Perhaps the city should have hired its school district's contractor to build city-wide Wi-Fi: The School District of Philadelphia has a 7,000 node network, using Meru's Radio Switches, centrally managed wireless LAN devices. Avaya and HJ Heinz, the network's builders, covered 268 schools, 166,000 students, and 10,000 teachers with the dispersed network. The 802.11a/g nodes handle voice, video streaming, and data.
Xirrus offers free Windows Vista Wi-Fi status tool: The program provides Vista users with a plethora of details about their Wi-Fi environment, and the access point to which they may connect. It's designed to inform users about rogue APs, too. This should be a very nice addition to Vista's already superior control over Wi-Fi networks. Microsoft improved Vista's management of Wi-Fi networks, although there are still awkward bits. Xirrus, a maker of Wi-Fi switches, should earn some nice karma points (and publicity) from this move. (One of the top hits still on Wi-Fi Networking News is an item about a free Windows 2000 WPA client.)
AnchorFree launches ad network for free access: AnchorFree joins the gang of providers of free-via-ads Wi-Fi service. MetroFi is the best known of these players, although they shows ads from multiple sources (as I understand it) including JiWire, a company that I've worked for and provided advice for in the past. The size of the ad-supported Wi-Fi market is rather murky: are millions or tens of millions being spent per year? AnchorFree is focusing on hotspots; MetroFi on cities, although the news that came out of Portland a few weeks ago indicate MetroFi is still sorting out how to raise capital or produce revenue for its continuing network development in that city.
Wi-Fi Alliance releases voice over Wi-Fi white paper: The group that certifies devices as Wi-Fi compliant is offering details on best practices for providing voice over Wi-Fi. It will offer a new certification for Wi-Fi devices with voice applications in the first half of 2008.