Today's hotspot mystery shopper saga comes to you from Benugo, 116 St John St, EC2. The deal is that you buy something and they then give you a access code which gives you 30 minutes of free access. So I buy today's special and sit down to try and make it work. DHCP comes straight up. I can ping the gateway but nothing else. I fire up a browser and that's dead as well. After 10 minutes of footling around I try IE6 and of course I'm taken straight to captive login page. So if you use a Mac, I guess you're stuffed. Anyway, the first access code has apparently expired so I get another one, put it in and I'm on. There's a little

Once I'm signed on, there's a little window showing the minutes left.

The adsl speed test reports
Downstream 473 Kbps (59.1 KB/sec) 510 Kbps (inc. overheads)
Upstream 241 Kbps (30.1 KB/sec) 260 Kbps (inc. overheads)

Even though I'm apparently enabled, Phoenix still doesn't work.

They've got some mains sockets so you can get power. And there's small posters on the wall to tell you they have access available. I get the impression that I'm not that unusual, but that nobody would be able to help me get going. Certainly there's nobody else with a laptop here.

And with 8 minutes left I'm now rushing to finish what I'm doing.
[from: JB Wifi]

I think this article at Techdirt Wireless nicely sums up the state of GPRS vs WiFi and the traveller. Here we have a tech savvy, American in London on business with a box full of gadgets trying to get Internet access. In theory, this represents one of the prime markets for paid WiFi hotspots along with 3G. So how does it go.

- First the Hiptop doesn't work with EU GSM as it's a US GSM only device.
- Then the T-Mobile GPRS works with a tri band Sony-Ericsson phone and it's bluetooth connected to the laptop. But at $15 per megabyte!
- Then the hotel room broadband connection didn't work. There's no mention of the price but we know these things tend to be on the expensive side.
- The few Starbucks with WiFi are on the opposite side of town (He doesn't say but presumably he's staying in the west end and the wifi enabled Starbucks are all in the City.)
- So it's down to the EasyInternetCafe. This has a SurfAndSip and appears to have WiFi, but the web page is not obvious. There should have been a pre-paid £5 for 24 hours option but there's no obvious way of paying and nobody in the EasyInternetCafe to ask.
- So then it's the usual 1.5hours for £2 on a terminal which works first time and is as painless as usual.

So here we've got the captive audience, several failures, and the real competition ends up being the nearest Internet cafe. So what this tells me is that there is a market for paid WiFi hotspots. But the price has to be as low as or less than a typical internet cafe because that's where the real competition lies. He also points out that this is a one off situation (that will get repeated) so until there's roaming across hotspot providers any sort of flat-rate monthly subscription doesn't work either.

And frankly all that applies to GPRS and 3G as well. IMHO per-megabyte pricing is just never going to fly. [from: JB Wifi]

What is the Xpertweb Talent Co-op ? [from: JB Ecademy]

The Internet Topic Exchange has just appeared on my radar. A very interesting experiment in using trackback to build channels of blog entries.

Pick a channel on the Exchange, drop the trackback URL into the trackback field on our Ecademy blog form and you can join in too. [from: JB Ecademy]

I want an Instant Message client that automatically goes into "busy" when I'm using certain applications. I'm not quite sure what the test should be, but I suspect that it shouldn't be that hard to be able to tell that I'm probably busy and don't want an interruption based on my current use of the machine. The problem is that even though there is a function in MSN to be able to say "offline" or "busy" I forget to use it. Most clients put up an "Away" message when you don't use the PC for a period of time, but while that's useful for the caller, it's actually useless to me. I guess what's really happening here is my own irritation with being interrupted which is why I don't much like telephones, mobiles, IM and other technologies that demand your attention just when you don't want to give it. It's also why I like Email so much because I can work at it when I want to and not when the caller wants me to. This also raises the question of why so very few IM systems have a store and forward mode. Why can't I send an IM message to someone who's off line, away or busy and them receive it when they next become live?

There's a lot of talk in this area about Presence and the ability of callers to see whether you're available on a whole range of systems not just IM. This could turn into a real tyranny of attention if we don't make sure that the systems make it easy to say "I'm unavailable". But unfortunately this is not high on the developer's list of priorities because it works against the need to encourage people to use the system for the system to be a success. But then I'm beginning to hate IM so much for it's interruptions that I'm seriously considering just not running it.

So there you go. I want to be able to say "Go away and leave me alone!" ;-) [from: JB Ecademy]

Kevin Sites Blog is coming from a CNN reporter on the front line in Iraq. [from: JB Ecademy]

Bruce Sterling and Derek Woodgate: Tomorrow Now So I'm surfing around, catching up on a day or two's news, and I come across some mega coverage of the SXSW conference via BoingBoing. I've read everything Bruce Sterling has ever done so this caught my eye. Then I noticed that the author and owner of the blog is one Heath Row, who just happens to be an Ecademy Power Networker!

If you got some serious time to spend on this, there's way too much content about way too many interesting topics from way too many interesting people. Great job, Heath. [from: JB Ecademy]

Yes, it's another episode of Get your war on

- Listen: They're called French Fries, they're greasy and they taste great with mayonnaise. F***ing dealt with it.

- Mayonnaise? Holy s***?, are you British? [from: JB Ecademy]

Is anyone going to the London WiFi Meetup tonight? If so, I may see you there.

Jerusalem, 33-34 Rathbone Place, London, 7pm [from: JB Wifi]

The inevitable counterpoint to World of Ends. EmptyBottle.org: World of Assholes

Essay question: Compare and contrast, World of Ends,

1. The Internet isn't complicated
2. The Internet isn't a thing. It's an agreement.
3. The Internet is stupid.
4. Adding value to the Internet lowers its value.
5. All the Internet's value grows on its edges.
6. Money moves to the suburbs.
7. The end of the world? Nah, the world of ends.
8. The Internet’s three virtues:
a. No one owns it
b. Everyone can use it
c. Anyone can improve it
9. If the Internet is so simple, why have so many been so boneheaded about it?
10. Some mistakes we can stop making already

with World of Assholes

1. The Internet is complicated
2. The Internet isn't a thing or an agreement : it's a place.
3. The Internet isn't stupid, but it's filled with stupidity.
4. Adding value to the Internet adds to its value.
5. Value on the internet goes unnoticed unless some high-traffic node connects it to the mainstream.
6. Money moves to the greedy.
7. The asshole of the world? Nah, the world of assholes.
8. The Internet’s three vices:
a. Americans dominate it
b. The wealthy populate it
c. More inhabitants does not automatically mean more value, except to those who want to sell you something
9. If the Internet is so complicated, why do so many seem driven to try and simplify it?
10. Some mistakes we can stop making already.

And apologies for the bad words. Heh, I'm only quoting here, ok! [from: JB Ecademy]

WiFi Ecademy DailEnews
Which led me to this.
Reiter's Wireless Data Web Log
Which led me to this.
Werblog
Which led me to this.
Japan Media Review -- A New Set of Social Rules for a Newly Wireless Society
Which led me to this.
Keitai Log

It's a smart mob world. [from: JB Wifi]

The Doc and David Weinberger have produced another great manifesto. World of Ends: What the Internet Is and How to Stop Mistaking It for Something Else. This should be required reading for any corporate type person with responsibility for "Internet Strategy".
[from: JB Ecademy]

Following my success in getting free wifi in a Starbucks in Faringdon road, I got this today.

Dear HotSpot user,

Yesterday marked the announcement of our plans to launch the UK HotSpot service. By the end of May, we will have an impressive 56 hotspots in Starbucks coffee shops across the UK.

This announcement follows the successful pilot programme in six Starbucks stores in London and Birmingham. Since the launch in August 2002, nearly 1000 of you have trialed the service.

These hotspot areas mean that you can relax with a coffee and, using a 'Wi-Fi' enabled laptop or PDA, can easily check your work e-mail, surf the internet or download multi-media presentations, without the hassle of a docking station or bulky cables.

This scheme has already worked incredibly well in the US, with over 2,000 HotSpots already in place. Discussion with airports and hotel chains means that the concept should be equally as successful in the UK, giving a real opportunity to showcase our service.

To ensure maximum flexibility and choice for all, from 31 March, four pre pay tariffs will be introduced, ranging from £5.50 for an hourly pass to £47.00 for a month pass.

More detail about the new T-Mobile HotSpot venues will be updated on www.t-mobile.co.uk/hotspot shortly.
Regards

Webmaster (JR)
T-Mobile UK

£5.50 for an hour is on the edge of what I'd consider acceptable. [from: JB Wifi]

The Register : Swisscom buys Megabeam and WLAN AG

Swiss telecoms operator Swisscom today announced the acquisition of WLAN hotspot firms Megabeam and WLAN AG. Financial terms of the deals were not disclosed.

I hope Megabeam got a reasonable price. That's a pretty fast turn round for the VCs involved! [from: JB Wifi]

Here are some words as I try and type without making any typing errors. [from: JB Ecademy]

News - Wireless Internet startup to bring up to 30,000 "hot spots" to UK this year. Guy Kewney writes.

Next Monday, a thunderbolt will hit the British wireless Internet world, as Inspired Broadcast launches a "pubs and clubs" chain of WiFi hotspots in three thousand different locations, with the possibility of seeing this rise to 30,000 locations before the end of the year.
...

And what are we to make of this?

To the customer, these access points will almost certainly look like BT OpenZone, or Megabeam, or other big, commercial operations - and if you have an OpenZone account, you should be able to connect to these hotspots exactly as normal.

The full announcement is due next monday. [from: JB Wifi]

I'd like to see Google introduce a simple API so that my website (or Ecademy) could ping Google and say "I've changed. Please index me." I'd like to see this API be open, documented and implemented by all the other search engines and aggregators as well. In fact they could do worse than just copy the weblogs.com and blo.gs API. [from: JB Ecademy]

Has anyone succeeded in finding an alternate Windows client manager for Buffalo NICs like the LIIG and LIIGP? These cards are effectively cheap clones of the Orinoco cards but the client manager sucks.

There's been some talk over the years around netstumbler about using frigged Orinoco drivers with Buffalo kit to get netstumbler working. This is no longer necessary as the latest drivers and netstumbler release work fine together with one exception. Netstumbler doesn't seem to put the card into scan mode so you sometimes need to use the CM to do one scan, after which everything works. Anyway, when I tried messing with frigged drivers a while ago, I never persuaded the Orinoco CM to work. No matter what I tried, it always came back with some obscure Control panel .cpl error.

This issue came to a head for me yesterday. I'm sitting in a Starbucks in London with free WiFi. Netstumbler could see the AP, the CM gave me a series of confusing messages ending up with "no AP found". No matter what I did, the CM didn't show the AP in a list or appear to manage the DHCP process correctly. Meanwhile there's messages in the status bar saying 11Mbps, 85%. So I fired up a web browser to discover that the drivers had in fact found the network, got a DHCP address and associated. So in a nutshell, the CM just plain didn't do it's work. Now I can cope with this and hack my way round it, but it's not exactly consumer friendly.

This may or may not be relevant, but the Starbucks T-Mobile AP was a Cisco. I've previously had trouble finding and connecting to another set of Cisco kit in a public area, this time with WEP. In this case, the Buffalo code just plain couldn't see the AP at all.

Now I'm griping about one manufacturer's code. But reading between the lines here the whole industry is like this. Numerous point releases of drivers and apps that are all flaky to some degree or another. Not so very long ago, ethernet and dial up modems used to be like this. Graphics cards still are. It's about time some third party utility software appeared. So who's going to write the "Norton Utilities" Client Manager for common WiFi NICs? [from: JB Wifi]

Thoughtful and relatively complete analysis 2003 And Beyond It's relatively complete but with a pronounced Microsoft flavour. If you want an overview of the state of technology as of 2003 and particularly for SMEs, then read this. [from: JB Ecademy]

I'm taking my own medicine and posting this from a public hotspot. It's the Starbucks in Farringdon road London. I haven't seen any promotional literature anywhere or any sign that they've got Internet access here. The signal at street level was pretty poor but downstairs in the basement, I'm getting full speed access.

When I first used the web, I got redirected to a TMobile page that asked for name and email address. After a 30 second wait, I've been enabled and am using the web with no problems. Email also seems to be working. DHCP gave me a 10.0.0.180 address with DNS on the DHCP server at 192.168.255.1 and a name of jblaptop.int.aptilo.com

My email is coming through with SSL (you should always do this on a public WLAN to avoid exposing passwords) so quite a lot of ports seem to be open. SSH and SFTP are also working.

The service is currently free so I guess that's it. It just worked. ZDNet are showing 4 sites in the city and one in Wardour st.
The Official site only shows 2 in the UK and not including this one.

A quick run of a speed tester shows

Downstream 928 Kbps (116.0 KB/sec) 1002 Kbps (inc. overheads)
Upstream 245 Kbps (30.6 KB/sec) 264 Kbps (inc. overheads)

Pretty damn good. [from: JB Wifi]