Sifry’s Alerts

Starting in London, people are marking WiFi spots in chalk on the street, called Warchalking. Just like the hobos of old, these WiBos(Wi-Fi Hobos) are marking places friendly to them. They are using take-offs of the hobo sign system to mark places where bandwidth is available.Thanks to Cory at BoingBoing.

According to
Venturewire,
Vernier Networks is expected to announce the close of a $24 Million dollar Series C investment round. New investors
Allegis Capital and
Financial Technology Ventures co-led the round.

I just heard back from Benjamin Trott, one of the authors of Movable Type, and he tells me that the new Google search (on both titles and excerpts) will be included in MT 2.2! Cool.
Also, Dave Winer (glad you’re back from the hospital, Dave!) posted about the Google hack in today’s Scripting News. I’m glad that he liked it. However, he may have misunderstood what I was doing – my hack doesn’t give you a Google-It macro that just puts a link to a Google search. Instead, it actually performs the search when you build the page, and puts the related links right on the page as well. This removes a step from the process, and more clearly adds context to each entry. In addition, whenever the index page is rebuilt (like when new entries or comments are posted), the Google-created links are updated, even for old stories. If Dave is looking for a Radio implementation of this, he should look at Jake Savin’s macro.

The Register reports on a potential threat to the UK’s new freedom in the 2.4 GHz spectrum. Up until 2
weeks ago, 802.11b outdoor or commercial use was prohibited. Now, the
Low Power Radio Association is feeling threatened
by this, according to their article.

My comments: It’s funny, just when I think that the USA has problems
with the FCC and its Part 15 rules in the 2.4 GHz spectrum, I’m
remineded that there are countries with even less freedom of the
airwaves available. I’m also surprised that Wi-Fi itself isn’t
considered “low-power” – sure, it is lower power than say, Bluetooth,
but surely not much less power than alarm circuits or meter-reader
radios. Sounds more like an established player is looking to hold onto
its turf.

Joltage and Atlas Broadband announced a
partnership that will allow Atlas’ existing clientele, in addition to
other enterprises of all sizes, to transform their locations into
Joltage-powered Hotspots. The two companies will deliver jointly the
tools, services and support for creating and maintaining freestanding
areas of high-speed, fixed wireless Internet access.

Joltage will provide the registration, authentication, billing, payment
processing and quality management services. Atlas will supply the
broadband connection with speed and quality of service guarantees.

They are also offering a website promotion to receive a free access
point when you sign up for Atlas Broadband and Joltage.

I’m still perplexed by Joltage’s business model, but hey, maybe they can
pull it off.

Jake Savin has taken the spirit of my recent MT hacks and created a new macro for Userland Radio. Cool deal, Jake! I got a bunch of inquiries from Radio users who wanted the functionality. Now they can be happy.

Alan Reiter posts a good analysis of two recent moves by big asian telecom carriers -Singapore Telecom and
NTT DoCoMo to roll out massive numbers of hotspots throughout
public Singapore and Tokyo, respectively.

These are big moves, and show off two interesting points:

In the NTT case, they are agressively making moves in the 2.4GHz space
even though the ministry of Posts and Telegraphs (the Japanese
equivalent of the FCC) hasn’t officially opened the spectrum for outdoor
use. Reliable word on the street is that they will be opening up the
2.4GHz spectrum along with a piece of the 5.1GHz spectrum for use with
unlicensed devices.

In the Singtel case, they are promoting the use of the Nokia D211
multimode radio card, which supports GPRS and 802.11b WLANs. This is,
in my opinion, the sweet spot where the established carriers show their
true muscle.

This is also a page that the US carriers should seriously consider, both
as a bridge to their 3G rollouts and as a way to lock up the business
user market and to force handset manufacturers to include these
capabilities in their new handsets and PDAs. If and when this happens,
say goodbye to the fledgling WISP aggregator model, a la Boingo and
Joltage, and all the little WISPS sprouting up where wired broadband is
hard to find. The ISP model (and WISP model) will be won by those with
the most capital and the most locations; any other players will have to
survive at the fringes and in the smaller niches where they can dodge
the footsteps of the giants.

Hey, this happened before, with the wired internet as a model, and some
of the bigger ISPs were able to hang on against the ILECs. But what is
so surprising to me is how quickly these large carriers are learning
from their past mistakes and are getting out there with service now.