts with the notion that a booster is needed, which is highly sensible. Reporter Steve Alexander found service was highly variable outdoors with a standard laptop Wi-Fi adapter. The company sells boosters: a $160 high-gain laptop card and an $80 ($5/mo rental) home bridge. Alexander didn’t re-test problem areas with the high-gain card. You can see the map of Alexander’s test locations.
Orange Line in Los Angeles can’t attract Wi-Fi operator: A spokesperson suggested riders should take advantage of “existing satellite” providers, where I think he’ll be red-faced to know he should have said cellular. Or the reporter misheard. Say satellite and cellular each ten times fast. Now drink a glass of water.
Scarborough (Yorkshire Coast, UK) offers free Wi-Fi: 5.5m visitors pass through this coastal town each year, and a local business association has decided to unleash free Wi-Fi. The service will be pointed outwards for boats in the harbor, as well as inland.
Free Wi-Fi float in Sebastopol parade: The Apple Blossom Festival Parade last Saturday included “a fluorescent and sparkle-clad crew that shouted, ‘Free Wi-Fi.’ ” The parade was led by a 1906 San Francisco Earthquake survivor.
Posted by Glennf at 1:09 PM | Comments (0)
Artist’s project sweeps Wi-Fi into watching your neighbor: The Register reports on an art project in Brooklyn where Emery Martin heads a conceptual group that advocates volunteers to monitor open Wi-Fi networks to make terrorists aren’t planning attacks on “your own home network.” He provides technical details for connecting to and dumping all the traffic passing over open access points. It’s a send-up of the government’s warrantless monitoring of data communications, really.
My hometown of Eugene, Ore., expands Wi-Fi: The City of Eugene, where I lived during my formative teenage years, has expanded its free Wi-Fi access to five locations, including three pools and five community centers. It’s also available at airport, public library, local arts center, city hall, and elsewhere.
Milpitas votes to take over EarthLink’s network assets: The city will assume control of the assets, sell some equipment to raise replacement cost funds, and shut down public access, as previously expected. Their yearly costs for operation, most electricity, are estimated at $10,000 to $12,000 for the compact network.
Xirrus releases Windows XP version of monitoring widget: The free Yahoo widget shows current Wi-Fi area status in a kind of radar sweeping method, and provides a popup with full details about all nearby networks and their access points. The widget was previously release as a Vista gadget. (Gads, I can’t believe I just had to write that sentence. I suppose next, it will be a Windows Me gee-gaw, and then a Windows 98 jimcrack, and then, finally, a Windows 95 tchotchke.)
Posted by Glennf at 1:54 PM | Comments (0)
John Cox exhaustively examines what works (and doesn’t) with municipal Wi-Fi for Network World: This article thoroughly goes over what failed in rolling out city-wide Wi-Fi, and what kinds of networks seem to be playing out successfully so far. There’s not enough history with nearly any of the “successful” networks out there, but building networks designed primarily for municipal or public safety purposes seems to produce revenue savings and an increase in specific results. You have to love the lead, too: “Municipal Wi-Fi is dead.” Followed by a good summary of how the “classic” flavor is all washed up.
Portland, Ore., considers its options with MetroFi’s stalled network: The city of Portland alerted MetroFi in February that it considers the company “in default of contract,” according to the (Portland) Oregonian. MetroFi told the paper that his firm won’t be finishing the network without “financial support from the city and left open the possibility MetroFi will shut off the entire system.” CEO Chuck Haas also seems to have sworn off ad-supported Wi-Fi, something the company switched to years ago, deciding there’s truly not enough revenue there to turn a profit. Local group Personal Telco may move into a more leading role, given their steady work while MetroFi fiddled with their business model.
The Oregonian’s blog cites some items from the 6 Feb. 2008 letter sent by Portland to MetroFi, noting a lack of ongoing communication and maintenance, as well as a failure to provide information about its advertising partner MSN’s privacy practices.
Washington State Ferry Wi-Fi adjusts pricing: Ferry-Fi operator Parsons now offers 2-hour sessions for $3.95, and pre-paid packages of up to 20 sessions for $29.95 (about $1.50 per session). Monthly service remains $30 per month, but Parsons roams with Boingo and iPass at no extra charge.
Posted by Glennf at 4:33 PM | Comments (0)
AT&T-equipped Starbucks live in San Antonio Alan Weinkrantz believes he’s spotted the first transitioned Starbucks. He saw installers putting in gear, and the login screen shows AT&T Wi-Fi prominently, with T-Mobile’s HotSpot logo relegated to a square in the upper right. He may be right. In Seattle and New York at least, the Starbucks login banner shows T-Mobile prominently across the top with AT&T in a square at the upper right, as I noted with Klaus Ernst’s help on 10 April 2008. The store is located a few miles from AT&T’s HQ. Update: Information Week’s W. David Gardner confirmed the milestone with AT&T.
Suffolk signs contract with E-Path: After yesterday’s scathing New York Times article—which I wrote up and elaborated on—you might be surprised to read that Suffolk County’s executive Steve Levy has signed a contract with E-Path, the Wi-Fi network builder. As of Monday, Levy was saying that no services would need to be paid for by the county. Now, it’s “a price ‘as close to zero as possible.’” Apparently the contract doesn’t specify any actual purchase of services? While the New York Times was unable to get E-Path’s head on the phone, Newsday had no such problem. E-Path’s Joe Tortoretti is now saying that an anchor tenant and minimum service commitments are needed to build a network. That’s rather a different tune, isn’t it? E-Path, a firm that has built no such networks to date, is now going after the Long Island Railroad, too, with Levy’s backing. Shouldn’t this be bid out again by the county, given all the terms have changed?
Panasonic adds Wi-Fi camera: The Lumix DMC-TZ50 can upload directly to Google’s Picasa photo-sharing service. It’s got a 9.1-megapixel sensor, and comes with 12 months of free service at T-Mobile hotspots in the U.S. As I have noted many times before, uploading and “emailing” photos via photo-sharing services from Wi-Fi-enabled cameras typically involves a downsampled or compressed image, and that level of degradation isn’t noted in the widely marketed information about the camera.
Corpus Christi to reclaim network: The city council voted 7-0 last night to take its Wi-Fi network back over from EarthLink. As noted yesterday, EarthLink avoids paying $1.59m in fees to the city, but the city gets $3m in improvements, and hundreds of thousands of dollars in additional equipment. The improbably amount of $50,000 in yearly operating expense was once again bandied about in this GigaOm report. Milpitas also releases EarthLink, accepts its network.
Posted by Glennf at 12:03 PM | Comments (3)
Millions in grants for wiring, unwiring communities: This week brings $61m in funding to efforts to put affordable broadband with useful purposes in communities across the U.S., Wired reports, between a $36m grant from AT&T and its foundation to One Economy, and a $25m effort by the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation. As Wired notes, One Economy will bring broadband to 500,000 low-income Americans in over 50 communities, with private partners handling deploying. They’ll also develop audience-appropriate content. The Knight project will bring together grants and best-practices to help communities create self-sustaining Internet access. OneCommunity in Cleveland was cited as an example, and its head will take the job at a new Knight Center of Digital Excellence.
Akron is pretty ecstatic about the new Knight center, which will be built in its midst, as not only will the city become a center of thought about linking up communities, but a wireless project of its own will now be completed more rapidly. The Knight Foundation is putting in $625,000 towards the $2.2m project to unwire 10 sq mi. Other funds are coming from the city and the University of Akron. Akron’s local paper, the Beacon Journal, was the first newspaper owned by the Knight family. [link via Daniel McKimm]
Parks across the U.S.—about 194 of 3,208—have Wi-Fi, but why? This USA Today article enumerates what parks in which states offer Internet access, but are hard-pressed to explain why it’s useful. I do like the idea myself of having a lifeline back to people and information even when I’m away from it all, but it’s hardly a necessity.
USA Today also runs down some transportation-Fi: The newspaper runs through a list of where Wi-Fi is available on various means of transit.
Posted by Glennf at 12:43 PM | Comments (1)
Wi-Fi Planet runs down transit-based Internet access around the world: There’s a lot to choose to write about these days, as Internet access using Wi-Fi for end users and cellular data networks for backhaul abound. The article notes that commuter vehicle Wi-Fi can serve three purposes: access for passengers, intra-vehicle communication among systems, and remote surveillance in case of emergencies or security issues. The King County Metro System (called Metro by those of us here in King County) has Wi-Fi on a variety of buses, and seems to be gradually expanding service.
Microsoft expands its commuter bus system: The Wi-Fi equipped buses will grow to handle 4,600 riders a day from the current 1,800. A good friend will now have a 5-block walk from his Seattle home instead of a sort of impossible bus commute or a tedious daily drive. Microsoft was late to the game of offering free bus service to its employees, and thus their expansion must indicate that the increase in productivity and other goals are being met. The company told the Seattle Post-Intelligencer that 2,500 of the 4,300 employees who have so far used the system for a total of 130,000 rides were single-occupant car drivers.
Nikon’s new Coolpix S52c pairs 9 megapixel images, Flickr, Wi-Fi: The $300 camera, shipping in a few weeks, has a 9 MP sensor, 3x optical zoom, and vibration reduction and stabilization. The camera’s internal Wi-Fi works with a local network, where it transfers photos to a computer, which then can upload them to their own online service, Picturetown, or it can “email” photos (sending low-resolution images that the companies tend to forgot to give you the specs on how low resolution) at hotspots. The camera comes with six months of T-Mobile service. Pictures can be transferred to Flickr and social-networking sites via a feature at Picturetown.
Posted by Glennf at 2:15 PM | Comments (0)
Aircell gets FAA approval for in-flight launch: Aircell has completed another hoop, with approval from the FAA to manufacture, install, and operate its hardware on planes; the first models approved are for the American launch, the Boeing 767-200. Virgin, Aircell’s other launch partner, is using Airbus A319 and A320 aircraft. The press release notes that the launch routes for American will serve Los Angeles, San Francisco, New York, and Miami. American is equipping 15 planes at launch with Aircell’s Gogo Inflight Internet service.
Is it a coincidence that St. Paul is getting Comcast’s fastest service? St. Paul, just over the river from Wi-Fi-loving Minneapolis, will get news tomorrow from its cable provider that DOCSIS 3.0 technology will be rolled out. This latest flavor of cable standard will allow 50 Mbps down and 5 Mbps up in Comcast’s initial rollout. Service will run $150 for 50/5 Mbps; 6 Mbps and 8 Mbps downstream service are currently $43 and $53 per month. The faster service will hit 20 percent of Comcast’s customers nationally by 2009 and fully rollout by 2010.
Posted by Glennf at 4:25 PM | Comments (0)
Biopic of Hedy Lamarr will include technological achievements: One of the most beautiful women in the world in her day, Hedy Lamarr’s achievement and co-inventing spread-spectrum frequency-hopping technology (to prevent jamming) was overlooked through government secrecy, sexism, and incredulity until the turn of the century. A planned biographical film, “Face Value,” will survey the scope of her life.
Slacker partners with Devicescape for easy music access: The Slacker Portable adds Devicescape’s simple connection software built in. A firmware update, available today, allows Slacker owners to use Devicescape software to connect without entering passwords and other minutiae on the portable device, but rather manage free and open network connections directly, or, for managed and fee networks, through a Web site into which passwords can be entered.
More detail on Internet Archive plan for San Francisco high-speed access in projects: MuniWireless details who all is involved, including usual suspect Tim Pozar, a long-time advocate of spreading cheap and free (and corporate-free) Internet access.
Posted by Glennf at 7:13 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
No laptops allowed: So-called topless (nice sexy term for “laptop-less”) meetings are coming into vogue? It’s hard to tell if it’s a trend, but to judge by conferences I’ve attended, no one pays attention to anything any more. Banning laptops might be an advantage to promoting shorter meetings—people will be jonesing so hard for their ‘top that they’ll cut to the chase.
Internet Archive offers fiber-based service to public housing project: Forget Wi-Fi. How about 100 Mbps to each apartment in a 260-unit project (Valencia Gardens)? That’s Brewster Kahle, Internet pioneer and all-around good guy, written large. His efforts intend to put high-speed service into 2,500 units, mostly by the end of the year. The project ties into city-owned fiber, and is routed through the archive’s high-speed NOC. With this project and the Meraki Free the Net mesh effort, San Francisco could move out of the status of a developing nation in terms of widespread broadband access.
Boston Wi-Fi project launches: The first pilot project under the direction of Openairboston launched today, with a square mile in Roxbury and Dorchester, passing about 8,000 homes. Service is free for 30 days, then $10 per month thereafter.
Open Range Communications gets $267m loan for rural broadband: The funds are intended to push service into an extraordinary 518 rural areas across 17 states. They’ve raised $100m privately, too, GigaOm reports. They won’t deploy just one set of technology, but will sublet spectrum and use a satellite range for ground service, Om Malik writes.
Chrysler will put Wi-Fi into cars: Bloomberg News reports that Chrysler intends later this year to offer dealer-installed cellular Internet links in cars. The Chrysler chief for this effort misuses the term Wi-Fi, though, as it’s cell data with car drivers required to obtain a cell subscription. The service will move to factory-installed after 2008. There’s not much detail on what drivers and passengers will be able to use the service for in this brief article.
Wi-Fi chip shipments dectupled in five years; revenue quintupled: ABI Research notes that 440m Wi-Fi chipsets will ship in 2008, 10 times greater than in 2003. However, revenue is just 5 times higher, which shows how even with more advanced chips in the mix, the race to the bottom continues. Broadcom was the leading vendor in ABI’s analysis.
Posted by Glennf at 3:53 PM | Comments (0)
TapRoot offers Windows Mobile, Symbian Series 60 option for sharing cell data over Wi-Fi: TapRoot’s software lets you turn a cell phone with a data connection into a Wi-Fi hotspot. The free demo version allows a single user to connect at a time over Wi-Fi; a full-feature version is in the works that they’d resell to carriers (they hope). No consumer plans are sold. This is the second phone-as-hotspot package to appear this year. JoikuSpot was released last month, but works just with Nokia Symbian phones.
Greyhound offers Wi-Fi on northeastern corridor buses: The aging bus company gets modern with its BoltBus service, which launches March 26 between Manhattan and Washington, D.C., with promotional $1 tickets each way (purchased online, in advance). The buses will have a little more legroom along with the free cellular-network-backed Wi-Fi. The bus company told Wi-Fi Planet that the Internet access wouldn’t be perfect—“may be very slow or spotty”—an admirable bit of truthfulness, but there are 110-volt outlets on board that makes for entertaining diversions (like watching DVDs) between good connectivity.
Posted by Glennf at 2:06 PM | Comments (1)
Las Vegas student provokes discussion of Wi-Fi mooching: Highly unbalanced Las Vegas Sun story on a student who claims he was booted from a cafe that offers free Wi-Fi despite regular purchases fails to quote cafe’s owner. The owner posts his version in the comments (guy rarely bought anything). Hard to know truth, but owner’s version makes plain sense. Comments are especially interesting. Follow-up on story backs owner’s version.
Penn Station in New York gets free Wi-Fi in Long Island Railroad waiting area: Penn Station, a blight on the face of travel since its previous incarnation was destroyed, now at least has this free service. Craig Plunkett notes that both A and G networks appear present under different SSIDs.
Posted by Glennf at 10:15 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Metageek offers wireless signatures in update to spectrum analyzer software: Metageek’s Chanalyzer 3.0 software for their $399 Wi-Spy 2.4x spectrum analyzer in a USB dongle adds signatures in a sidebar: patterns that let you match what you’re seeing in the graph to common interferers like microwave ovens and cordless phones. You can upload snapshots to get input from other users, or add to their Signatures Library. The Windows-only tool also provides greater control over recording, annotating, playing back, and slicing data. This software doesn’t work with their original Wi-Spy model (now dubbed “v1”), which continues to be sold and supported.
BelAir cited as revenue market leader worldwide for wireless mesh: This doesn’t surprise me. BelAir is the name I’m consistently hearing associated with most of the large-scale muni projects, such as Minneapolis and Toronto, which skews revenue up because so many nodes are needed for these projects. Can anyone tell me if Tropos, SkyPilot, or Strix has any large-scale metro projects that are being deployed? Or have three companies refocused their efforts? The revenue estimates for node shipments, by the way, come from Dell’Oro Group, a firm that’s been tracking the wireless industry for many years. Update: I got some good pushback on this by vendors. Tropos noted that it was the 2007 overall revenue leader in the study; BelAir for the second half of 2007; Tropos also led in nodes shipped. Both Tropos and Firetide also pointed out that with the rising interest in public safety networks and large-scale logistics networks, focusing on big-city Wi-Fi isn’t really where the market has led to.
Intel modifies shrinkwrapped hardware to span 60 miles with standard Wi-Fi: It’s not a great trick to set up antennas and receive Wi-Fi signals dozens of miles away. The hard part is keeping a consistent link over time and dealing with latency and environmental factors. Intel says they’ve got a device that they’ll sell initially in India at what should be below $500 per node (although a pair is required for links). They expect most links will span about 30 miles, with one node on the edge of a city. An Intel manager says in this Technology Review article, “If you take standard Wi-Fi and focus, you can’t get past a few kilometers.” That is to laugh, as I imagine all you community networkers are now doing reading these words. It’s relatively easy to run Wi-Fi that far; you just have to know what parameters to tune. In fact, they’re not using Wi-Fi, but a protocol that’s Wi-Fi like, which employs a form of half-duplex TDMA (time division multiple access).
Posted by Glennf at 4:05 PM | Comments (2)
MyLoki lets you tell your friends perhaps too much about where you are right now: Skyhook Wireless’s Loki service and developer’s kit allows embedded JavaScript in Web pages to extract your current location based on the Wi-Fi environment around you with your permission. A new offering from the firm called MyLoki lets you publish your location via a public Web page, a Facebook application, RSS, and a Web page. I’m not ecstatic about the granularity offered. The public page lets you publish your exact location, but nothing less exact, and no “buddy” privileges. You can publish your current city through the other means, but nothing more granular. A map badge for your Web site can show country, state, city, postal code, or exact location. Further refinement is clearly needed, as different people I know need to know where I am (or not at all) at varying levels of exactness.
Phila. pays $200,000 for Wi-Fi management: The Wireless Philadelphia non-profit that manages the incomplete Phila. network gets help from an outside consulting firm which works with the city’s chief information officer. The $200,000 cost in the current fiscal year is booked to the city, and the numbers weren’t hidden, it certainly wasn’t transparent that these costs accrued to the “no-cost to the city” project. The future of the network is uncertain given EarthLink’s stated intent to sell it; the city may buy it and contract with another firm for completion.
Posted by Glennf at 11:43 AM | Comments (0)
Denver plays nanny with Wi-Fi: The Denver airport will give you free Wi-Fi, but they filter it to avoid, they say, unintentionally offending “angry parents whose children walked by a screen showing pornography.” In other words, people with laptops act stupidly in public, and we have to protect you from those people (and nudity). The reporter on this piece notes that Sports Illustrated’s swimsuit issue (“bare-breasted” this month; had to go check that was true), Penthouse, and Hustler are all on display and for sale at the airport newsstands. A person foolish enough to view Web pages containing adult content unsuitable for tiny eyes might also purchase a magazine, or view stored content on their own computer or on a DVD. This story brings together two huge pop culture icons: David Byrne and BoingBoing. The former discovered the filtering while passing through the airport and trying to read BoingBoing; the latter has waged a campaign against stupid filtering since being entirely blocked due to a limited number of images and topics. BoingBoing has a page on defeating what they call censorware.
Touch My Network: Did she say what I think she said at 4 minutes, 6 seconds into this video? Yes. She did. And she got it right, even. (She must have a fiber-optic link.)
UK sees increase in Internet use on East Coast Main Line: The new operator, National Express, made the on-board, Wi-Fi-delivered Internet service free to all classes in December; they saw a jump from 30,000 to 100,000 users per month. Formerly, couch riders paid £4.95 per hour, while first class paid nothing. The line carries 17.4m passengers per year, which makes me think that usage number measures “sessions” rather than, as the article states, “people.” (The 17.4m figure is trips, not people, meaning tens of thousands of people ride the line each day.)
Posted by Glennf at 2:41 PM | Comments (0)
Pittsburgh gets free-Fi: The Pittsburgh Downtown Partnership found a new provider for its network, one that’s agreed to donate service for three years. AspStation has stepped in to replace a provider, US Wireless Online (not to be confused with apparently thriving US Internet in Minneapolis), that filed 2008-10-08 for bankruptcy protection. The new provider will offer two hours of free service a day and a lower, not-yet-determined fee for monthly unlimited usage. AspStation was providing the back-haul for the network already, and took over. They will likely slowly expand the network, which has 5,000 to 6,000 monthly session (reported as users, but really sessions), averaging 85 minutes a day, or about 120 to 150 users active at any given time. If the company could convert 100 users to a monthly fee of even $10 per month, that plus the good publicity might be worthwhile to them. Their costs are lower since they already have a back-haul operation in place.
Professor maps Wi-Fi geography: An article in tomorrow’s issue of Annals of the Association of American Geographers details Paul M. Torrens work in documenting the geography of Wi-Fi in Salt Lake City. Torrens, an assistant professor at Arizona State University’s School of Geographical Sciences and Director of Geosimulation Labs LLC, and apparently students drove around SLC to obtain a huge amount of data that was then mapped in interesting ways over the city. The Flash presentation is nifty, showing 3D rotations of topologies. Part of the conclusion of the paper is that the amount of information we spew out about ourselves creates “data shadows” with “an increasing level of precision and depth of associated information.” Food for thought.
On a related note, Skyhook partners with photo geotagging service Locr: Locr helps its users apply location information on top of pictures. Skyhook Wireless determines location based on Wi-Fi signals (in mostly urban areas). The partnership lets Locr tie into Skyhook on Wi-Fi-enabled handsets running Windows Mobile 5 and certain Nokia Symbian phones.
Posted by Glennf at 10:18 AM | Comments (0)
Toledo paper picks up on MetroFi woes: The local paper in Toledo writes about MetroFi’s problems in Portland, Ore., and Aurora and Naperville, Ill., and recounts Toledo’s history with MetroFi. The Wi-Fi firm originally contracted to build an ad-supported network for the city, but was working on a deal with the mayor’s tech head to contract for services worth $2.16m over five years. (This story erroneously states it would “cost Toledo taxpayers” that much money, without mentioning that much or all of the sum would come from existing an telecom/data budget, and be cost conservation.) The newspaper is owned by Block Communications, which also owns Buckeye cable, which originally competed for the Toledo bid against MetroFi, but delivered a bid that didn’t answer the spec for city-wide service—partly because Buckeye wondered if it made sense. (The newspaper/cable overlap is disclosed in the article.) Buckeye has installed about 61 hotspots around Toledo.
Cisco, San Francisco Muni test unwired bus: The Connected Bus will run for about a year on a regular route in SF, and offer Wi-Fi to passengers along with touchscreens providing information like current location, arrival times, and connecting transit routes.
Knowzy documents free Wi-Fi at some Calif., Ariz., Jacks in the Box (Jack in the Boxes?): A firm named Ripple, which puts TV broadcasts into the stores, offers the Wi-Fi using Sputnik as the back-end, the site reports. A code on the screen following the word Wi-Fi indicates both that Wi-Fi is available, and the gateway page passcode to gain free access. Two hours’ use every 12 is offered.
Balloon-Fi: Space Data Corp. is floating balloons with cell-data transceivers over the southern U.S., with an expectation to extend their “network” further, the Wall Street Journal reports. It notes the rumor that Google may invest or purchase Space Data. The company puts a payload on balloons that it pays farmers and others $50 to launch the balloons at a regular time each day; the balloons each stay aloft for about 24 hours. They pay GPS hobbyists $100 to retrieve the $1,500 transceivers. They’re registered to bid for 700 MHz spectrum in the current auction, and it’s clear they’d like to offer cell-tower-like service across rural areas that are expensive to connect—but which have unserved audiences.
Cincinnati airport goes free: The Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky airport, a major hub for Delta, now offers free Wi-Fi in a large portion of the airport. This is an extension of the local Project Lily Pad, which has attempted to build out free Wi-Fi where useful instead of building a city-wide cloud. Time Warner Cable is paying for the service. (A side note: My wife and I flew with our then-2-year-old son through Cincinnati in 2006, and for some reason, even though we were in the airport about two hours total round-trip, he still talks about the airport.)
Sky Broadband uses easy-to-guess method for default Wi-Fi network encryption: The Register reports that the UK Sky Broadband service sets a default password for a NetGear DG834GT Wi-Fi gateways issued to their customers that’s based on the device’s MAC (unique network interface) address, and easily derived. A Register states there are about 1m customers using the router model affected. Sky hasn’t issued any broad advice to customers to change the password.
Posted by Glennf at 10:42 AM | Comments (1)
Minneapolis Wi-Fi network nears completion, but with dead zones: Steve Alexander writes for the Star Tribune that US Internet is nearly done with its city-wide buildout, about four months later than planned, which is a remarkable achievement compared with other city plans, mostly unfinished or never begun. Some “challenge areas” are featured in a map provided by the company that are due to a problem with—wait for it—light poles! Yes, the quotidian strikes again. Alexander writes that 124 poles are troublesome, and the city is working is working with the controlling utility on solving the problem. US Internet told Alexander that 20 percent of the 8,000 people preregistered for interest in subscribing live in one of the biggest dead zones.
Nigerian gang allegedly hijacks neighbor’s Wi-Fi for alleged lottery scam in Spain: Allegedly. 10 Nigerians were arrested for their alleged participation in a scam that brought in whoop-de-whoo amount of $28,000 over three months. They used someone else’s network to run the operation.
Tempe network’s future: ComputerWorld runs down what’s happening in Tempe following the collapse of the Kite Network service there. Kite’s owner, Gobility, won’t talk because of “legal reasons,” which could include Tempe’s actions against the firm, which apparently hasn’t filed for bankruptcy or taken any steps towards resolving situations with the cities involved. The Telscape deal to acquire the network is clearly dead. The city may be able to seize the company’s assets or assess them fines, and is thinking about trying to find another network operator.
Posted by Glennf at 4:27 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Boingo expands mobile service to Sony Ericsson phones, Windows Mobile 6.0, plans iPhone service: Boingo Wireless will expand its $8 per month unlimited worldwide mobile usage plans to smartphones that use Sony Ericsson UIQ 3.0, which include the W960i, P1i, and G900i.
Boingo also released today its mobile service software for Windows Mobile 6.0, which includes devices like the T-Mobile Dash, under the same pricing scheme.
The company mentioned its interest in the iPhone to PC Magazine; Boingo says 6 percent of connection attempts in its airport locations are from iPhones or iPod touches. I confirmed with the company that they aren’t interested in releasing an iPhone before Apple releases the developer toolkit—which is Any Day Now, since Mr. Jobs promised the kit in Feb. 2008. February has 29 days.
The Wi-Fi Alliance has certified 200 products with Wi-Fi Protected Setup (WPS): I’m still waiting for the operating systems to catch up fully with the fact that the easy-to-use WPS is out in the marketplace so widely. Apple upgraded OS X to handle WPS with its own products, but I haven’t seen enough gear that’s designed to work with it yet, despite that number. I wrote extensively about how WPS works back in Jan. 2007. The alliance has also started with “testing support” for near-field communications (NFS), a rather exciting new method of providing out-of-band security by simply touching two devices closely together at a designated point. The physical proximity necessary provides an extra level of protection against man-in-the-middle attacks and other interception issues.
Train-Fi is expanding at a modest pace across Europe: An update from the International Herald Tribune as to where you can now find Wi-Fi on trains, and where it’s coming. The phenomenon, which I wrote about for The Economist in fall 2006 when I thought it was picking up steam now appears to be rounding the bend and accelerating. Notably, Deutsche Bahn has moved from a single trial to service on several long lines, and the international Thalys line will have all 26 of its trains equipped by spring, up from 3 today. French SNCF is in trials on a high speed line and could expand to all 400 trains it runs within France and internationally.
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Phila. CIO three-quarters sure EarthLink will pull out of city: Nonetheless, he’s pretty happy with the service in places, and the city is considering its options. The city expects it will hear within 60 days about EarthLink’s plans.
Continental signs with JetBlue for in-flight TV, Internet: The airline will offer 36 channels of television at no cost to first-class, $6 for coach starting in a year, along with email and text messaging, price not disclosed. American, Alaska, and JetBlue now also have test plans; United and Delta are sure to follow.
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Kudos to Minneapolis’s US Internet for building a Wi-Fi network that works: The testing firm Novarum found that two zones tested in Minneapolis’s nearly-done Wi-Fi network achieved the best marks for performance among U.S. networks tested for 802.11g and 802.11n clients. These are outdoor tests, as far as I know, but that’s still saying something. Update: Muniwireless reports that BelAir (which commissioned the work) and US Internet shouldn’t have released the comparative information, as testing is underway. Novarum is still positive about the results, just not precisely the method of comparison or disclosure, Muniwireless writes.
Empire State Building disabling cars wirelessly: There’s a radius of five blocks around what was once the mooring place of Zeppelins that appears to be related to keyless entry systems in cars. About 10 to 15 cars won’t start or can’t be opened every day, according to locals. In parts of the country near military bases, garage door openers and keyless cars flip out when a base flips on systems that apparently leak out-of-band signals into those unlicensed frequencies.
Long Island Wi-Fi pilot launch delayed: The 2.5-mile project along Route 110 near the borders of two participating counties, Suffolk and Nassau, has been pushed back while utility pole agreements are finalized. It’s getting close. As always, utility poles tend to take longer to secure rights to than anyone anticipates, even when they’re aware of this fact. Suffolk County Water Authority is considering acting as one of the anchor tenants for the 750 sq mi project led by E-Path Communications.
Bluetooth used to synchronize leg motions for double amputee: Two veterans are testing out mechanical prosthetics that use standard Bluetooth signaling to coordinate their motion, allowing for greater range with less effort and more natural movement. One of the veterans reports that the legs sometimes get going a little fast and there’s a chain reaction, but he sounds pretty upbeat about how it works.
A calm discussion about Wi-Fi table squatters: A neat slice of life from Milwaukee, Wisc., examining the unwritten rules of lingering over a cup of joe (or more) in cafes when it’s quiet and when it gets busy. One customer, clearly an engineer, doesn’t want unwritten rules, preferring to have written instructions about social interactions: “if the owners want the public to obey rules, they should state these rules, post a sign or something.” Because if there’s one thing a friendly cafe wants to do is post lots of rules that anyone with sense could intuit.
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Minneapolis network operator says completion is close: About 85 percent of the network that US Internet is building in this Minnesotan city is complete, with the remainder done by February. US Internet has previously said that based on current subscribers and interest by people in areas that weren’t covered, they could be cash flow positive in what seems to be months. That would be a huge milestone for the entire industry if it comes to pass. As usual utility poles figure into delays: Some poles don’t have day-time electricity, exacerbated by what sounds like bad maintenance leading to cracked conduits where wiring could otherwise have been added.
Longmont considers buying network at fire sale: The city of Longmont, Colo., thinks that the network built by Kite Networks for their city could be worthwhile if purchased at discount if no other buyers emerge, this story from the local paper notes. Under Colorado law, voters would have to approve.
Boingo, JiWire partner in airport ad deal: Boingo Wireless will rely on JiWire for airport advertising on its 28 airport Wi-Fi networks. The deal is described as additive to revenue—that is, there’s no mention of passengers getting free Wi-Fi for watching ads, although that’s been part of JiWire’s strategy elsewhere, including an ads-for-free-Wi-Fi deal for iPhone/iPod touch users in airports that obviously involves Boingo. (Disclosure: I own a vanishingly small number of shares in privately held JiWire.)
USA Today profiles Skyhook Wireless: The company’s Wi-Fi-based GPS-like service was picked up by Apple, and this should make more deals easier for the firm.
Fon offers free routers to Castro neighborhood in San Francisco: Cher impersonator encourages people to share. Get it? The Cher connection comes from the Castro’s long history as a gay commumity.
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Boingo, Broadcom partner to include Boingo software in Wi-Fi VoIP phones: Boingo received another shot of confidence in its method of aggregating access to tens of thousands of hotspots worldwide for a flat fee with Broadcom incorporating the Boingo software toolkit in its Wi-Fi phone chipset platform. Reducing coding effort vastly increases the likelihood that a manufacturer would partner with Boingo to provide access for its subscribers, or that a reseller or service provider would wind up working with Boingo because the phone already had the capability to tap into the Boingo network. Boingo charges $8 per month for unlimited access for mobile devices with Wi-Fi, including handsets and devices with browsers. The iPhone, alas, is not yet in the supported devices list given its closed platform approach—until next month when a software developer’s toolkit is released by Apple.
Eye-Fi signs deal with memory-card maker Lexar for their embedded technology: The details are pretty vague right now, but it likely means better and wider integration of Eye-Fi’s features with camera memory cards, among other possibilities. I don’t think we’ll see every memory card have Wi-Fi inside, but Lexar’s market position makes it possible for them, in turn, to work with camera makers to incorporate special features that a Lexar Wi-Fi card would have access to. Eye-Fi also runs the back-end of the system, and while there are no details available about whether the company gets a cut of customer purchases for uploaded photos, one expects there’s money on the back end, too. Separately, Eye-Fi announced new partnerships with Microsoft and Costco. Eye-Fi users can upload photos starting Jan. 11 to Windows Live, Windows Live Photo Gallery, and Costco’s Photo Center.
Tropos has new CEO: The metro-scale Wi-Fi equipment maker, notable for providing gear to EarthLink Networks for the quiescent municipal division, has a new chief executive and president, Tom Ayers. Ayers’s background is in networked security. Ron Sege is stepping down after four years, riding the rollercoaster of not-quite-early-stage startup to what is still not-quite-late-stage startup even as market conditions changed dramatically. Tropos began its life as a clever mesh firm looking to target the high cost of campus-wide enterprise networking with a cheaper approach. The firm rode the wave of hype in the metro-scale Wi-Fi market. With less growth in that field—but still a predicted hundreds of millions of dollars to be spent in 2008 in the U.S. alone on city Wi-Fi—it’s a time of change and new strategies. With the loss of many thousands of nodes for projected EarthLink projects, the company has to develop harder markets.
Canary Wireless updates Digital Hotspotter detector: I thought Canary Wireless’s first-generation product was the best of breed when introduced way back in Dec. 2004. The new model, the HS20, will go on sale for $60 sometime in the first quarter of 2008. Features seem much the same, with easier controls for scrolling among multiple networks detected. The device shows the network name, signal strength, and encryption type (if any). There’s a place for Wi-Fi detectors only if they provide all this info. Otherwise, it’s just a toy.
Latest ferry run powered by Wi-Fi in Washington State: Parsons has turned on Wi-Fi in the long Bremerton-to-Seattle ferry route after long delays in securing locations to mount equipment. In the end, they placed 10 shoreline access points due to siting issues and the curving path the ferry takes. It was known during the production tests of this service that this would be the hardest route to unwire. Bremerton is a blue-collar town that’s much more affordable than any other bedroom-by-ferry communities. Washington State Ferries carries 50 percent of all U.S. ferry trips (by passenger numbers), and now has its most popular routes equipped with Wi-Fi. Roaming deals with Boingo, iPass, and others allow business commuters and others to have ferry-Fi access at no charge above their existing monthly fees. While the press release says this is the largest “commercial, over-the-water Wi-Fi system in the world,” I would say that’s too narrow: it’s almost certainly serves the largest audience of commuters of any Wi-Fi system.
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Sony mylo 2 has crazy name, better interface, free Wi-Fi: Sony’s insanely named COM-2 mylo has a nicer looking design, a lower price ($300 instead of $350), and password-free no-cost Wi-Fi hotspots access at all Wayport locations, including over 9,000 McDonald’s outlets, certainly a prime overlap with mylo 2 buyers (I refuse to use its proper name). The new version adds AOL Instant Messenger support on top of existing Google Talk, Skype, and Yahoo Messenger. It also allows Skype voice calls as did the first edition. A preview in PC Magazine notes that the Web browser is good—reviews of the first mylo excoriated a poor browsing experience. But the reviewer’s browser ran out of memory regularly, especially when trying to use Flash heavy sites. There’s only 23 MB of free RAM on the machine, quite low given that the reviewer notes 831 MB is available for music and video storage.