Apple released a new 700KB patch regarding the functionality of Macbook and Macbook Pro batteries. It’s not a usual type of update and that makes is worth mentioning. According to Apple:

Battery Update 1.2 updates battery firmware and improves battery functionality.

After Battery Update has been installed, each battery you insert into your MacBook or MacBook Pro will be updated automatically. Your computer’s power cord must be connected and plugged into a working power source.

For further information on this Update, please visit this website: http://www.info.apple.com/kbnum/n305256.

We’re half-way releasing an all-new WiFi product called …. #$%^&&! :P

Unfortunately we’re not ready to disclose names, business plans or other details related to the new venture but here’s some pointers:
- take all you know about WiFi. Forget it! Now rethink it!
- the platform allows *any* WiFi router in the world to join in
- a market of over 10 million routers and a few hundreds of mil. users targeted
- worldwide. no regional limits.
- social, simple and catchy.
- from the creators of c*free wireless and wirelessisfun.com

I’ve pitched the idea to a number of contacts and it arose some VC interest. Looking forward to actual negotiations.
I decided to spill the news on wirelessisfun.com before it gets picked up elsewhere.
Expect the new service to come live in the next couple of months.

For business partnerships, inquiries or media coverage please shoot an email at dan {at} wirelessisfun {dot} com

Where I am sitting as I type, in the southeast corner of my urban house, my WiFi sniffer reports as many as nine separate wireless networks passing through my home. Most of these have some form of security, but a couple clearly have not been changed from the default settings, with SSID’s such as “SSID” or “Untitled”, and have no security, so I hop on for my web, keeping my mail.app firmly closed (as we all know, these mail programs have no security of their own and rely on the network’s security to keep your password private). However, more than half of the wireless networks on my corner still use the default broadcasting channel (6) so there is a tremendous amount of interference. As a result, even the one or two networks I can get connectivity through only work some of the time; I don’t need to tell you how frustrating an unreliable internet connection is.

So I find myself now paying for broadband and hooking up my own wireless access point, even as I’m bathing in the excessive microwave radiation of all of my neighbors’ networks. Of course I use encryption, and change the broadcast channel to one not being used in the vicinity, and of course, now my network works great. But I hardly feel triumphant; there are nine more wireless networks in my neighborhood than are really necessary – mine being one of them.

See, I believe that internet access ought to be completely free to all people, and WiFi begins to make this possible, but people are still thinking in terms of protecting their precious bandwidth, and their precious data. (In fact, hotspot hosts now need to be concerned about protecting their very precious freedom, as recent court cases have demonstrated that the owner of an open hotspot can be held criminally culpable for illegal activity across their network based on the fact that their IP is connected to their name and that’s proof enough for the American justice system. Owners of open hotspots, read up on this!)

So if I do want to take on the risks of acting on my ideology of Free Internet, I need to run two wireless access points off of my broadband connection – one encrypted for my own traffic, and one wide open free for all – just adding more noise to the ether.

We have the same problems everywhere: too much WiFi, all WEP’d, and all interfering. Some businesses I know have given up WiFi with robust encryption and returned to wired networks – yes, they have turned off the WiFi for the reliability of ethernet! Obviously THEY weren’t having fun, and I can’t blame them. Those businesses – cafes, restaurants, libraries – who promote their free WiFi are few and far between in my city.

I live in an urban area where I can walk to all of the services I really need within fifteen minutes, but there isn’t a cafe offering free WiFi for three kilometers from here. WiFi has become almost totally inconvenient. Everywhere I use it, wires work better (though that doesn’t mean that I actually run the cable!). Services like FON are getting a bad rap for everything from shoddy hardware to censoring the community they depend on, and anyway it sounds like the hotspots are few and far between, so there’s not much incentive to sign up.

Standards keep getting better when I look at the specs on paper – N is better than G is better than B – and now we’ve got WiFi TV, WiFi MP3, and WiFi phone – but the system, the platform, the real mobility, is getting worse. Wireless IS fun, when we learn enough about it to make it easy – especially for the non-geeks out there – and I’m excited to be working with people who are thinking up ways to make it more fun, and more easy.

What’s the next evolution of wireless going to look like?

Digg.com is still a mystery to me! We’ve submitted great stories and even industry exclusives, of which surprisingly, those we would have made no fuss about were picked up by the digg community.
The only story that was made popular was Feb. 20th Dell Powered by Linux? submitted by Marius. It was dugg by 1274 people and brought wirelessisfun.com a little over 10k unique visitors in one day. Unfortunately those people never came back or never subscribed to our RSS. What a shame!

Although I can still find interest in digg.com, I submit WiF stories only now and then. The bitter taste of a suddenly empowered users who bury your story just because somebody else might have covered the same topic, poor quality comments and even skewed understanding of democracy I reject. Of course the service is optional, but I really appreciate the concept and I’m sorry it’s so poorly misused by some people.

I feel democracy should be regarded in a more positive light and with a more pro-active attitude. Most of democracy on digg.com is authoritarian and rejects any new perspective on the same topic. Take the story below as an example. There’s somebody who must have submitted some of the stuff below on digg. But that might be only the reproduction of the press release, whereas our story is an analysis of the matter from a distinct point of view.
When I submitted the story about Michael Dell using Ubuntu people argued in the comments that I should pay respect to the original poster, some dude who submitted the story about the same time I did, quoting different sources and having a different content. WiF story was buried by a number of users because of this.

I’ll wrap it up here and keep it objective… What a shame, digg!

Note: it’s what I feel people and I take the risk of not being popular. If you are to hate someone for this article, hate me! But save wirelessisfun.com from hate mail! It’s a great tech blog! Now hit me! :D

Update: Digg comments on the story:
1.pcbeast says “blatant digg-bait, marked as spam”
Bravo, buddy! There you go! Thanks for underlining exactly my point above why digg.com sucks! I do have content and even arguments! What are yours? Have you even read the story??

2. thenativeraver – “Buried, what a lame attempt to get traffic.”
If only you read the the article before…

The Fon Spot for Mac and what’s inside it

There hasn’t been much Fon news or related lately but we couldn’t miss the fact that
– Time Warner opened their doors to broadband sharing in the US and
– The programmers in Spain finally came up with a beta version of the FON Spot Mac / Linux

What this software does is that it turns your Intel-based Mac into a FON hotspot. If you use a 3G or EvDo modem this software will turn your Airport into a Access Point-like WiFi adapter and start sharing your connection around.
It’s not a new concept for Mac users as by default Macs let you share your modem connection in three clicks anyway. But FON saw this was an opportunity that could not be missed to expand their service and brand where conventional hotspots do not protrude. Shrewd!

Screenshot of Mac’s WiFi sharing enabler

Let’s analyze if this would really work in real life past the obvious geeky sexieness.
Having a Fon hotspot ‘built in’ your Mac is neat if you’re a big fan of the service and really want to take it everywhere with you. Maybe you have a flat mobile broadband connection anyway and you don’t mind sharing but you’re missing the credentials for your signal. Or maybe you just don’t mind doing it. Any case you chose it’s fine!
But in all other cases you’d be simply sharing your connection as is or no sharing it at all. Eventually it all comes down to FON’s business model. Share WiFi and get WiFi for free elsewhere in FON hotspots, as a Linus. Or share your WiFi for some money. These cases are based on a permanent presence in a determined location. Usually one would use a fast connection they don’t really mind sharing.
What happens when you share your crawling 3G/EvDO? Those pipes are not that large, your connection is not in a specific connection and does not provide service 24/7. That does not make for a compatible service with FON’s, which anyway is catchy because it brings advantages both ways.
Based on how FON Spot for Mac works the only winner here is.. FON! You would likely not share that limited bandwidth (I’ve done it oh so many times with my EvDo) and not agree FON is using your expensive connection for self-promo and Alien (non-member user that pays premium for access) money milking.

Running c*free, a free hotspot operator, I’ve often used Mac’s WiFi sharing to promote the brand at different events or ingenuous places. Hell, I’ve shared that signal a couple of years ago when I was still using Windows through an Ad-Hoc profile and later using a USB kit called c*free mini.
Yet, I still don’t know how this would go beyond such use!
Most folks who have/use a mobile broadband connection pay a shit load of money on it every month. They are usually business/entrepreneur/SOHO types that
- care for their data and its security
- pay for the 3G / EvDo for a precise purpose
- are time critical
- don’t have time or interest in playing with gizmos and hacks such as FON Spot
- are energy-conscious, meaning they would power their WiFi only when in the range of a signal they would use.

It’s unclear to me how this hack will make it in the real world. It might! But as it stands, incentives – even ones like the principle of sharing in exchange for free connectivity (wait!! Free WiFi? Why, when you already have the darn 3G?) – are low or inexistent!

For the techie ones I opened the installer and below is a screenshot of the package contents. I did not install the hack on my Macbook for it’s still beta and I rely on being able to use my Airport card. Those of you who have the time and curiosity are welcome to post their experiences in the comments section.

Use your mobile setup!
It’s really rare that we get to experience grid failures these days. And so it should! This is 2007!!!
Oddly enough we had such a power outage today and, from what we’ve been told, the grid failed in almost every corner of the city! If your business is in tech and telco you probably rely on more than one computer, a good connection to the Internet and a big load of office gadgetry that is energy-dependant.
In a few seconds I realized that the cable modem and the WiFi router are off so there’s no connectivity. Luckily my setup is mobile so here’s how I got back online in minutes:

- I work on a Macbook and, if unplugged, I get about 3-4h of work time on one charge.
- If WiFi or the ISP fail, there’s a backup connection at hand – a mobile 2.4Mbs EvDo USB modem from Zapp Mobile.

While the outage lasted about 30 minutes and it took the cable company an extra 15minutes to re-broadcast, I should have been offline and out of business for about an hour. Plugging the USB modem and clicking connect was easy. Sure, some have redundant connections and UPS power savers in their offices. Albeit being able to save work and wait for the power to bring back the net is not the way to go.

Both ends meet when I saw that the mobile setup I use when out of the office took over the local setup with flying colours! This is so 2007! :D

As if there wasn’t enough buzz around blogging, competitions and rankings emerged.

WiF:)) is too young to qualify for the major rankings (yet!) but our local blogging community picked up our blog and we’re nominee at two of the Cluj BlogFest sections
- Best Collective Blog
- Best Tech Blog

Preliminary voting ranks us second on both, so I’m darn proud we don’t blog in vain! Funny though, as it’s an English blog for the dot com era, wirelessisfun.com is a favourite read among fellow Romanians! Bravo, Romanian blogging! And thanks for supporting us!

Voting session still open and, even if you are not a Romanian native, please help us by voting Wirelessisfun.com in either of the two sections! Thank You!

Yes, my dear followers, for the past year I’ve been using the last incarnation (mid-2005) iBook 12″ from Apple that was phased out in early 2006. It was a great road buddy and my life on the go has been taken to another level using it. Its awesome portability (12″), great battery life and unbelievable power from such an obsolete configuration allowed me to roam hundreds of hotspots, record podcasts and edit demanding video. I browsed maybe a million websites, configured around a hundred WiFi routers, sent 5000 emails and received twice as many, blogged hundreds of posts, beta-tested around 200 Skype builds, delivered a few world-class presentations and played a few days Unreal Tournament 2004 with the little devil.

But I was never really happy with the performance when I had to record a live skype conference call for a podcast or when the whole thing slowed down because of the 30+ tabs open in Safari, a few IM clients running in the background, the RSS reader, the email app and maybe iTunes streaming a chill out online radio station. Maxing out the RAM to 1.5GB did not help much either so I always had to chose judiciously what apps to run simultaneously.
Of course it’s a great machine for basic web browsing, normal IM and now-and-then Skype calls, some basic editing of the last vacation video and such. But we take mobile computing serious here at wirelessisfun.com as following the crazy www demands insane multitasking and multithreading.

The most relevant feature, though, is the ability to cover all or most wireless standards. The iBook could “see” 802.11b/g networks but the very new ‘n’ and the isolated ‘a’ running on 5Ghz standards were things I couldn’t really experience. You can laugh, but NASA still uses 3×86 computers in their space missions, okay?! :)

I just bought a brand new Intel Core 2 Duo Macbook that has no problem connecting to 802.11a/b/g/n WiFi networks and, should cables really really really be needed, it can do Gigabit Ethernet! I completely love it! It’s not the black one (because Macs are historically white) and as a matter of fact it’s that machine one can get for around 1060 Euros in Europe.
I’ll provide it with some extra RAM soon and cap it at 2GB (it now has 1GB) so I can effectively run multiple apps and XP decently in Parallels.

The new Macbook is the 5th mobile machine I own in 5 years (I change my laptop almost every year). An older post about the previous ones here! Good times for Wirelessisfun.com! Stand by for an Airport Extreme Base Station review in the next couple of days!

In case your WiFi is dead, your DSL modem does not respond to ping, your Blackberry acts as if its job was to show the time not to send/receive email, you stopped being slumped by Twitter updates from you friends…. that means the world has been taken over by zombies! And these guys could not stop them!

Just got an email from Robert Lang, Fon’s Europe manager, informing me that they launched the Romanian eshop. Good times! Here comes competition! :)
Those looking for the hottie (*grin*) router, rejoice!

I missed Michael Dell’s bio on the corporate website but I didn’t miss the big story on Dell going with Linux and the note that Michael Dell’s OS of choice is Ubuntu.
Entrepreneur Martin V., Dell’s friend, bloggs about a recent email in which this story was confirmed.

Dell’s lappie software:

Ubuntu 7.04 Feisty Fawn
VMWare Workstation 6 Beta
OpenOffice.org 2.2
Automatix2
Firefox 2.0.0.3
Evolution Groupware 2.10

Intel wants to kill wireless networking with its integrated powerline Ethernet!
They want to push HomePlug AV 200Mbps powerline standard into their desktop designs next year as an optional feature, in particular in Intel’s Viiv platform (the multimedia branch for home).
We’re going to cover this to more extent as soon as it gets more realistic. Till then, have fun staying wireless! WiFi rulez! ;)

“Vista sucks, there’s no need to rush”

Can’t remember where I read this statement, but it’s one absolute truth hidden behind a joke! :)

Ahhhh, the sound of precious electronics crashing onto the expensive natur pavement of Bill Gate’s cubicle… The horror!! The horror!! Linux strikes back (thanks Intel *grin*) in an Mac-esque incarnation for the UMPC.
Looks like Intel is shedding the Origami gorilla (read: Microsoft) as they prep a Linux-based platform to compete with Vista and XP-based UMPCs. Intel will unveil their new MID (Mobile Internet Device) platform at the Intel Developer Forum in Beijing later this week. says Endgadget.

That’s about it, folks. First Dell, now Intel… ;)

Wireless is fun! Thanks to Linux!

Increased Internet access in Romania reveals poor use of grammar. It’s a frightening sight, really! By comparison most native English content comes untampered with.

I’m considering introducing grammar quizzes in our free hotspots that will grant access only if user checks correct spelling.

Romanian is a language of Latin origins spoken by around 28 million people worldwide.

I have been imagining an avatar-based enhancement of current WiFi nets forever.
No, there’s no sign of such an upgrade to 802.11 networks yet.

But it’s easy to have the hack become mainstream because of two very important reasons:

1. 802.11 broadcasts SSID as a clear text password for auth.
2. 2007 routers have plenty of user-accesible flash memory a small avatar could be fitted in.

Any enhancements and changes needed for the operating systems to display such a visual ID would be minimal. Just as a WiFi hotspot sends out a textual identification string (the network name) there’s little reason to believe they couldn’t send out some sort of avatar too.

Just imagine how much personality a visual identification could give to a wireless network?
Businesses could take advantage of it by broadcasting their own brand and creating awareness, hotspot operators could enhance their visibility and home users could have the customization their IM avatar brings.

It’s all up to the industry, I say. Need not wait for some new draft on behalf of WiFi Alliance. I have the feeling we’d be in 2012 by then.

Come on guys! Asus? Linksys?

Paul Miller from engadget writes about the Mac OS X Leopard (10.5) being postponed to October. It’s a sad day today for the Apple enthusiasts who were waiting for the spotted OS, but Apple blames it all on the iPhone. They had to move some of the key software engineers from the Leopard developers team to the iPhone developers team.

This is good news according to engadget because this will guarantee that many glitches will be removed from the iPhone in this process.

On another note, here at WiF:)) we decided to have a little bet about the iPhone. No, not about the release date, but about it’s looks and style… This came up because of all the iPhone replicas that started to appear on the market since Steve Jobs’ keynote at MacWorld. We think they will make it different from what we’ve seen, and it probably will have an edge to all the products appearing like mushrooms all over.

Read  more about the leopard on engadget

Zonk writes on Slashdot that the DoD (US Department of Defense) is planning to launch in the first quarter of 2009 an internet router in space. The project is called IRIS (Internet Routing In Space) and at first it’s supposed to be used solely by the military in their transmissions, for about 3 years, which will serve also as a testing period, but a commercial use is foreseen in the future. Cisco will be developing the software for this router, and I dare to say that they will do a great job as always. I wonder what will be the OSPF here ;-).

Internet Service Providers will be able to use this router, or similar ones, after the three year testing period, to reduce delays in internet communication, and this will probably be the new trend in data transmissions.
Here at WiF:)), having the c*free background, we were thinking about placing a hotspot in space… What do you think about that?

Hello, please direct your mothership to coordinates xxx,yyy right near asteroid 24 for free WiFi in space ;-)

More about this on ITworld.com and of course Slashdot.

Oh yes… Wireless IS fun!

Telecoms Pricing Asia
Le Meridien Hotel, Singapore
28th-31st May 2007

Late May I’ll be in Singapore as a key speaker for IIR’s Telecoms Pricing Asia ‘07. This is the third event organized by the Brits that I’ll attend and deliver to, following Fixed Mobile Convergence ‘06 held in Amsterdam and Telecoms Pricing ‘06 held in Barcelona.

Get both keynotes here:
The Holy Grail of WiFi (TP’06)
Wireless is Fun! (FMC’06)

The subject of my upcoming keynote, Establishing a framework for wireless service pricing which reflects the different capital and operational costs of WiMax, wireless local loop and UMTS/HSDPA deployments will revolve around the following draft:

Today’s standards bundle provides great flexibility for network deployment.
While it might look like an easy plan to blueprint a new rollout and provide
a good pricing framework to effectively monetize it, there’s a number
hurdles to overcome:
- determining the right technology (based on the market size, geo,
penetration and lifecycle expectations for backend systems used);
- determining the right mix (WiMax + WiFi? WiMax only? HSDPA+WiFi?);
- outlining the costs and rollout timeframe;
- examining exit strategy and determining fruitful adoption incentives
to generate growth;
- “Will it work?” – cheating the incremental rollout;
- “Keep an eye on net neutrality and disruptive 3rd party add-on
services!” – how can innovation maximize revenue without hindering
sensitive end user alternative choice?

Telecoms Pricing Asia is the world’s premier pricing event focusing on Asian telecoms and talks about maximising profitability and customer retention in Asia’s competitive telecoms markets.

To find out more or register for the event go to IIR’s website: TP Asia

For your convenience I have included the event brochure: telecom_pricing_asia07.pdf

Free Pass!
To get you guys into it, here’s a neat trick! As a speaker at the event I’m entitled to bring along a guest that gets free access to the conference!
A WirelessIsFun.com exclusive, I’ll give out the invitation (valued US$3,800) to one of the WiF:)) friends so he/she can join me in Singapore!

You gotta tell me soon if you’d like to join in so I can announce the event organizers. Unfortunatelly the invitiation does not cover travel or accomodation expenses. I really wish it did.

Dennis, Mike, Chad, Robert, Marius, anyone? :)

I’m in grief. I was so hyped and supportive about Moo.com (you know, those minicards fellows) to realize this morning that the order I placed a few months ago never made it to my office.

Apparently they love to print, but hate to deliver! ;)
Bad Moo, bad bad!

I’m a little behind with posting articles, not so much news. I realize that most of our readers have TechCrunch, WiFiNetNews.com or Endgadget in their RSS readers so there’s no point to replicate most stories. The main idea behind WirelessIsFun.com was a place to host industry related articles, research, reports and studies conducted by the WiF:)) crew, all wireless telco insiders.

Let’s try a different excercise! Meet my desktop:

Dan’s current www’ing
I’ll share some articles that are currently open in different tabs of my Safari browser. I didn’t get the chance to read them through so I invite you to do so.

An entrepreneur’s dream – NYC – DarrenHerman.com
People don’t scroll…emails – 37signals.com
Ideas Worth Spreading: Hans Rosling from TED 2006 – on GoogleVideo

Now meet my “hot” RSS feeds I check as often as email:
– click to enlarge

Podcasts I always listen to:
This Week in Tech with Leo Laporte and friends, a must listen to!
Net@Night with Leo Laporte and Amber Macarthur.
Buzz out Loud with Veronica Belmont and Tom Merrit of c|net
Diggnation with Kevin Rose and Alex Albrecht, a web classic.

Follow me on Twitter

Oh, by the way! The weekly beer review is indefinitely postponed because I’ve been continuously working and an absurd amount of time behind the wheel. ;)

A Colorado University graduate, part of a team of 5 students in a telecommunications class doing a research project on municipal wireless service in Romania got in touch with me to find out a WiFi executive’s thoughts on muni WiFi, obstacles and challenges of doing business in Romania.

They are working on a multi-million-dollar project that, they hope, will involve Siemens in a municipal WiFi mesh system for Cluj Napoca, Romania (population cca. 500.000).

Details are not so important at this stage so I’ll keep the guys in the shadow even if they plan to compete with our business here (c*free has 22 hotspots in Cluj Napoca, one is metro-class).

I think it’s surprising the amount of attention this Transylvanian city gets from a wireless perspective. Our developments have been natural as we’re based here. At turn, a US designed muni project for blooming city in Romania is interesting read. There’s good wireless business perspectives in Cluj but I’m inclined to think it’s just a contextual hype.

Read the rest of this entry »

Can blogging help you get a new job? Dennis Smith, T-Mobile USA Sr. Recruiting Manager and fervent blogger thinks ‘yes’! Read his very interesting entry to find out how!

No, you cannot preorder the iPhone yet! But a sponsored search result on Google returns “Preorder in Amazon Available from June 2007″. And, as we posted before, it will be released in the US on June 11, about two moths from now, at a price of around $499 (8GB) with Verizon 2-y contract.

Please be patient :)
We are.

*about half of the traffic wirelessisfun.com gets is because of this string:

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=iphone+release+date+&btnG=Search

I bet you didn’t try the all new Yahoo! Widgets 4.0 yet!
Ok, I’ll wait! The 11.3MB installer should take you no more than two minutes to download and about a minute to install! Got it?
Good! :)

Let’s get down to business, shall we? Are you a Mac user? You’d better be, I’m biased here! I assume you are familiar with the Dashboard that comes preinstalled with all Macs OSX 10.4ish onward. It’s great and I use it frequently. But PCs did not have the ability to display widgets like Macs did before Konfabulator, later bought and made more friendly by Yahoo!. Starting with version 3.0ish I begun using this cross-platform environment because I found it was surprisingly easy to design and code widgets for. More so, it allowed those widgets to be run on Windows machines too.
And I needed to reach a broader audience. Granted, Yahoo! did not make such a big fuss around its widget environment so the awareness is scant. But there!

Up until v4.0 it was just another application I’d bring up at times. Now it comes with a redesigned interface, more glam-bam-bam, a more consolidated library (yes, I’d spread my widgets all over the harddrive and once deleted or moved they’d be orphaned) and a neat sidebar. The sounds that go with it are also cool. I mean, hey, any PC or Mac you can think of can be pimped like nothing just by installing this piece of software (a no-brainer anyway, very intuitive).

The installer already has a bunch of widgets to suffice for everyday use. But the beauty is just begining. Point your browser to the Yahoo! Widgets Gallery and a full catalog of free widgets open before you eyes. Anything from weather snippets to wifi status monitors. Pick one, download it (they’re really small), and Yahoo! Widget Engine takes care of it for you – it moves it to the designated directory and places it in the convenient sidebar where you can activate it at any time.

This glossieness and web2.0ish interface is really eyecandy but all that comes with a price. Yeah, you guessed: system resources. It runs a little slow on my G4 iBook, a tad slower than the Dashboard I bring up by pressing F8, but not below usability. The app itself takes no more than 7megs but be prepared to guard your RAM: every widget you power on takes around 7megs by itself. So choose only the ones you want to have running.

About a year ago I designed a WiFi connectivity monitoring widget that has been downloaded more than 29.000 times so far. Just search “wifi” in the gallery and “WiFi Status” will show up first in the list. The widget displays the SSID of the base station you are associated with and the signal strenght, in both percentage and intuitive graphics. The tremendous amount of times it has been downloaded and the fact that it bears the c*free logo makes for really cheap and efficient marketing. It took no more than a couple of hours to design and code, but brought good visibility to our WiFi service.

My good friend Robert Muresan of MobileGround.com took the widget to another lever, creating one of the coolest tricks in WiFi history: a real time wireless conectivity/awarness service. Do you want your blog readers, fellow forum users or website visitors to know where you are online? Just install his widget you can download from this address, create a free account, and follow the steps to place the status badge on your blog or website.
You should get a badge looking like this:

We only scratched the surface of this environment and have not really devoted much time to development. There’s plenty of free templates really easy to customize. One can, say, brand their own RSS reader widget that displays the latest blog entry or news. Or can make a widget useful in their field, of course branded. If you’re not skilled in coding or design there’s plenty of freelancers and small companies that will be happy to provide you with a cheap, customized widget. Remember, anyone from Skype to Google has a free widget they tout in their “download” section. It’s a proof of good conduct, if you want. A complementary Mac-compatible Dashboard widget would be a smart thing to do also. Anyone in search of a great way to advertise their blog or whatever should ty the marketing power of widgets.
Take some time to play with the new Yahoo! Widget Engine v4.0! You’ll be sold! Trust me!

Apple reports they just sold their 100 millionth unit of their world famous mp3 player, the iPod! WOW!

Now since there’s AppleTV, the iPhone and the Airport Extreme Base Station, we expect the wireless iPod to emerge out of Cupertino soon too.
Now, plllllleeeeasee Steve, don’t replicate Sansa and Zune’s flaws and mistakes. Mkay, tie it to the iTunes Music Store but pppppplllllleeeasseee let me enjoy my wireless freedom and beam my music back and forth at will. Will you? Please?! Pretty please?! Thank you!

Make good use of your iPods people and get the WiF:)) podcasts (below) on them NOW! ;)

No intro, no closing bells, just a really illuminating talk I had with Mike Puchol (Whisher.com co-founder) and Chad (AustinTX of elfonblog.fondoo.net), a WiF pod regular. They were really nippy about recording but I was really lazy about editing and posting. Sorry guys!

We discussed topics ranging from Apple to Fon and Gizmo Project. Then, in Part 2, Chad and Mike went on their own bragging their thorough knowledge of wireless tech. Worth listening to! Big time!
We had fun and I’m sure you will too. :)

Get the topics here: Podcast.txt

Download MP3: WiF podcast / 1 of 2 for April 9th ‘07
(running time 25:50)

Download MP3: WiF podcast / 2 of 2
(running time 49:35)

Update: Yeah, the audio feed doesn’t really work (hey Feedburner, thanx!) like snooz_bar pointed out in the comments. If you don’t mind doing this the old fashioned “Save as..” way until I get to the bottom of it we’d be really happy.

This very early morning I had to briefly go online! My EvDo modem being kaput I pulled over in this blue-collar residential neighbourhood. What are the odds to find a free hotspot in such a common place? Minus none!

But wireless is fun and always jumpy ;) Popped my iBook open and found competition’s signal in range! Sweet, I said, feeding my hungry Mac with precious TCP/IP data. Too bad the owner thought it was uncool to see those stupid ads over and over again so he altered the software preserving only the name. Good job, Joe!

Yeah, competition is great sometimes! It has hotspots in all those places we would never consider. :)

Disclosure – major positions in c*free wireless, long.

Scott MCCARTNEY from the Wall Street Journal talks about the adoption of WiFi on US airliners. The story is rather long and intricate, but the bottom line is that in the beginning of 2008 we will be able to use our laptops and WiFi enabled devices during flight. We will be able to stay in touch with our offices or our business partners, and our families.

The costs for refitting an airliner to support this would be around $100,000, would involve about 12 hours of work and about 100 pounds of equipment.

At first, VoiP services will be restricted for passengers and will only be available for pilots, flight attendants and air marshals, but will eventually be available for everyone except during take-off and landing.

The prices announced for the passengers will be around $10/day.

Read more here.

Starbucks Coffee Company (NASDAQ :SBUX) will enter the Romanian market this year alongside Marinopoulos Brothers S.A, we learn via Manafu and a MMD Public Relations press release.
I’m not particularly fond of this news but I admit having Starbucks is one criteria to show up on weird world maps. Since I’m a smoker ( yeah, I am! so sue me :P ) this gets even less appealing.

What’s notable here is, though, the fact that Starbucks could bring along T-Mobile hotspots to Romania. And that’s WiF:)) news! We’ll wait and see!