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An open letter from Jeff Pittelkau, VP Product Development, JiWire Inc:
Hello everyone!
Regular readers of the WeeklyWire may have noticed we've reduced our publishing frequency. That's because the entire JiWire team has been focused on its burgeoning Ads for Access business, which delivers premium advertising to Wi-Fi users in leading hotels, airports, cafes, municipal networks and other venues.
For nearly two years, we've been working hard to bring the biggest and best Wi-Fi networks into our advertising footprint, and we've also built an amazing technology platform that allows us to deliver contextually appropriate advertisements to Wi-Fi users based on their location, device type, and behavior. This new economic model subsidizes the cost of Wi-Fi service and, in some cases, enables sponsored FREE access.
All of us at JiWire are very passionate about the latest Wi-Fi gear. We love the quality of coverage Becky Waring has been able to give us for many years, and it's why we've been collaborating with her as she starts her own site and newsletter service, AllThingsWireless.net. This will be your last issue of the WeeklyWire, and we hope you'll take this opportunity to join Becky's mailing list so you can continue to receive her excellent coverage of Wi-Fi products.
Best regards,
Jeff
INVITATION TO SUBSCRIBE: I hope you'll join me as a charter subscriber to AllThingsWireless.net. Everything from Bluetooth to WiMax is fair game, with a special emphasis on Wi-Fi and 3G flavors like EV-DO and HSDPA. Whether you want to upgrade your home net to 802.11n, tether your laptop to your 3G phone, or find the best unwired airports, you'll find the answers here, along with a healthy dose of the gadgets, trends and gossip that power your wireless world.--Becky Waring
Sign up by March 15 and be entered to win one of several great inaugural prizes, including an iPod Touch and a new 802.11n router courtesy of Belkin.
Finding a "free" Wi-Fi hotspot in the US just got a whole lot easier, now that AT&T is taking over the Starbucks contract formerly held by T-Mobile. The reason is simple: the 12 million AT&T DSL and U-verse customers with at least 1.5Mbps service will now get free access at all 17,000 U.S. AT&T Wi-Fi locations, including the 7,000 Starbucks stores. In addition, any customer with a Starbucks stored-value card used at least once a month gets a free two hours per day -- money they're likely to be spending anyway. Starbucks is the crown jewel of U.S. Wi-Fi properties, and making access available to so many customers for free is a huge deal. We expect many Wi-Fi mavens to flee Comcast for AT&T broadband as a result. The handover has already started, and will be completed market-by-market by the end of the year. But T-Mobile Hotspot subscribers will not be left out in the cold -- they can continue to roam at Starbucks for at least the next five years.
Meanwhile, Boingo, the biggest Wi-Fi roaming network with 100,000 locations worldwide, has not been standing idly by. It just announced an agreement with Wayport to bring more than 9,000 North American McDonald's locations under the Boingo umbrella. And since Boingo already had a contract with AT&T, it gained all those Starbucks locations too. Now both Boingo and iPass offer access to the combined Starbucks-McDonald's juggernaut, to go with their excellent overseas and travel-oriented hotspot networks. In one heady week, the U.S. Wi-Fi scene has gone from frustratingly fragmented to near-free and friendly.
Ask JiWire: I have a mixed network of Mac and Windows PCs at home. Will Apple's new Time Capsule work for me?
Answer: Definitely! Time Capsule is essentially just Apple's AirPort Extreme router with an added internal 500GB or 1TB hard drive, and Windows users can take advantage of both. The AirPort Extreme is the top-selling 802.11n router in the country, according to NPD Research, and for good reason. It offers the option of either 2.4 or 5 GHz operation, so you can put your 802.11n network into the uncrowded 5GHz band if you like -- a real boon for apartments or dense housing with lots of neighboring networks. (I have the AirPort Extreme running at 5GHz for streaming HD video around the house, and keep my old router operating as a 2.4GHz access point for legacy devices, plugged directly into the AirPort.) Even better, it can share both USB printers and hard disks, two extremely valuable features. No other 802.11n router can do this -- aside from Time Capsule. Both routers also sport Gigabit Ethernet for fast wired performance.
So what does Time Capsule add? In Windows the hard drive will show up as a Network drive just like any other NAS (network-attached storage), and you can copy files back and forth. With Mac clients running the Leopard OS, Time Capsule's hard drive can be used for both file sharing and Time Machine backup purposes. However, since Time Machine can end up filling the entire drive over time, I recommend using the internal drive only for Time Machine backups, and attaching an external USB drive for file sharing. Time Capsule's printer sharing features also work equally well on both PCs and Macs. For mixed Mac/PC networks, there is truly no better solution than AirPort Extreme or Time Capsule. Opt for Time Capsule if you want to perform Time Machine backups of your Mac drives, and opt for AirPort Extreme with an external hard disk for regular shared storage.
Got a wireless dilemma you'd like answered? Send it to Becky Waring at AllThingsWireless.net. She'll select the most interesting questions to answer in her newsletter.
What if your bedside alarm clock was also a digital photo frame? And a streaming Internet radio, music and video player? And a news/weather/stocks/traffic reporter? And an eBay auction checker? And an email reader? And, and, and...
You begin to get the idea. The Chumby ($180) is about the same size as your old clock-radio, but a whole lot cuter (with squeezably soft leather sides) and more useful. It connects to the Internet via Wi-Fi and grabs information from hundreds of different "widgets" you can choose from on the Chumby Network. The widgets are designed to display their contents attractively on the 3.5-inch touchscreen, so that you don't need to scroll around. And Chumby even comes in your choice of black, pearl or latte, to coordinate with your decor.
Chumby is whatever you want to make of it, since you hook it up to your computer first, to program which widgets you want on it. We especially like the integration with Facebook, Flickr, MySpace, Picasa and Photobucket web photo albums. If you upload photos to those sites, they can be displayed automatically on your Chumby when you're not using it as an alarm clock or news reader. Touching the screen moves you around, or you can use the button at the top to navigate.
Other cool widgets include: video highlights from David Letterman, The Early Show, YouTube, VH1, and CBS Sports; Today in History and Word of the Day RSS feeds; a Sodoku solver; dozens of games; horoscopes; and Webcam feeds. And Chumby is adding more widgets constantly. While it's most likely to go on a nightstand, we can see Chumby in the kitchen, on your sofa table, or anywhere else you might want to check some news or email on the Internet without firing up a computer. Did we mention it's squeezably soft?
-- Becky Waring, Executive Editor
Top 10 Countries
Country |
Hotspots |
| United States | 67,132 |
| United Kingdom | 32,589 |
| France | 24,174 |
| Germany | 21,792 |
| South Korea | 21,076 |
| Japan | 11,027 |
| Russian Federation | 8,373 |
| Spain | 6,041 |
| Italy | 5,450 |
| Taiwan | 4415 |
Top 10 Location Types
Location Type |
Hotspots |
| Hotel/Resort | 47,964 |
| Other | 34,578 |
| Restaurant | 33,004 |
| Cafe | 28,427 |
| FON Spot | 27,868 |
| Store/Mall | 21,842 |
| Pub | 8,271 |
| Office Building | 7,345 |
| Bar | 4,059 |
| Gas Station | 2,732 |
