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Archive for the 'Grass Roots Wireless' Category

Battle of the (Muni) Bands

Posted by Sam Churchill on May 15th, 2008

Portland’s Personal Telco has always had an active list serve discussion. Things are heating up with this week’s announcement by Earthlink to shut down Philadelphia’s Wi-Fi network, the largest in the nation.
Today, it’s the battle of the Tylers (Tyler Booth, President of Stephouse Networks vrs Tyler van Houwelingen, CEO of Azulstar)
Tyler Booth posts:


> I think [...]

Earthlink to Philly: We’re Outta Here

Posted by Sam Churchill on May 15th, 2008

Greg Goldman still sees a future for Wireless Philadelphia, the nonprofit firm set up three years ago to help city residents gain access to Internet service.
Just don’t ask him what it might be, says the Philadelphia Inquirer.
The Wireless Philadelphia chief executive called reporters to a North Philadelphia street corner yesterday to declare the nonprofit “alive [...]

Verizon Joins Android Rival

Posted by Sam Churchill on May 14th, 2008

The LiMo Foundation, Android’s chief competitor in the mobile open-source community, today announced eight new members, including Verizon Wireless, along with leading South Korean network operator SK Telecom and Mozilla Corp., parent of the Firefox Web browser.
Like Google’s Open Handset Alliance, which promotes the Android platform, LiMo is a global consortium of mobile communications firms [...]

Philadelphia WiFi Network To Shut Down June 12

Posted by Sam Churchill on May 13th, 2008

Earthlink says it’s closing the Philadelphia Wi-Fi Network on June 12. According to their press release:

EarthLink today notified its Wi-Fi customers in Philadelphia that EarthLink is terminating its Philadelphia Wi-Fi service and that EarthLink is providing its customers a thirty-day transition period through June 12, 2008.
After months of negotiations with the City of Philadelphia [...]

Android on the Loose!

Posted by Sam Churchill on May 13th, 2008

Results from Android Developer Challenge (round one) were announced last week. Here’s a listing of the top 50 applications:

AndroidScan - Jeffrey Sharkey
Beetaun - Sergey Gritsyuk and Dmitri Shipilov
BioWallet - Jose Luis Huertas Fernandez
BreadCrumbz - Amos Yoffe
CallACab - Konrad Huebner and Henning Boeger
City Slikkers - PoroCity Media and Virtual Logic Systems
Commandro - Alex Pisarev, Andrey [...]

China Quake: Twitter to the Rescue?

Posted by Sam Churchill on May 12th, 2008

From the BBC’s website this morning:

I was beginning to think Twitter - the micro-blogging service that’s all the rage amongst the technorati - was just another fad for people who want to share too much of their rather dull lives. Until this morning.

When I logged on to my desktop Twitter application (sad, I know) it [...]

Earthlink Shutting Down New Orleans WiFi Net

Posted by Sam Churchill on April 29th, 2008

New Orleans is about to lose its municipal Wi-Fi network as EarthLink plans to halt its participation in the citywide project on May 18, reports InfoWorld and the Times Picayune.

First, EarthLink tried to sell the network outright. Second, it sought to transfer ownership of the network to the city of New Orleans. Finally, it tried [...]

Mac OS on OQO?

Posted by Sam Churchill on April 29th, 2008

Engadget says the tiny OQO hand held computer has been successfully hacked to run Masc OS X Leopard.

The OQO is setup in a dual-boot Vista / OS X mode which boots Leopard in about 2 minutes and 30 seconds. It has WiFi, sound, power management and Bluetooth. The only thing missing at the moment [...]

Hacking EyeFi for Linux

Posted by Sam Churchill on April 28th, 2008

Matt Westervelt (of Seattle Wireless and Metrix fame), got an Eeepc and a Eye-Fi card for his Nikon.

I’ve been able to cut down the weight I carry every day without losing much functionality. One thing that I have been missing however, is the ability to configure my Eye-Fi card for random networks that I [...]

Affordable Spectrum Analyzer

Posted by Sam Churchill on April 23rd, 2008

WiFi Planet reviews the $399 Wi-Spy 2.4x, an inexpensive spectrum analyzer that can check on common interference from devices like cordless phones, microwaves, and other WiFi and Bluetooth devices.
The Wi-Spy 2.4x from Metageek consists of both a hardware and a software component. A USB dongle — no bigger than a Flash memory drive -— [...]