This from their wi-fi login page:
It’s a nice thought…
Tag: wi-fi
BusyPost
I’m really rather busy right now, so finding time to post is tricky. Plus they’ve taken away the wi-fi on my morning train which is a right old bugger. But I did see 2 things on lamp posts that pricked my interest today:
I’ve got no idea why this interested me. Perhaps because it’s something that conjours up a kind of image of a living hell…
But this I simply love! I like a lot of the things that the Karmarama guys do, but this I liked especially. As an occasional cyclist who doesn’t jump red lights I think this is something that needs to be said. And who would jump the lights after seeing this:
The campaign launched today and they say:
Next time you stop at a red light look out for the latest Karmarama poster campaign: “Every time you jump a red light, god kills a kittenâ€. It’s addressed to all those rogue cyclists giving us proper cyclists a bad name and giving laughing Ken Livingstone an excuse to enforce license plates for bikes and fines for leaving the house.
And of course they know that all you have to do online is mention kittens and you hit the 100x conversation multiplier.
More wi-fi sharing
Whisher are another new player in the global wi-fi sharing thing. It’s simple, you join up, share your network, and you get to use other people’s shared networks wherever you are. It’s not a new idea and there’s a few more established people out there.
These guys seem to have a nice interface and tone of voice though. I particularly liked this from their FAQ:
Whisher? haven’t you guys spelt it wrong?
Not really. We thought it would be cool that word processors would underline us in red.
You can add it to your word processor’s dictionary if it really annoys you, but we are not changing the name :)
Just a bit cute. And sometimes a little bit of cute makes a big bit of difference.
It looks like Fon is the biggest player in the space right now – but I think you need a specific router to use it. They’re cute too. They have different types of member, Linuses, Bills and Aliens.
Flickr Enabled LCD Frame
ThinkGeek :: eStarling Wi-Fi Gmail / Flickr Enabled LCD Frame I’ve seen this kind of thing before and there’s something really nice about the thought of having a frame that you can subscribe to a Flickr RSS feed of your photographs, or your families photographs. Or just photographs of things you like.
But why do they have to look like something out of the Jetsons? I guess it wouldn’t be too hard to encase it in something that would fit into a real house…
FON backed by Skype and Google
Yahoo News Story details how Skype, Google and a load of the usual VC suspects are backing FON. FON is a startup that aims to create a global community of wi-fi sharers. Members are either Bills (who charge a small amount for access) or Linuses (who just share for free). There were a couple of startups doing this previously and I don’t know where they are now. At least these guys have got some cash in their pockets
Mobile Marketing
Yesterday I spoke at the Mobile Marketing 2005 conference. I actually quite enjoyed it which surprised me.
It was a tricky old thing. From speaking to lots of people later it’s obvious that there’s a lot of different levels of knowledge and experience within the sector. And there’s still a lot to play for. Which is inspiring.
What’s less inspiring is quite how ‘old media’ a lot of the thinking in the industry seems to be. Especially from the network operator side. It’s almost as if the web and open source hasn’t even registered. The networks (and a load of ‘feeder’ companies around them) seem to want to control and own everything. Their value chain seems to rely on them owning and delivering content. Much like a properly old-school ISP.
Is it really economically impossible for a network to detach itself from all their ‘value added services’? I hate using that term (especially when the services in question add no discernible value in my world). If I was offered a network that just charged a data rate but let me go where I wanted, using whatever device I wanted, I’d be in like a shot. And hoovering up mobile bandwidth. They may not get me paying 50p to watch a movie trailer from them (I would absolutly never do such a thing by the way). But they would get the data charges.
Or am I just being naive?
Until they sort themselves out I’m hoping for a massive wi-fi cloud and using VOIP on mobile wi-fi devices. Fuck the mobile networks. (Note to mobile networks (especially any of our clients): I didn’t really mean that completely).