New and Noteworthy in WiFi for 6/8/09
Widgets & RSS FeedsSkyhook Lets Wi-Fi Signals Take the Place of GPS: Jenna Wortham’s article on Skyhook Wireless for The New York Times talks about the history, present, and future of Skyhook’s geolocation service which provides position data using WiFi access points rather than GPS or cellular tower triangulation. Skyhook’s service is now used to provide location data for Apple’s iPhone, the Firefox browser, and Eye-Fi camera cards.
HotelChatter’s Annual Hotel WiFi Report 2009: This annual report from HotelChatter is useful as a list of hotels with free WiFi. The summary is that budget hotels typically offer free WiFi and upscale hotels often charge day rates, although many are beginning to do away with this fee. The problem is that the list is solely based on price, there is no information about the quality of the connection such as security, bandwidth, what ports are blocked, or if there are overly aggressive filters.
The Devicescape Wi-Fi Report: Research on Usage and Trends: Devicescape developes consumer software that makes it easier to connect to WiFi access points. Some findings from the report included that the iPhone was the number one device used to connect to WiFi, that more than ninety percent of users want access to WiFi when they are traveling, and that more than half of the users were willing to pay for WiFi. The number one WiFi annoyance reported was complicated WiFi login screens. The surveyed population is comprised of Devicescape’s users so the results are naturally biased towards that population.
