London trounces rest of world in quest for WiFi dominance

Nothing like a hot stack of stats to spice up the oft-debated, nary settled question: who has the best WiFi access? Well, London continues to be the world capital of WiFi with 12,276 access points, according to the freshest installment of the annual Wireless Security Survey conducted by RSA, beating New York City by roughly 3,000. Paris rules the year-over-year increase category, however, with a shocking 543 percent gain over last year, while London and New York saw much slower increases. NYC did manage to capture the top spot in the coveted ‘corporate encryption’ category, with about 97 percent of corporate access points now employing some type of encryption, while about 20 percent of London’s business access points remain totally, completely, shamefully unprotected. We understand that upon hearing the news, Queen Elizabeth promptly ordered a pallet of routers with built-in firewalls for all of Buckingham Palace.

Maccas to supply ‘clean’ net service

MCDONALD’S plans to launch “family friendly” free WiFi services to its stores in a multimillion-dollar three-year deal with network security provider Earthwave.

The restaurant chain will offer free internet access for its 1.45 million daily customers, at around 720 participating restaurants nationwide.

It will be available in March 2009. Until then customers will have to keep paying for WiFi access in-store.

It will use Earthwave’s Clean Pipes to block websites containing pornography or unwanted material such as information about hacking, bomb-making and terrorism, as a means of protecting its young customers as well as the company’s family friendly brand.

Earthwave chief executive Carlo Minassian says Clean Pipes will enforce security policy rules that have been set down by McDonald’s management.

“The policy includes more than 100 pre-defined categories, as well as black and white lists that McDonald’s can control,” he said. “Authorised managers will have access to a secure Earthport portal via an RSA SecurID token, where they can make changes to their policy.”

Mr Minassian said the project involves the use of multiple tier-1 commercial web protection and filtering technologies, including URL and content filtering, intrusion prevention, firewall and distributed denial of service prevention.

Clean Pipes will also monitor and protect against threats arising from internet traffic generated by customers using the WiFi hotspots.

“In providing an internet s…

Sanyo introduces WiFi-enabled R227 tabletop radio

Internet radios aren’t anything new, but Sanyo’s putting its own spin on things with the WiFi-packin’ R227. Aside from offering standard FM reception, this tabletop device also tunes into thousands of internet stations / podcasts, and it enables listeners to search by country or genre. You’ll also find a pair of stereo speakers, one-button on / off, a bundled remote, an Ethernet jack, auxiliary input for DAPs and an audio output for connecting to larger, more robust sound systems. For now, it seems the unit will be exclusive to Canada where it will be offered in a black wood gloss finish for $219.99.

Linux powers thin MID

USI demonstrated a super-thin, Linux-based mobile Internet device (MID) that offers GPS, Bluetooth, WiFi, and either HSPA or WiMAX. The Intel Atom-equipped USI MID-160 sports a 5-inch 800×480 touchscreen, but lacks a keyboard, helping it keep a 0.6-inch profile.

Demonstrated at the Intel Developer Forum (IDF) in Taipei, Taiwan today, the MID-160 is said to be based on the Menlow platform, which means that like other devices that comply with the Intel-defined MID format, it runs the Intel Atom Z5-series processor. The device most likely runs an Atom Z500 clocked to 800MHz.

The 8.8-ounce (250 grams) MID-160 ships with 512MB RAM and a generous 8GB of solid-state storage (SSD). The 800×480 touchscreen is said to measure between 4.8 to 5 inches and offer 167,000 colors. The company did not release the actual dimensions of the entire device except for the thickness, but they appear to be similar to other announced MIDs, which have similar-sized screens.

Like previously announced MIDs such as the BenQ S6, the WiBrain “i1″ MID, and the almost identical Aigo P8860D and Gigabyte “M528″ MIDs, the MID-160 offers built-in 3G cellular networking (HSPA), along with WiFi and Bluetooth connectivity, and a microphone. It appears to lack the accelerometers of the BenQ S6, but offers GPS and WiMAX, just in time for the official launch of Sprint’s U.S.-based XOHM WiMAX service.

The MID-160 also appears to be one of the first Atom-based MID to opt for a touchscreen-only design that omi…

The WSJ’s Subscription Model

I’m at the Future of Business Media conference, where the wifi is painfully slow and where Robert Thomson, the editor of the WSJ, spoke this morning. He spent some time addressing the subject of whether wsj.com should be free, and started off by saying that people like me who think it should be are fuddy-duddies from the dot-com era, who haven’t kept up with how things have changed. He also said that although the debate about going free did happen, “we never seriously considered not charging for specialized content”.

But a lot of what Thomson said didn’t quite add up, and I still reckon that wsj.com is going to go free eventually — although not nearly as quickly as I anticipated when Murdoch first bought it.

For instance: Thomson tried to paint a picture of non-subscribing visitors to the WSJ’s website being so attracted by the headlines on premium stories that they end up subscribing. He said that the website is up to 30 million uniques — “a doubling of the audience from last year, and a great free funnel of the readers to premium content”. (If you think that number is high, so do I, and so does Thomson: he admitted that web metrics are “problematic”.)

Thomson admitted that the website’s ad revenue is growing much more slowly than its visitor count, and he didn’t even mention what the growth rates are in paid subscriptions on the website.

And later on, Thomson talked about “how promiscuous web readers are” — implicitly admitting that just because someone is re…

Truphone launches VoIP client for BlackBerry

Truphone, a VoIP service for smartphones, has rolled out a new Truphone client application for Research in Motion’s BlackBerry messaging devices. The client is still in beta and only works on WiFi enabled BlackBerrys at the moment.

Offering similar services and features as found on Truphone’s Symbian S60 and Apple iPhone platforms, the Truphone Anywhere VoIP service provides discount calling around the world using the BlackBerry smartphone’s WiFi (and eventually 3G) data connection. Linked up to the user’s address book, Truphone Anywhere will ask the caller whether they would like to make a Truphone call before dialing.

“There’s no GSM business tariff that gets close to the prices we can offer BlackBerry users with Truphone for international calling,” said Geraldine Wilson, the new CEO of Truphone.

Truphone for BlackBerry smartphones is available now for free from www.truphone.com/blackberry.

Sanyo reveals retro-styled HNV-M70 ALBO WiFi digiframe

Up until now, we’d have to say that Sony’s WiFi-enabled VAIO CP1 is the most attractive digital photo frame we’ve ever had the pleasure of laying eyes on. And quite honestly, it’s still probably the sexiest in terms of, well, sheer sexy. But Sanyo’s latest rival is cute in its own way, as the HNV-M70 ALBO packs a retro motif that anyone fond of The Jetsons will adore. Specs wise, we’re looking at an overly glossy 7-inch LCD (800 x 480 resolution), 256MB of internal memory, 802.11b/g WiFi, WinCE 5.0 behind the scenes, an IR sensor, RSS / e-mail reader, automatic screen rotation, a multicard reader and a multimedia player for good measure. Users can also load up pictures stored on Picasa or add in captions and e-mail to grandparents for maximum enjoyment. Sanyo’s set to start selling these in Japan (in black or green) next month for ¥40,000 ($423), but you can take an early look thanks to a bevy of hands-on shots linked below.

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