Comments on: Where's My New York City Wi-Fi?

By: Aric Boyles

Aric Boyles — Tue, 12 Sep 2006 00:48:00 +0000

I have also spoken to and emailed with Marshall Brown, actually many times over the past several years about the wi-fi project, and it has always been “coming soon”. He’s also been quite secretive about the whole project which doesn’t make any sense to me. I have offered many times to post the status of the project on my site (centralpark.com) and/or help in any way, but nothing has come of any of those offers.

FYI I did test the access point at the Dana Discovery Center last week. I picked up “parkwifi” however the signal was extremely weak, only two bars at most which was odd considering I was standing in and around the Discovery Center the entire time. I never could determine exactly where the access point was (which was another question I directed to Marshall with no response).

Another thing that confuses me is that when I did connect to parkwifi, I was not directed to a jump page or any branded intro page, like what happens in Bryant Park. I wonder why? I would have expected to see “Welcome to the Central Park free wi-fi network. Click here to see what’s happening in the Park today (sponsored by Nokia .

By: Klaus Ernst

Klaus Ernst — Wed, 06 Sep 2006 21:02:34 +0000

Dana,
like I said without the NOKIA flyer I never would have found out about this.
The WiFi Salon page is not very useful.
Check http://parkwifi.nokia.com
Klaus

By: dana

dana — Wed, 06 Sep 2006 15:33:58 +0000

Klaus,

Thanks for the update. So it seems that there are a few hotspots up and running in Central Park (though a month or so late). But better late than never, I suppose.

Its good to see that the silence is not entirely indicative of the state of the networks, though why they would want to be silent about this is beyond me.

By: Klaus Ernst

Klaus Ernst — Wed, 06 Sep 2006 15:21:44 +0000

Hi,
I sent my ‘testreport’ for 4 CP hotspots as a comment to Glenn but he left only Marshall Brown’s reply. Here is the whole thing:

From: Klaus Ernst
Sent: Saturday, September 02, 2006 1:46 PM
To: Marshall Brown
Subject: Re: Battery-Gardens

Dear Marshall,

I’m back (at home).

After parkwifi at the Dairy i went to the Armory. That one tested OK like the other 3 (Sheep Meadow, Summerstage and the Dairy). At the Sheep Meadow I connected to InteractiveWiFi at first, then I realized parkwifi is the way to go. I didn’t go to the Delacorte Theater (misspelled on the Nokia website) or Dana [Spiegel? ] Discovery Center. The skies looked too threatening (Ernesto!)

One big disappointment for me is that AOL 2.0 for Pocket PC doesn’t work on any of the Central Park hotspots. It works at Battery_Gardens tho. The other two Battery Park locations I didn’t test. I only found out about all the parkwifi hotspots when my buddies at J&R gave me one of those NOKIA ‘Play in the Park’ cards. parkwifi – the best kept secret (or so it seems).

Have a nice weekend.

Klaus

And Marshall’s Reply:

From: Marshall Brown
To: Klaus Ernst
Subject: Re: Battery-Gardens

Great data. We are still testing and enhancing. Expect the coverage to increase markedly over the next weeks, with the local portals coming up as well.

I will look into the AOL issue. We are keeping most ports closed, then opening them up one by one.

We’ll have an official launch / announcement soon, then the secret will not be so well kept.

MWB

You have a keen interest in this – what’s your day job?

Marshall Brown
Founder and CEO
WiFi Salon

P.S. see you at the sept. meeting
Klaus