“We will not stop until every San Franciscan has access to free wireless Internet service”
- San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom.
Amid rumors of Google mixing it up with WiFi, San Francisco Officials are expected today to take the first steps in process to bring universal Wi-Fi to all its citizens.
The city’s TechConnect strategy aims to provide free or low-cost high-speed Internet access across San Francisco’s hilly, 49-square-mile area. The city wants to enable mobile or portable Wi-Fi connectivity via handheld PDAs or cell phones.
San Francisco’s 49 square mile “cloud” is expected to cost $10 million to $18 million, similar to Philadelphia’s 135-square-mile cloud, projected to cost $15 million to $18 million. San Francisco’s hilly topography makes coverage more expensive.
The TechConnect initiative will focus on bringing affordable access to low-income citizens, according to the Mayor. “Providing universal, affordable, wireless broadband access is just the first phase of our new TechConnect strategy that will bring the promise of technology to low-income and disadvantaged citizens,” Newsom stated.
The start of the Request for Information and Comment process, beginning today, marks a 45-day public process in which all interested parties public, private and nonprofit can contribute ideas for the network.
Dell and other computer makers have pledged thousands of computers that will be given to residents of poorer neighborhoods, reports SF Gate. “We are going to be able to wire the city in a dynamic way so the entire city is a hot zone, but we are also going to be able to provide equipment in an unprecedented way,” Newsom said.
Meanwhile, AnchorFree Wireless has launched free Wi-Fi hotzones in San Francisco’s Marina District, Fillmore, Castro and Union Square, in the heart of San Francisco’s shopping district. The 245-foot-long plaza is home to the largest Macy’s store West of New York City.
Tourists and locals alike can access the Internet wirelessly at no cost along Union Square and by cafes located on the square. AnchorFree is also providing free Wi-Fi Internet access to attendees of the Blog Business Summit, going on this week in San Francisco, August 17 – 19.
AnchorFree is providing free Wi-Fi for San Franciscans (at least some of them) – without spending a dime in taxpayer money.
AnchorFree’s service initially charged $19.95 a month but switched to free connections in March. Their goal is to make free service profitable through location-based advertising on its home page and a cut of e-commerce transactions.
Feeva (formerly UnwireNow), built the hot spot in Union Square and attracted Google as a sponsor.
Google s interest in Feeva likely stems from the startup’s proprietary technology, which can determine the location of every Wi-Fi user and would allow Google to serve up advertising and maps based on real-time data.
The Union Square WiFi network was a joint partnership with the Mayor s Office of Economic and Workforce Development, the Department of Telecommunications and Information Services, the Recreation and Parks Department, Terabeam Wireless and UnwireNow(Feeva). Starting with this pilot project, the Mayor’s Office has directed DTIS to work with city departments to develop a citywide wireless broadband policy and explore other opportunities to use wireless broadband services throughout San Francisco.
Feeva is reportedly readying more free hotspots in California, Florida, New York, and Washington.
San Francisco may be poised to unveil plans for one of the most progressive “city clouds” yet — if they can figure out the “free” part.
Location Based Services might also develop around some of these (free) software packages:
- Meetro is a new location-based community building software. Using WiFi signals, it is able to discover the general location of a user without GPS. It calculates the position of a client in a manner similar to other Wi-Fi positioning developers such as PanGo Networks, Newbury Networks, Bluesoft and Ekahau.
- Boston-based Skyhook launched their software-only positioning system this June. The location of any Wi-Fi device can be determined without new hardware. Skyhook says they created a reference database of over 1.5 million private and public access points along with their locations. The WPS client software utilizes this reference database to calculate a device s location to within 20-40 meters. The Wi-Fi Positioning System (WPS) initially is being rolled out in 25 metropolitan areas. (see DailyWireless: Next Generation 911?).
- The MapInfo Envinsa location intelligence platform is also used to route 911 callers to the correct PSAP. The prototype architecture will be extended to dedicated workstations in working public safety answering points in Texas and Virginia.
- New-York-based Navizon provides peer-to-peer wireless positioning system which relies on a free piece of software and a GPS device or a WiFi and/or Cellular enabled Pocket PC PDA. Navizon provides your exact location in real time, and companies can send you messages about a restaurant of a film opening near the place where you are. Navizon knows the geographic locations of Hotspots and Cellular Towers in a specified city, and is able to determine your Latitude and Longitude via the software.
- Quarterscope’s Wi-Fi positioning technology, is a GPS replacer. Wi-Fi Planet has the scoop on Quarterscope and their Wi-Fi Positioning System (WPS).
- Herecast provides location-based services on a WiFi device. Herecast uses a symbolic naming system — instead of using coordinates such as “42.9875, -81.2915″, it expresses your location in terms an ordinary person would use — for example, the name of the building.
- Blogmapper (links blog entries to clickable locations on a map)
- Blogdigger, a blog search engine like Yahoo Local, Google Local or even A9′s Yellow Pages, which locates individual bloggers writing from specific U.S. cities or zip codes.
- Mates, a location-based social networking system developed at the University of Michigan.
- Neighbornodes are group message boards on wireless nodes, placed in residential areas and open to the public. These nodes transmit signal for around 300 feet, so everyone within that range has access to the board and can read and post to it.
- GeoURL ICBM Address Server (add Lat/Long to webpages)
- GeoNotes, (a free JAVA app that automatically detects your position for location-tagged messages), as used in Annotate Space
- Trepia (a location-based list of other nearby Instant Messaging users)
- LocalFeeds (finds nearby RSS News feeds)
- Orb is a free software place-shifting service. It lets you access your media from anywhere over the internet. Orb runs on computers with Windows XP or XP Media Center and provides streaming access to the audio and video on the computer. A TiVoToGo plugin is available that lets you watch your TiVo from anywhere.
- Portable Photostories and Geotagged Sounds can create Virtual Guides. Perhaps $100-$200 wireless multimedia devices, like the Playstation Portable, will make WiFi-enabled tours, cost-effective.
- WWMX Travelogue (GPS tagged maps, photographs and text)
At its simplest level, location-based services can tell you where you are. More advanced services can use your location to enhance information lookups, publish presence information, and create unique games — all while preserving privacy (or not). Every wireless access point broadcasts a unique identifier, which can be used to determine your position.
You’re walking past a coffee shop when your phone vibrates and a cents-off coupon for a latte automatically appears on-screen. That type of marketing is so intoxicatingly attractive to businesses that they forget how repulsive it is to users. This is a bad idea that refuses to die.
According to C/Net’s Declan McCullagh, the FCC wants the ability to track Wi-fi phones like the ZyXel P-2000W VoIP WiFi phone ($179), which lets you can make phone calls wherever there’s a hotspot. The FCC wants to “track” users, creating an “inventory” of every Wi-Fi access point in the United States, and compiling an “access jack inventory” for wired VoIP users, or mandating that Net phones include GPS.
[...] The first patent that is key is Patent# 6326918, which lays down the groundwork for Geographic-based advertising in a wireless environment, which Google and San Francisco seem to have talked about before. [...]
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