News.com reports on wISP hereUare's study that San Francisco is the hottest spot: SF leads the nation in public access points, says hereUare, a San Francisco-based public access firm. The numbers they offer up sound perfectly reasonable.

4:44:15 PM    comment   

Military interest in Wi-Fi at Asian Aerospace exposition in Singapore: a long-time friend who covers the defense industry writes, "Just got back from Singapore, where I was covering Asian Aerospace, the continent's largest defense expo. Also visited three Singaporean military sites, and found Wi-Fi in use at two of them: an experimental mobile Army battalion headquarters, where the wireless protocol is used to link laptop computers quickly and conveniently; and in a naval combat simulator, where instructors use Wi-Fied touch tablets to enter minute-by-minute evaluations of their trainees under simulated fire." I mentioned to my friend that the mere presence or absence of traffic (plus the information density itself) could reveal strategic information even with the information totally encrypted. He responded, "One of the big tasks these days (for the US military if no one else) is compiling an 'electronic order of battle': a list of emitters in the battlespace and what they're attached to. Sounds like the NSA, the Air Force's Rivet Joint crews, and other sigint bodies will have to add the Wi-Fi spectrum to the list of those they look for."

3:15:15 PM    comment   

Sky Dayton's comments a few days ago on Boingo and community networks: Boingo's founder takes a moment to explain where they're at in building networks to avoid the kind of conflict that happened at the launch.

3:06:45 PM    comment   

Boingo pushes forward, predicts 5,000 hot spots by year's end: a very nicely reported piece by Mark Frauenfelder on Boingo's roll-out and future plans, including some of the back-and-forth about their initial inclusion of Neighborhood Area Networks (NAN).

3:06:22 PM    comment   

Royal Caribbean CIO Tom Murphy faced a crucial test after Sept. 11: The hospitality industry was hard-hit by the terrorist attacks, and he had to lay off about half of his 400-person staff.
2:19:50 PM    comment   

When Tom Murphy arrived as CIO at Royal Caribbean Cruises in April 1999, he inherited a diverse IT group whose people hailed from more than 40 countries. The staff was beaten down by years of bureaucracy and mistrust. He's done quite a job pulling them into the 21st century.
2:18:17 PM    comment   

The millions of computer users who depend on proprietary software every day are no doubt oblivious to any such threat. Yet they are not hostile to open source, which can offer them many cost-free alternatives. The question is why governments are supporting one over the other when the market has, all on its own, let both exist side-by-side.

Commercial software in concert with rapid advances in computer hardware has been an important source of rapid productivity growth. For example, in the United States, hardware and software production accounted for just under 30% of the increased growth in domestic output from 1995 to 1999. Europe doesn't seem to have reaped similar gains in productivity from the computer revolution -- but excessive government regulation is often viewed as the culprit here. Government tinkering with an industry that has contributed so much to our economic well being seems ill advised.
1:33:17 PM    comment   

Tell that to GE, my friend. While you're at it, why don't you blame the the US telecommunications industry for all of that lost productivity from telephone calls.
12:35:47 PM    comment   

Granted, the last year and a half felt like a recession (or a depression in the technology industry) but was actually merely a stasis period were our growth slowed as a means to sort out excesses (look at all the great purging of poorly run companies going on).   Further, if our economy's new bottom during a stasis period is nearly 1% growth, it will have a major impact on our long-term wealth and the wealth of the world.  This is an extremely gross simplification, but the historical formula for our economy's growth was: two steps forward - one step backward.  Contrast this to what we just saw:  three steps forward - one step forward   Effectively, this is four times as fast as historical patterns.  As Flashman would say:  Huzzah!

[John Robb's Radio Weblog]
12:33:37 PM    comment   

This morning's New York Times (Monday, 3/4) has two superb stories on Wi-Fi in the business section: one covers Wi-Fi's community networking angle, and how the bursting energy in that unfederated movement may be the nucleus of the next big cool thing - mesh networks that use tiny cells to bypass conventional infrastructure. This time, that cool thing will be mostly free. The other article focuses on Wi-Fi's remarkable popularity and growth, centering around the accidental and purposeful availability of service at coffee shops, in neighborhood, and used for interesting purposes.

12:21:25 PM    comment   

Stopping for gas takes time. Having to stand in line to pay for it takes even longer. That's why gas stations have let customers pay at the pump for years.

One of the more innovative ways to do this has been ExxonMobil 's Speedpass. Waving a little device that fits on a key-chain in front of the pump debits a credit card account for the gas. Wouldn't it be great if the same device could be used to pay for Big Macs or a newspaper or groceries or to rent a DVD movie?

It's not that far off. The only difference is that the device--it's technically known as a radio frequency transponder--could be embedded into a common wristwatch. ExxonMobil and watchmaker Timex said this week they are testing a watch with a built-in Speedpass device at gas stations and at 400 McDonald's restaurants in the Chicago area over the next two months. Neither company said when Speedpass-enabled watches would be more widely available--nor how much they would cost.
11:41:40 AM    comment   

Submission from Steve Change, Sr. Engineer. Great site to see what's going on in the financial services industry.
11:35:50 AM    comment   

Recommendation from our security guru and MD of Engineering, Mr. Chris Kwabi.
11:32:33 AM    comment