The Blog




So cool. Take a Mini PDA that sends emails and has a camera attachment. Create a web site that can receive these emails and embedde images and turn them into a group weblog and you get Hiptop Nation. One person took their hiptop on a Marathon and blogged while running.

Could we do this with the latest MMS phones with cameras in them? [from: JB Ecademy]

Dec 24 2002 is World Sousveillance Day So remember to take lots of photos, MMS pictures, Webcam pictures and video of CCTV cameras. You won't have to wait long before live models appear for you to photograph. We'll be watching the detectives watch us, watching them, watching us, watching them. [from: JB Ecademy]

SUPERNOVA Group Blog is up and already there's lots of good talk around the subject of de-centralization. This is a subject dear to my heart as I keep asking the same questions. For instance, what if every Ecademy member had their own website with it's own blog? What would Ecademy look like then? You can ask similar questions about PDAs and Cellphones. What if there were 100 times as many cellphones in the world, each with 100 times the power, a camera and all linked to instant update web pages? What if on the end of every broadband connection was a server shipping as much content out as the owner was sucking in? What if every broadband connection had a WiFi access point slung off it sharing the bandwidth? What if every SME and LE had a web service link to it's accounting package and stock control so that orders were placed, products shipped and general ledger reconciliations done without ever involving banks, distributors and other intermediaries? What if every CCTV was webcam? And if the powers of Awe and Boredom won;t let us do that, what if every CCTV had a webcam next to it? What if every phone was a webcam?

While all this is happening we'll still need aggregators and concentrators to help us make sense of it all. So Websites are de-centralized and democratized but that leaves space for Google both with the main search and with Google News. The challenge for us is to come up with end user tools to facilitate all this and interesting centralized tools that feed back into it and help us understand what's happening. And the best tools will feed back on all this and enable new forms of emergent behaviour. [from: JB Ecademy]

The view from the dark side 802.11ninja.net has powerpoint slides from BlackHat 2002 on cracking WiFi. [from: JB Wifi]


Excellent article Wi-Fi Internet Access Is Hot, But Its Profit Potential Is Tepid :

One tidbit. With prices of Wi-Fi chips and networking equipment plummeting even as unit sales are soaring, the industry's revenues are not expected to top $3 billion - 1 percent of the worldwide market for telecommunications equipment - before 2006, according to Synergy Research.

I've been trying to understand hotspot pricing by looking at it from first principles. Iit's quite hard given the different bsuiness models and usage patterns. Even for hotspots aimed at causal users, there's quite a lot of tension there between loss leader services provided for free to attract more custom and paid for roaming services with a large billing and provision infrastructure. Meanwhile the only people making money are selling spades not mining for gold; the hardware manufacturers not the service providers. But as mentioned above, they are in a market with high competition and a rapidly falling price curve. And the product we ought to buy (triple standard 802.11b, a and g) isn't even available yet.

More on this later. [from: JB Wifi]




More on Cometa that suggests there may be nothing there at all, at all.Joho the Blog: Cometa Semiotics [from: JB Wifi]

Indian Govt To Throw Open 802.11b For Rural Connectivity with help from the Media Lab and Negroponte. [from: JB Wifi]





If you're even vaguely interested in WiFi (and if you're not why are you reading this? ) you need to look at Glenn's reports from the recent 802.11 Planet conference in Santa Clara. here, here and here. [from: JB Wifi]

Cometa analysis from Unstrung Links with iPass and other roaming systems. Target market is business people. Big competition, are they too late? [from: JB Wifi]

Popdex Another blog tracking site for link whores.




I mentioned yesterady that some factions in the USA consider WiFi to be a threat to "Homeland Security". Today there's an article in Wired. Feds Label Wi-Fi a Terrorist Tool in which federal cybersecurity czar Richard Clarke who said "Companies throughout the country have networks that are wide open because of wireless LANs.... Millions of houses are getting connected, which means that more and more are getting vulnerable," then we have Daniel Devasirvatham, who headed the Homeland Security task force for the Wireless Communications Association International trade association saying "We know that (an attack) could bring down the network of this country very quickly. Once you're on the network, it doesn't matter where you got in,"

Does anyone else find this mildly ridiculous? Let's take that last point. "It doesn't matter were you got in". So if I launched a denial of service attack from a Taiwanese server that I controlled via a box in Australia by using a laptop in Bryant Park with the park's Free WiFi access, Bryant Park is responsible? Hello? Or what if I share WiFi internet access round my home and incidentally someone in the road uses it to attack Whitehouse.gov to what extent am I responsible? These are difficult questions but if we take the view that I and Bryant Park are responsible, what do Feds think we're supposed to do about it? Can we expect them to mandate that all WiFi hardware is to have a Fed chip installed to provide positive identification and that the protocols are modified to ensure the ID is used, and that anyone tampering with it gets a minimum 20 year gaol sentence? And do we really think that will make any difference at all to the ability of a determined hacker to break it?

Scott McNealy famously said "There is no privacy, get over it". Well I'm tempted to say to the Feds, "There is no security, get over it." And put your efforts into securing the critical systems at the centre, not into trying to mandate security at the edge. [from: JB Wifi]

With the Cometa announcement about AT&T, Intel and IBM joining forces to build a US nationwide network of hotspots, I think the WiFi hype meter just went right off the scale. Every technical publication and every technical column in mainstream publications carried the story. But there was a severe lack of intelligent comment or analysis. Now Reiter has published his first thoughts. I'd like to add a couple more.

The sheer scale of the plan is awe inspiring. "20,000 Wi-Fi hot spots", "an access point within five minutes walk of any employee in an urban setting and within five minutes drive in a rural setting". This is either going to take a massive rollout effort or a franchise model.

It's not at all clear what the busines model is going to be. From Reiter, "The Cometa executives said they were not certain how the new network would be used but were convinced that the nation's 100 million Internet users would begin to use their portable computers in new ways once connections are widely and easily available as they travel." As Reiter points out, not certain? They've got to be kidding!

So is this a massive VC, cash and debt based landgrab to secure ownership of the sector? Anyone would think this was 1998 all over again. [from: JB Wifi]

The Register : Nortel Networks is to offer mobile operators a new technology that will seamlessly link their wide-area wireless networks with fast emerging Wi-Fi systems.

The idea behind Nortel's new technology is that mobile operators can offer consumers and enterprises a single 'sign on' and seamless service between 2G/3G networks and Wi-Fi hotspots based on 802.11b.


I can understand the reasoning. But when can we expect WiFi devices to include a Cellphone SIM card? And why should WiFi manufacturers include this? [from: JB Wifi]

I've started an Ecademy WiFi mailing list. Come and join in. [from: JB Wifi]




Lots of good reports coming out of the 802.11 Planet conference.
The future of WiFi wireless technology will encompass voice, cellular networks, the military and even toys.
Wi-Fi: As big as Budweiser? No Bigger
Wireless punches hole in homeland security or how WiFi is one of 5 major security risks in the USA
Boingo Recruiting For Wi-Fi Hotspots
Nortel marries GPRS and Wi-Fi  for seamless roaming between the two types of connection
NIST draft goes final: PDF on security approaches
Glenn has updated his Update to wireless insecurity article

Once more up the hockey stick curve, dear friends. [from: JB Wifi]

Danny O'Brien is blogging the 802.11 Planet conference.

You can see that WiFi is taking off: lots of low-attention-span wide-eyed MBA wolverines sniffing and snarling their business plans on the floor. They already know Sky's overview - they want to know what everyone is going to do for them, or what they can do to everyone else. The conference is much much bigger than last year, but I think the smarts has got a bit more dilute. Ah, well - once more into the J-curve... [thanks, Oblomovka] [from: JB Wifi]




The Wireless LAN (WLAN) Top Sites List has got a good selection of links [from: JB Wifi]

Wild story about a semi-autonomous balloon antenna. Floating at 60,000 feet and maintaining position for 12 months with large slow turning propellers, the balloon is used as an antenna to beam WiFi down to an area of 10 miles radius. [from: JB Wifi]

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