Dubiousness on future of Long Island project: Long Island network builder E-Path has lost out in Trenton, where it asked for a mere $250,000 in contracted services to build a 7.5 sq mi network; Delay Beach, Flor., hasn't progressed, either. Trenton's business administrator states the problem clearly: "You can't expect a company to come in and expend millions of dollars on build out costs without having some level of guarantee that they're going to recover their costs." But there's more problems with E-Path in Long Island, where the utility that needs to grant pole access for two pilot projects says they gave access months ago. We'll see what shakes out. I was dubious from the start about the scale of the project with no anchor tenant, and with a firm that had no comparable projects of scale even underway. It's not a lack of confidence in E-Path (I have no opinion on their abilities); rather, the state of financing for projects of this sort.

Extremely fair article on Sebastopol Wi-Fi networking health debate: The local paper manages to push the camel through the eye of the needle in presenting various aspects of the vote by the local council to rescind the gift of a local ISP to provide city-wide Wi-Fi. It neither ridicules the symptoms of people who describe themselves as electrosensitive, nor ignores the clinical research that shows such sensitivity to be unprovable, even as the symptoms are clearly manifest (just not correlated with EMF). The article notes that one radio host who speaks on health has his words carried by a station that is bumping more signal out across Sebastopol than any Wi-Fi network would. In a true Sonoma moment, however, the leading opponent to the city-wide network and the owner of the ISP cross paths in front of Whole Foods where high school students in favor of the network were gather signatures for a petition--and hugged. That kind of behavior is more of what we need: civility, understanding, and mutual working forward to improve everyone's health. More research? Sure. And more kindness, too.

Wired's Wi-Fi map: now, useful! My friend and colleague Cyrus Farivar spent weeks researching what municipal projects were proceeding, on hold, or dead across the U.S., and I wasn't very impressed by the way in which Wired presented this material in their print issue. But never fear! Online, paired with Google Maps, his research is tremendously accessible. It's now a few weeks out of date, but still useful for the scope and locations of projects. It makes me want to build an ongoing effort of the same kind!

Complimentary essay on Boston's pace: By not building fast, OpenAirBoston avoids the mistakes of other municipal networks. True. But in the end, they need to build something; they are only "behind" in the sense of not having put their neck out too far.