Published January 30th, 2006
in Family and Thoughts.
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My birthday was last Friday (27th). It was uneventful. I lost my apartment keys in Hawaii so I had to spend the weekend in my grandmothers house sleeping on the inflatable mattress. She doesn’t have wireless internet access. I would have setup a wireless router but they are using AOL and you need to have the AOL software installed, I’m not even sure you can setup a wireless router on the AOL cable service. Anyway, the point was I spent a lot of time sleeping trying to get back on east coast time and searching for internet access.
I found a McDonalds near my grandmothers house (this is in Queens, NY) that had a “We support wireless Internet” sign on the front do. I went into McDonalds and asked the woman behind the counter “what do I need to do to connect to the wireless network?” She made a really strange face and asked me “Wire what?” “Internet, wireless internet, you know the thing you have advertised on the door?” “What? We have wireless internet? Jim, you know anything about the internet? No body told me” Jim: Oh yeah, you know those phone jacks, if you look around we have some phone jacks on the wall, you never seen that? Its the internet!
In the end I ordered Apple pies and found the wireless network but no one could give me a access code to actually use it. So I just ate my apple pie while staring at the computer screen. I looked really out of place.
On my birthday I went to a night club to celebrate with my uncle. We ordered a bottle of champaigne, it came with strawberrys and I spent some of the night convincing women to join me for a slice of strawberry. It works really well. Maybe next time I will sneak the strawberrys into the club.
Eventually I managed to track down my apartment building manager (for a building manager he is rarely ever in the building) and get copies of my apartment keys. Then it was back to life as normal.
Some people complain I don’t blog enough about my personal life, there you go! Eating strawberrys in the back of the club and sleeping on my grandmothers inflatable bed while searching for wireless internet access in Queens, NY. What were you expecting?
Published January 25th, 2006
in FON.
Today I spoke at ETel about FON in America. I was only given 15 minutes and there is so much I wanted to say that I just didn’t have time to.
For example, I didn’t talk about the ability we are building into FON that will allow one FON hotspot to share documents, files, and bandwidth another FON hotspot nearby in a mesh manner.
I didn’t talk about out commitment to bring Wi-Fi to communities that need it, places like Harlem in NYC and the less advantaged areas of Paris.
I didn’t talk about the social networking component. The ability for each hotspot to have a home page that the user can personalize. So you can say “if you are in my neighborhood, check out this cafe across the street that has the best espresso in NYC!” And the ability for users to be able to send you thank you notes. This isn’t in the system now, but its in the 6 month road map.
I also said that Martin laid down trans-atlantic fiber, I don’t think thats true. But it is true that he laid fiber across europe.
Anyway, enough of my disclamer, why don’t you listen to the FON USA launch yourself.
Christine Herron, Stuart Henshall at SkypeJournal and Alec Saunders blogged about the talk.
Published January 23rd, 2006
in FON.
A new promotional ad, check out the FON store
Published January 22nd, 2006
in Travel, Politics and Thoughts.
This afternoon I was in my hotel dinning hall having brunch and listening to a wonderful lounge singer. After a few songs the lounge singer said that she was pleased to have the Mayor of San Mateo joining us for brunch, only two tables away from me.
So what do you do in a situation like this?
For a second I thought, “maybe I shouldn’t interrupt her during her brunch” but then I realized that I would likely never have an opportunity to meet her again. So I finished my meal, paid my bill and walked over to their table as asked “is this where the mayor is?” By the way, did I mention I didn’t actually know what she looked like?
Claire said, “yes, I’m the former-mayor.” And our conversation started there. Eventually it turned out she knew me better then I knew her! She’d seen my one hour special appearence on CSPAN. She asked me to sit with her group, and even invited me to ballroom dance with her. I had to say no to the ballroom dancing but I did get a chance to speak with the San Mateo’s current Supervisor. Claire Mack is a delightful person, its obvious to see why she was elected Mayor.
When you break the rules, you never have to ask “what if?”
Published January 20th, 2006
in FON.
At PTC there was a plenary panel with the director of Marketing for Qualcomm, his name was…let me find his business card…Jeffrey K. Belk, SVP Marketing. Jeffrey made some very good points about how WiMax is over hyped. He wrote a really interesting whitepaper on WiMax/WiFi and 3G. I only read through it very quickly (it was written by a marketing guy after all) but the gist is that WiFi / WiMax isn’t going to replace 3G networks.
He is right. Maybe when WiMax is REALLY ready in 3 years or so we can talk about the likelihood 3G being replaced but we are a long ways from that point. WiFi is a hotspot technology. You have to go to a spot to use it, while 3G networks have a lot more coverage. But that doesn’t mean WiFi is irrelevant to the cellular business. WiFi is cheap. 3G is great for reach but bad for throughput and cost. WiFi is poor for reach but great for throughput and cost. The two will co-exist. When WiMax is ready FON will use that, but right now I am really excited about 802.11N and its expanded coverage ability. We will see it in stores mid 2006. I hope the first FON routers will be 802.11N but that remains to be seen…
3G is not going to replace WiFi, even though Verizon, god bless their heart, is advertising on the back of every major business magazine that WiFi is crap. I don’t blame them (it was written by a marketing person). After the session I told Jeffery Belk that FON believes, when given the option users will prefer to make a cheap call over a WiFi network rather then traditional cell networks. Even if that means standing still for a few minutes (it’s rude to talk while walking anyway). He told me I was crazy! He said, “no one will ever want to make phone calls over a WiFi network” when given a choice. My response “I think you’re wrong, and hopefully FON will prove it.”
Jeffery may have been right about WiMax hype but he is dead wrong about WiFiFON’s. Lets see what the nice people at eTel will have to say.
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