Wireless Bandit

Fredericton NB Goes WiFi

Fredericton goes WiFi

If Fredericton, New Brunswick can, why can't Toronto Ontario?

Good news - WiFi Being used to Save Money

Air Port project in Colorado uses WiFi

The amazing thing is that this is an economic redevelopment story that could be a precedent for how land is reused. In this case Stapleton Airport in Colorado is being rebuilt for residential and commercial purposes. The contractor is saving over $2M by using WiFi over wired services. They are doing this for the construction trailers AND then handing it over to the city. The airport tower is being used as an antennae to provide wifi to the whole city. Truly a great story!

Stealing it - the best compliment

It seems stealing content on the net and repurposing it as yours without any attribution is the law of the Net... Here are over 20 Wireless Bandit hotspots "ripped out"

Whoever runs Geektools.com should just contact me and we'll setup a special feed using RSS to your site. You really don't need to do it this way. Plus you are way out of date!

Steve and Bill's Adventures in WiFi Land

Did Steve Ballmer break a law here? Read near the end of the article.

In light of all the news...

Folks, I have been reading the penal code on the law that a Toronto wardriver broke:

S.342.1 Unauthorized Use of Computer

I must say this concerns me that a site like Wireless Bandit would be used for nefarious purposes, which leads me to my next suggestion:

Should we build a registration system to allow access to the CAPs database and for searching the map? I really don't want to end up on the front page of a newspaper... What do you all think?

News links:

Canada.com

CTV

680 News

Pulse24

The Register (UK)

And the Toronto Star

Commentary:

Slashdot

An interesting observation about traffic

I thought this was interesting, dunno if you will too. I looked over the past 1000 visits to wirelessbandit to see some patterns in traffic. The largest visit over the past 1000 visits was a visit with 75 page views over several hours from someone at globeandmail.ca... Uh oh... Anyways I have copied and pasted the unique referers from visits with >= 10 page views. Note that there are many non-Google referers. This tells me that while google will drives lots of people to your site (WB gets way over 70% of traffic from Google searches) they may not be the best visitors. Those would be from sites like wififreespot.com or even the greyorbit.com blog. Location counts on the web.

Links that Generate Long, Intense Visits to Wireless Bandit

http://www.wififreespot.com/can.html

http://www.greyorbit.com/archives/000421.html

http://www.google.ca/search?q=war drivers toronto&ie=ISO-8859-1&hl=en&btnG=Google Search&meta=cr%3DcountryCA

http://www.google.ca/search?q=bell canada toronto hot spot union&hl=en&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8

http://www.google.ca/search?q=dropped wireless connection&hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&start=20&sa=N

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&q=starbucks pictures

QUESTION: Why does searching for starbucks pictures bring up WB? I have ONE blog entry on this topic.

http://www.google.com/search?sourceid=navclient&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&q=war driving toronto

http://www.google.ca/search?q=wireless hot spots toronto&hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&start=20&sa=N

http://www.google.ca/search?q=downtown toronto %22access points%22 wireless&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&hl=en&meta=

Linksys Media Adapter

Oh yah, this too is cool... For less than $200 US you can stream your video/audio to any home entertainment system. Take that microsoft mediaPC... Ah wireless....

Enough is Enough Spotnik

Ok so I was working on a project with some friends at the Marche in BCE Place and thought we'd use the spotnik hotspot

We pop open the computer and a friendly Spotnik login screen comes up. I quickly login and activate one of my 1 hour cards. There is no expiry date listed so I figure I can go ahead and use it. I click Connect and I get a quick screen that says something like

"Generic error, Sorry try again." [close window button]

Then it pops back to the login screen, seemingly logging me out. I go over to Acqua and they know nothing about the hotspot. There is a beautiful sign right in front but of course they "KNOW NOTHING, SEE NOTHING!" Colonel Klink from Hogan's Heroes comes to mind when I talk to each cafe owner. They are pretty ignorant of this technological wonder they have installed. I guess they have no reason to be aware of it... It is not really THAT important is it?

Well for me it was a matter of principle at this point, so I called Spotnik's support. I have programmed it into my cell phone, don't ya know? I talked to "Anita" who told me to clear my IE cache and cookies and then try the "forget password" feaure and hit cancel instead of resetting my password. "That may clear your cookie and let you login. We've had some problems reported from Acqua today," Anita quips. Sorry no go. I called back and she gave me some other weak advice and then tried to connect to the hotspot herself. Nope, no dice.

So here I am again. I have tried Spotnik 3 times, and only was successful on the first time. I really hope their service level is not this bad, cause I'd want my money back if I paid for a month and the 3 times I actually needed to use it, I was SOL...

Spotnik, can you try to get your sh*t together please?! You're making WiFi in Toronto not a terribly fun experience...

Reed Hundt on WiFi cutting into revenue streams of telecoms

exFCC Chair Reed Hundt has a lot to say here... I couldn't find the link online but I am sure It is somewhere out there...

A new technology could not only restart economic growth but also help connect everyone, everywhere to the Internet­at low cost.

Reed E. Hundt, Stagg Newman, and John E. Richards
The McKinsey Quarterly, 2002 Number 4

Remember when technology-based start-ups were going to put established companies out of business? The surviving incumbents are now having a last laugh. But their schadenfreude may be short-lived in the telecommunications industry because a new technology called Wi-Fi (wireless fidelity) is threatening the business models of the mobile carriers, the phone gear makers, and the providers of high-speed DSL and cable modem services.

Toronto1 Segment on Wardriving

A denizen of Wireless Bandit was recently featured on Toronto1 television segment on wardriving. Apart from the fearmongering it was decently put together. For a 5min+ segment I would have liked to see more about the community of WiFi in Toronto and all the cool things that are happening around this scene. Personally I rarely wardrive anymore as it seems to be a collosal waste of time, but hey that's just me.

On the other hand I love to find new usable hotspots! I am surprised the conversation has not drifted yet to "Why and when do you use WiFi?" Anyways email "David" for a link to this video, as I am unfortunately not allowed to post it in public...