The Martian NetDrive Wireless: 40 gigabytes of small, silent, 802.11b filesharing

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They aren't dancing in the street, but purple-clad men have laptops strapped to their bellies in Times Square: Today in New York, Intel has been showing off its new Centrino system, a set of three components including a wireless module, that they claim will radically increase battery life, potentially improving it by 50 to 100 percent, through more efficient processor usage and chips that control the power to various components including the wireless radio.

A correspondent in New York called to say that he was walking by the Times Square McDonald's -- the Cometa network in New York McDonald's went live today; look at that big white empty country -- and saw men dressed in purple suits with laptops strapped around their stomachs. You were supposed to walk up and use these laptops, typing inches from their private parts. (He promises a photo; Bill Koslosky pointed to these photos he took.)

Intel has also blanketed the country in advertising. The New York Times this morning, for instance, had a multipage ad section focusing on wireless -- the first two-page spread in the section had the word unwired in about 700-point type. The last page listed a number of wireless ISPs/hot spot operators and locations.

Paul Boutin is at the launch: Watch for his Slate coverage later today.

HP opts to not use Centrino for professional models: HP is worried about corporate customers who don't want built-in obsolescence through built-in wireless. They'd rather offer interchangeable cards. They will use the Pentium-M, though, which the author of this piece implies is a different piece of technology. HP will introduce 802.11a, b, and g through an Atheros module in mini-PCI format in May. A consumer Centrino will follow in June.

Dell and Broadcom partnership explored, alongside a cavalcade of chipmaker announcements at 802.11 Planet: A great round-up of several chipmakers recent announcements, including the Dell/Broadcom one. This story at e-insight doesn't quite explain that the Dell Latitude will use Centrino by default. Read Dell's press release for the clear statement.

Other News

Wi-Fi Alliance says WPA certification coming in May, a/b/g labels dropped in favor of speed, frequency: Wi-Fi Protected Access, the subset of IEEE 802.11i security revisions still in progress, will be certified by May, resulting in massive firmware upgrades for tons and tons of devices. The Wi-Fi Zone program will identify the local service as 2.4 GHz and/or 5 GHz, and 11 Mbps or 54 Mbps. A little bit of a matrix to sort out.

David Weinberger (Cluetrain, JOHO, NPR) interviews David Reed on why interference is an illusion, and spectrum policy is deeply flawed: Reed says that the notion of interference is rooted in a pre-modern era in which devices spewed out radio frequencies and weren't intelligent enough to adapt. Interference is a metaphor that paints an old limitation of technology as a fact of nature, he says.

T-Mobile to provide CTIA Wi-Fi coverage: Alan Reiter reports that T-Mobile and Sprint contended with the organizers and conference center to have the right to offer service. They'll charge $10 per day or $20 for three days. Alan's not sure if his tutorial will have service, which is ironic.

Buy a Fujitsu and get 2000 T-Mobile HotSpot minutes free: Fujitisu is offering 2000 minutes of T-Mobile HotSpot service for free when you buy a qualifying notebook. In typical fashion, the terms aren't disclosed: do they expire? do they start ticking when you buy the notebook? [via Dan Gillmor]

Newbury Street community network possibly only commercial/community freenet: Leander Kahney of Wired News writes about Michael Oh's efforts to offer to free wireless networks across an increasing area of Boston's Newbury Street to promote his business while doing good. Oh seems to have a single backhaul, which radically reduces his cost in offering this kind of service.