Archive for October, 2008
McDonald’s has been offering $14/h Telstra WiFi with their burgers since 2003, allowing customers to work online (yeah right) or surf the Web while munching on their $6 burger and fries. Did anyone actually do that? Because, well, I know myself, and eating a greasy burger with sauce and greasy fries,… But at least they were ahead of their times compared to their competitors.
“There is a McDonald’s restaurant in virtually every community and by making this service available to so many we are taking a leadership position and anticipating the future communication needs our customers.”
Now they take the next big leap, and offer free WiFi at all their locations. That’s at 720 McDonald’s stores across Australia (roll-out over time). And at the same time they’ll make it ‘Family Friendly’ by using Clean Pipes technology from earthwave:
“Clean Pipes provides a common security framework to protect McDonald’s from both external and internal threats. The solution involved a multi-million dollar investment by earthwave to develop a defense in depth security architecture made up of layers of security including firewalls, network intrusion prevention systems, distributed denial of service protection and various web protection mechanisms. This architectural approach will enable McDonald’s ability to continually monitor and defend its networks against potential internet related attacks.”
“The ‘Clean Pipes’ service also provides McDonald’s with a number of proactive measures and reporting aimed at both highlighting and countering potential network security threats from internet traffic generated by customers using the McDonald’s free WiFi Hotspots.”
Sure sounds impressive, using all the security buzzwords. Why would you need all that to offer ‘Family Friendly’ free WiFi? As far as I can tell, that means their public WiFi is linked to their internal network?
Next, they’ll get bouncers at the door too…
Better be safe than sorry, I guess.
The annual Wireless Security Survey conducted by RSA reveals that London is still the worlds wireless networked capital, by more than 3000 more than New York.
Paris broke all the records with a 543% year-over-year increase in the number of wireless access points detected in the city. At 15%, New York City remains the leader in regards to its concentration of hotspots.
ISPReview notes:
In London, the volume of personal ‘home’ wireless access points was greater even than the number of corporate ones… Most impressively, home network users appear to be more security-savvy than their corporate counterparts.
Read on at ISPReview, or RSA’s press release.
Nothing on Sydney though.
Thursday, Oct 23rd, 2008
Categories: Media
iBurst, recently providing free internet access as a sponsor of Web Directions South , is about to terminate its wireless network, ZDNet writes. The BigAir Group was one party interested in taking over the iBurst assets, but:
“BigAir Group Limited announced today it has been notified by the Receivers for the Commander Group, McGrathNicol, that its bid to acquire the iBurst assets of Personal Broadband Australia (PBA) was unsuccessful… The Company has also been advised by the Receivers that they intend to discontinue providing iBurst services and the network will be shut down and closed no later than December 19th 2008.”
iBurst was launched in 2003, and was one of the first to offer wide area wireless broadband internet. But last couple of years mobile telcos’ coverage of 3G grew both in reach and speed, and iBurst modems were too expensive, and bigger than the small 3G USB dongles.
I’d still like to salute iBurst for providing us with free internet access at Web Directions South last month, and the technicians then present. It must have been a difficult period for them knowing the company wasn’t in the best condition.
Wednesday, Oct 15th, 2008
Categories: Social
Poverty manifests itself through different guises. When we think of poverty, we’d immediately recall a homeless person or a malnourished African child, a reflection of economical poverty. Social poverty is the result of lack of social capital. As per J.D. Lewandowski, “the concept of social capital refers to the networks of social trust and social connections that serve to enable individual and collective actions in a given social structure or society.” Social exclusion is often a cause of poverty, conflict and insecurity. Improving social inclusion increases one’s well-being, mentally as well as economically.
The Internet has enabled a way of social interaction and connections which facilitate the kinds of action that “make democracy work” (Robert Putnam). It enables freedom of movement up and down the socio-economic and cultural ladder through social participation and human development. It offers economic opportunities and access to public and social services.
On the Internet, everyone can be anyone, and social division becomes a non-issue (though actually new social divisions are constantly being created, on a different level – are you on MySpace or Facebook?). In fact, “on the Internet, nobody knows you’re a dog” (Peter Steiner’s cartoon). Another joke goes “Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day; teach him to use the Internet and he won’t bother you for weeks.” But that man might rise up to be the next Internet millionaire. Access to the Internet is an instrumental right for the improvement of people’s capability. Missing out restrains personal growth. That’s also why gouvernments provide libraries, and Internet access at libraries. It gives people access to knowledge, but libraries are a less than ideal environment for social interaction. Bringing the Internet closer to the community, closer to home, empowers people to take control of their own social network (online and offline). That’s where Free Sydney Wireless (Free Australia Wireless) fits in. By providing free Internet access, through a shared connection, we try to bridge the social divide in our own community, closest to us. This hardly costs us anything extra, as we already pay for Internet access. This is our small contribution to tackle social poverty.
The growth of social networking and user generated content reflects the deep rooted need of people for self expression, social interaction and peer validation. People sharing without personal financial gain. As they do, others do. Or so we hope anyway.
What are you waiting for, why not get involved?
Reposted from halans.com.