Archive for the Technology category
From tomorrow June 21, you can get free wifi on the Sydney Manly ferry service. The service is limited to 30 minutes or 30MB, which nowadays really isn’t that much, especially with those annoying auto-playing video ads on some news sites.
The service is provided by Tomizone. You connect your device to the tomizone@sydneyferries access point on the upper deck, open your browser and then log into the Tomizone portal. Once past the 30 minutes (just long enough for the trip) or past the 30MB, you can top up with your credit card.
Check out the Sydney Ferries post about their free wifi and top-up pricing, and make sure you read the FAQ on the Tomizone PDF.
Of course, they aren’t the first ones to offer free wifi. The private Manly Fast Ferry has been offering free wifi since mid May, as a three month pilot, provided by CafeScreen.
Now, can we get it on the other ferries too then?
Inveneo has a great case study about setting up long-distance Wifi in earthquake hit Haiti, which in short boils down to:
1. Wifi Network Design: make sure your nodes are visible to each other and pointing at the right location
2. Location Capacity Survey: confirming the location can support a network node
3. Wifi Hub Antenna Pointing: aiming the dish for the highest signal strength
4. Installation Trip Preparation: determining what you’ll need before your 30ft up a tower
5. Node Antenna Setup: aiming and connecting the antenna
6. Disseminating Internet Access: networking locally for end-user access
7. Network Management: making sure everyone has equal access to bandwidth
Inveneo helps out NetHope rebuilding Haiti’s shattered communications infrastructure using open source solutions like OpenNMS and OpenStreetMap.
Internode last month introduced the Mifi in Australia.
Mifi is a personal, portable, 3G mobile broadband Wifi access point. It allows for up to 5 devices to connect over Wifi at the same time, and the battery should last for 4 hours. It’s an easy and fast solution for setting up a personal Wifi bubble, without fiddling with software on your laptop or phone. The Internode Mifi comes unlocked, so you can slip in any telco’s SIM card.
I’ve had a Mifi for a couple of months now (from eBay), and it’s a great little device. My iPhone is on Optus and the Mifi has a Vodafone SIM, and I have to say, I’ve gotten better and faster connections on the Mifi (aka Vodafone network) then on my iPhone (aka Optus). For example, inside at a conference in Darling Harbour I’d only get GPRS on Optus, but 3G speeds on Vodafone. It’s a great little travel device. It also has a micro SDHC slot for instant file sharing between the connected devices.
But one drawback is it’s USB connection. First of, when connected on USB to your laptop, it switches off Wifi and acts as a regular modem. What’s up with that? Because then you can’t share your connection anymore (unless you set up your laptop as access point, but it kinda defeats the point). Also, you need the right USB cable, because else it will power the device but it won’t recharge the battery! I didn’t know there was that big a difference in cables, but one time while travelling I didn’t have the right cable with me and while I could plug it into the mains power and use it, it wouldn’t recharge the battery and I couldn’t use it when being mobile.
Currently I’m on a 24m contract on Vodafone (5Gb – $41) which is about to run out, after which I probably go for a 12 month prepaid (12GB – $150; I certainly didn’t use up 12GB per year on contract).
And in light of the Apple iPad release, I’m still undecided to get the Wifi+3G version, or just the Wifi version. The 3G iPad will use a micro SIM, which means you can’t just pop in your current SIM. But with the Mifi, if need be, I can still get online over mobile broadband. Unfortunatly, the GPS is only available on the 3G version, and I love location-based apps.
EDIT: Alternatively, you can also get the (cheaper) Huawei Mobile Wifi device over at Expansys AU.
While Meraki switched course a while ago, increasing their prices, using buzz words like “enterprise” and “cloud computing”, and stopped innovating, FON introduces a smart 802.11n wifi router for 79 EUR (about 133 AUD – Meraki’s MR11 802.11n router is 599 USD/689 AUD). It’s not just a n-wifi router, it offers some cool features you’d pay a lot more for with other brands:
- Connect a USB hub and add as many USB devices (webcams, printers, etc.) as you want.
- Convert a 3G signal into WiFi.
- Upload videos to YouTube and multiple photos automatically to Facebook, Flickr and Picasa.
- Add new applications with a simple click.
- Self Tweeting Router: Follow your Fonera2.0n via Twitter. Check the status of a download or see if a visitor has connected to your FON Spot.
Not sure if this router also runs on Open WRT and allows mesh-networking, but it is open and there’s a strong FON developer community.
And with FON you can still connect for free at any FON Spot in the world*. For FON Spots around NSW, check out the unofficial Australian FON site, or check out FON.
You can still grab a previous model for 29 EUR (also offering USB disk sharing, 3G dongle support,…).
* FON is a “pay-it-forward” service, you share yours with other FON owners, so you can use theirs for free.
A nice overview of laptop friendly cafes, for Sydney and a couple of other global cities, indicating if they offer free laptop powerups, public wifi and have any 3G connectivity. Check out the Sydney locations, and vote on your favourite.
Having said that, some cafes, at least in the US/New York, are feeling the GFC pinch, as the WSJ writes “Coffee Shops Pull the Plug on Laptop Users“:
Amid the economic downturn, there are fewer places in New York to plug in computers. As idle workers fill coffee-shop tables — nursing a single cup and surfing the Web for hours — and as shop owners struggle to stay in business, a decade-old love affair between coffee shops and laptop-wielding customers is fading…
As Norm Elrod experienced first hand, blogging on Jobless and Less:
…but waiting for me at my home office away from home office was quite a shock – little plastic covers on the electrical outlets, secured with little padlocks. The cafe was unemployed Norm-proofed, and I was devastated. They might just as well have kicked me in the crotch and pushed my hunched-over body into traffic.
Might not be a bad thing, as people might start to talk to each other again…
EDIT: As Cr@iG notes, LaptopFriendlyCafes.com now also has an iPhone app!
Wired’s Autopia has a great article on Robin Chase (of World Resource Institute, Zipcar) on mashing up the electric grid with cars and mesh networks: “The Grid, Our Cars and the Net: One Idea to Link Them All“. It explains what a smart electricity grid is and how cars fit in as network nodes to a mesh network.
And in this case, the current US recession might be a good thing, as Chase points out:
“The time is right, too. There’s $7.2 billion in the stimulus bill for broadband, $4.5 billion for the smart grid and about $5 billion for transportation technology.”
It reminds me of a discussion we had with Richard Hayes at one of the Sydney BarCamps about smart meters in a mesh network.
The Australian gouvernement is planning to spend billions of dollars on faster broadband (up to 100Mbps), which might arrive in five to eight years if we’re lucky, but would probably be too expensive for people to use. UK’s Virgin Media on the other hand is this year about to start testing wideband internet applications at a 200Mbps real-world pilot (not a lab experiment). If only the gouvernement would think ahead, and use that money not just to provide fast internet access but also improve and smarten the electric grid (people still need electricity to get online too, right?), they would get more bang for their buck (a two-in-one solution). I do believe there are issues between federal and state gouvernement, but that really doesn’t make sense (to not have a national electric grid policy). 19th century gouvernement doesn’t work well with current technology.
Wired has an overview of the new Fonera 2, to be introduced in Europe April 21st, for 50 Euro (94 $AUD), supporting for networked storage and automatic downloads (and YouTube uploads) in addition to its internet-sharing capabilities. That’s a lot of functionality for a little price. Interesting to see what the telcos think of this. Available worldwide in May (euh, probably except Australia).
Read on at Wired.com
Meraki has released a new, powerful 802.11n router, the MR58, targetted at businesses (with a price tag to match). It’s an outdoors version, has three 802.11n radios, five antennas. Meraki:
“The MR58 can also be used to create long distance mesh links as far as 20 km with optional antennas.”
The folks over at Open-Mesh also have a new router, the Professional Mini Router OM1P. New features include “a hardware watchdog chip that will restart the router should it lock up due to environmental or power spikes or short outages” and Power over Ethernet. Still only US$59 (the original still available at US$50). Soon they’ll also start offering Ubiquiti and WiliGear routers, pre-flashed with the Open-Mesh software.
Ubiquiti Networks are holding a contest, the UI/Firmware Challenge with US$200.000 prize money (first prize US$160.000!), ending August 17.They have some lofty goals:
“In an effort to enrich and contribute to the open-source community, Ubiquiti Networks is offering $200,000 in cash prizes for developers who provide the most impressive User Interface/Firmware for Ubiquiti’s newly released open-source embedded wireless platform, the RouterStation.”
“The goal of the contest is to design a feature rich routing firmware with a clean, intuitive web interface for configuration and maintenance of Ubiquiti Networks RouterStation hardware platform.”
As far as I can tell, it’s not about Linux hacking, but rather the UI design only. You might need to buy their RouterStation though…
AppleInsider has a story on an Apple Australia package in the AU store which supposedly is a wireless bundle with Unwired. Unwired is the wireless ISP offering the uConnect free wifi service across Sydney. Unwired is also one of the slowest ways to connect wirelessly, and only available in metro areas. I wonder why Apple would team up with them?
Unwired would also be in the process of rolling out Wimax on a national network. Will we see the introduction of a new Airport range and a national Wimax service?
Additionally, Unwired is owned (partially?) by the Seven tv network, which also owns the Australian rights for Tivo distribution. A fast national wireless network might help the rollout of new Tivo services.
Chris Duran has set up a free wifi mapping project, just what we have been waiting for (and I was too lazy to do myself):
WiFi in Australia is a “user-generated and user-moderated maps of WiFi hotspots all over Australia”.
Any one can add any wifi (open, paid, restricted) they encounter, so start contributing!