Welcome to our partnership with JIWIRE: If you're a previous visitor to Wi-Fi Networking News, you'll notice some changes today in our banner, the left navigation bar, and our site's coloring. We've partnered with JIWIRE, an editorial operation that combines a great hot-spot directory with a terrific editorial approach to teaching how to most effectively use Wi-Fi in specific and wireless in general. (That last part is self promotion: I helped plan the editorial mission and calendar over the last three months, and act as senior editor for JIWIRE: writing, planning, and working with freelance contributors.)

Our partnership with JIWIRE doesn't change anything editorially: we're still an independent organization, and Nancy Gohring and myself will continue to report in the fashion we have over the life of this site. JIWIRE will be handling the advertising sales for this site, however, and our connection back and forth should help us both reach more people. We link to their hotspot directory (see at upper left) and they link to our headlines.

JIWIRE has also begun its real editorial cycle starting today. If you visit their home page you'll see links to five regular daily themes: Wi-Fi, Hotspots, Cellular, Road Warrior, and Gadgets. Each of these themes is handled by a dedicated bloggers (with excellent credentials): Nancy Gohring (WNN, NY Times, InfoWorld), Mike Masnick (TechDirt, consultant), Brian Jepson (O'Reilly, book author), Paul Boutin (Slate, Wired), and Agen Schmitz (formerly of Amazon.com), respectively.

The idea of this section of the site was to provide timely and interesting items about subjects that appeal to a wireless audience, but without the formality and depth of a full-length feature.

I'm looking forward to working closely with JIWIRE on both sides of the fence: as an editor with them and as a partner on the news site. It's a great complementary combination, and I welcome your feedback!