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December 10, 2006 • 10:38 pm 0

Wi-Fi in Flushing Meadows Corona Park

One of WiFiSalon’s unannounced, Nokia-sponsored hotspots is at the “Queens Zoo”:1 in “Flushing Meadows Corona Park”:2. An NYCwireless member recently took a trip out there to test out the wireless signal, and sent back a report with some photos. As best as we can tell, the hotspot is located in the building called the Wild Room, and the signal reaches about 100+ yards from that location.

Why the New York City Parks Department still refuses to announce or publicize Wi-Fi in the parks — WiFiSalon built “or otherwise”:3 — is beyond me.

Non-scientifically created coverage map based on basic signal availability testing:

!http://wirelesscommunity.files.wordpress.com/2006/12/queens_zoo_map1.png!

There’s no signal at the entrance:

!http://wirelesscommunity.files.wordpress.com/2006/12/queenszoo01.png!

There’s barely a signal at the bridge over the waterfront marsh:

!http://wirelesscommunity.files.wordpress.com/2006/12/queenszoo21.png!

There good signal at the Wild Room:

!http://wirelesscommunity.files.wordpress.com/2006/12/queenszoo11.png!

There’s also reasonable signal behind the zoo, but our correspondent fails to see the use of getting Wi-Fi along the road:

!http://wirelesscommunity.files.wordpress.com/2006/12/queenszoo31.png!

[1]http://nyzoosandaquarium.com/5719193
[2]http://maps.google.com/?q=53-51%20111th%20St,%20Queens,%20NY%20(Queens%20Zoo)
[3]http://auth.nycwireless.net/hotspots_map.php

Filed under: Community Wireless, New York City, NYCwireless

December 10, 2006 • 5:56 pm 0

CAIDA COMMONS workshop, Dec 12-13

Laura Forlano and I have been invited to attend and participate in the CAIDA COMMONS workshop in San Diego on December 12-13. “CAIDA”:3, the Cooperative Association for Internet Data Analysis, is holding the “COMMONS (Cooperative Measurement and Modeling of Open Networked Systems) workshop”:1 as a means to figure out how community network organizations — builders, policy analysts, researchers, and supporters — can work together to push forward the science and practice of community networks.

bq. CAIDA proposes a collaboration to simultaneously solve three acute and growing problems facing the Internet: a self-reported financial crisis in the Internet infrastructure provider industry; a data acquisition crisis which has severely stunted the field of network science; and a struggle for survival within emerging community and municipal networks, who are in an ideal position to address the first two problems but often lack resources and experience to make informed operational decisions, and are also continually threatened by incumbent-driven legislation.

bq. We propose an experiment to build a cooperative national backbone to connect select community and municipal networks to each other, and to the global Internet. Peering would be conditionally available to county, state, and federal government entities, academic institutions, and community wireless initiatives. The conditions are two-fold: (1) the attached networks must make select operational data available to Internet technology and policy researchers under appropriate legal data sharing frameworks; (2) the attached networks must agree to cooperatively develop and abide by policies based on confirmed results of empirical data analyses.

Laura and I are going as representatives of NYCwireless (builders) and as researchers (especially on Laura’s part). While we won’t be blogging directly from the conference, I expect there will be lots of projects and collaborations that will come out of the workshop.

[1]http://www.caida.org/workshops/commons/0612/
[3]http://www.caida.org

Filed under: CAIDA COMMONS, Community Wireless, Event

November 27, 2006 • 3:55 pm 0

NYCwireless November Meeting: Nov 29th at 7:00pm

All are invited – please re-post everywhere!

_Please note earlier starting time for meeting_

h2. Location and Time

*Wednesday, October 25th, 2006 at 7:00pm*
*”Bway.net”:http://maps.google.com/?q=568%20Broadway,%20New%20York,%20NY*
568 Broadway at Prince St, NE corner
Suite 404
New York, NY 10012
(lobby sign-in required)

h2. Agenda

# Berlin Wireless: Alex Toland and Ulf Kypke from “Berlin’s Freifunk”:1 and “wlanhain”:2 community wireless groups will talk about a new project for an all-in-one wind and solar-powered hotspot/panoramic camera sculpture for a community-planned park in Berlin’s Friedrichshain neighborhood.
# Connecting non-profits: Marc Baizman, a Project Manager at the technology assistance provider “NPower”:4, will speak about the technology needs of the non-profit sector.

*The meeting will be streamed live to Berlin where they are hosting a simultaneous Freifunk community wireless meeting.*

“NYCwireless”:3 monthly meetings are held on the last Wednesday of every month. They are free, and open to all, RSVP not required.

“NYCwireless”:3 is a non-profit organization that advocates for, and enables the growth of free, public wireless networks.

[1]http://freifunk.net
[2]http://www.wlanhain.de
[3]http://www.nycwireless.net
[4]http://npower.org

Filed under: Community Wireless, Event, New York City, NYCwireless

November 15, 2006 • 12:56 am 0

Distinguished Speaker Series at Polytechnic University

On Saturday November 18, I will be speaking at the Distinguished Speaker Series at Polytechnic University’s Technology Management program from 12:45 to 2pm. Nina Ziv, a professor at the University, asked me to speak to the executive students about NYCwireless, municipal wireless, and what’s going on in New York City.

Filed under: Community Wireless, Event, Muniwireless, New York City, NYCwireless, Policy

October 30, 2006 • 11:30 am 0

PodCast: Michael Lewis on the Wireless Harlem Initiative

At our last “NYCwireless”:2 meeting, Michael Lewis, Executive Director of “Wireless Harlem”:1 gave a talk about the work he and his team have been doing to bring a form of community developed and supported ubiquitous wireless to Harlem.

His talk was fascinating, and we spoke at length afterwards in our Q&A about some of the more interesting details, especially about how New Yorkers really need to talk things into their own hands and build affordable, ubiquitous wireless themselves, since our administration doesn’t seem to be doing much to pursue this idea.

NYCwireless and Wireless Harlem are working together–we’re going to be helping bring both public space (read parks) Wi-Fi, and help with some of the community outreach. Its very exciting seeing how energized this part of New York City has become about wireless!

“Michael Lewis on the Wireless Harlem Initiative PodCast”:4 (m4a, 23MB)

“Michael’s presentation”:3 is also available (PDF).

[1]http://www.wirelessharlem.org
[2]http://www.nycwireless.net
[3]http://www.nycwireless.net/tiki-download_file.php?fileId=51
[4]http://wirelesscommunity.files.wordpress.com/2006/09/top.jpgwp-content/uploads/2006/10/20061025_wireless_harlem_nycwireless_presentation.m4a

Filed under: Community Wireless, Muniwireless, New York City, NYCwireless, Urban Wireless

October 22, 2006 • 1:22 pm 0

International Summit for Community Wireless Networks on May 18-20, 2007

NYCwireless regularly attends the NS4CWN event with lots of other community wireless networks the world over. This year promises to be even better, since we’ll be nearby Washington, D.C., and more of the policy wonks will be able to attend. I’ll be going down with some other NYCwireless members, so I hope to see you there!

bq. *NETWORK DEVELOPERS AND IMPLEMENTERS, POLICY EXPERTS, AND COMMUNITY ORGANIZERS WILL GATHER AT LOYOLA COLLEGE IN COLUMBIA, MARYLAND, MAY 18-20, 2007 TO EXPLORE THE FUTURE OF BROADBAND.*

bq. The Champaign-Urbana Community Wireless Network (CUWiN) and the Center for Community Informatics (CCI) will host the International Summit for Community Wireless Networks from May 18-20, 2007 at Loyola College in Columbia, Maryland.

bq. The summit is the largest gathering of wireless network developers, technology and policy experts, and community organizers working to build universal, low-cost broadband networks around the world. “We are proud to host an event that brings together technologists and activists committed to universal access to informatics,” said Marco Figueiredo, CCI Director.

bq. “The International Summit for Community Wireless Networks explores the opportunities and challenges facing the growing movement to build nonprofit, open-source, community and municipal broadband networks,” said Sascha Meinrath, co-founder and Executive Director of CUWiN. “This event showcases cutting-edge technologies and develops political strategies to increase digital inclusion.”

bq. Since the first National Summit for Community Wireless Networks in 2004, over 300 Community Internet and municipal broadband projects have sprung up in the United States alone. The summit will focus on how these networks can better serve their target populations, the policies needed to support broader deployment of community wireless systems, and the latest technological and software innovations.

bq. Presenters at previous summits have included Annie Collins of Fiber for Our Future, Mark Cooper of the Consumer Federation of America, Harold Feld of Media Access Project, Robert W. McChesney of Free Press, Matt Rantanen of Tribal Digital Village, Greg Richardson of Civitium LLC, Paul Smith of the Center for Neighborhood Technologies, Jim Snider of the New America Foundation, Dana Spiegel of NYCwireless, Esme Vos of Muniwireless.com and many other luminaries.

bq. “High-speed broadband access is the electricity of the 21st century, yet many rural and poorer urban communities are being left off the grid,” said Ben Scott, policy director of Free Press, the DC-based policy think-tank. “The innovators and organizers at the International Summit for Community Wireless Networks are blazing the trail to make broadband affordable and available to everyone.”

bq. For more information on the summit will soon be available at: “www.WirelessSummit.org”:1

[1]http://www.wirelesssummit.org

Filed under: Community Wireless, Event, NS4CWN, NYCwireless

October 17, 2006 • 10:57 am 0

NYCwireless October Meeting: Oct 25th at 7:00pm

All are invited – please re-post everywhere!

*Please note earlier starting time for meeting*

h2. Location and Time

*Wednesday, October 25th, 2006 at 7:00pm*
*”Bway.net”:http://maps.google.com/?q=568%20Broadway,%20New%20York,%20NY*
*568 Broadway at Prince St, NE corner*
*Suite 404*
New York, NY 10012
(lobby sign-in required)

h2. Agenda

Michael Lewis, Executive Director of “*Wireless Harlem*”:2, will be speaking about the “*Wireless Harlem*”:2 initiative and the feasibility study the organization recently finished. “Wireless Harlem’s”:2 mission is to “close the digital divide in Harlem by making access to information ubiquitous for all of its residents.” Its objectives:
* Deploy scalable community-wide wireless broadband network
* Ensure everyone has access (residents, schools, business, visitors/tourists)
* Become innovation testing resource for new wireless broadband applications

“Wireless Harlem”:2 and “NYCwireless”:3 share many goals and objectives, and we are working together to help bring Wi-Fi to New York City.

“NYCwireless”:3 monthly meetings are held on the last Wednesday of every month. They are free, and open to all, RSVP not required.

“NYCwireless”:3 is a non-profit organization that advocates for, and enables the growth of free, public wireless networks.

[2]http://www.wirelessharlem.org
[3]http://www.nycwireless.net

Filed under: Community Wireless, Event, New York City, NYCwireless

October 7, 2006 • 3:30 pm 0

Survey on Wireless Hotspot Usage

NYCwireless board member (and Columbia University graduate student) Laura Forlano is “running a survey on wireless internet usage”:1 at cafes, parks, and other public places. While the survey is being run on NYC hotspots, information from across the country and across the world will help inform this research

The results of this survey will be used in her research and thesis to better understand how people use public Wi-Fi. NYCwireless will also be able to use guidance from this survey (through Laura’s excellent research) to build more and better hotspots.

In exchange for your participation, you will be entered into a drawing for an iPod, iTunes or a $300 donation to a charity of your choice. Your contact information will be used only for the purposes of the drawing.

Please take a few minutes to “complete the survey”:1, and post this survey information on other blogs.

[1]http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.asp?u=735302651119

Filed under: Community Wireless, NYCwireless

September 14, 2006 • 11:09 pm 0

Thank You Letter from Monroe College

Over the past year, NYCwireless has been working with Professor John McMullen and his classes at Monroe College. Rob Kelley, Laura Forlano, and I have each been going up to teach the students for a day about wireless technology and building community wireless networks. With our support, Professor McMullen has also had his students each take on a semester project to get a “community hotspot set up in a local business”:1 (and earlier this year also helping to set up our hotspot with SolarOne at Stuyvesant Cove park).

Word has reached the school of our efforts, and Mr. Jerome recently sent us this heart-felt thank you letter and a donation to NYCwireless.

This is the reason why we at NYCwireless do our work. Its not for the money (we’re just a non-profit) or even the media attention, but because of the difference we can make in people’s lives.

!http://wirelesscommunity.files.wordpress.com/2006/09/monroe_college_letter1.gif!

[1]http://auth.nycwireless.net/hotspots_map.php

Filed under: Community Wireless, New York City, NYCwireless

September 8, 2006 • 11:57 am 1

NYCwireless OneWebDay + Live Wireless Video Chat

!http://wirelesscommunity.files.wordpress.com/2006/09/top.jpg!:1

On September 22 at 12pm Eastern, as part of “OneWebDay”:1, “NYCwireless”:2 will be hosting a live video conference with community wireless groups around the world. We will be discussing the ways that free, public hotspots have contributed to our own and other local communities. We expect the video conference to last about 30 minutes.

The video conferences will be recorded and contributed to the “OneWebDay”:1 video archives. We will be live at Castle Clinton in Battery Park, New York City, where there will be many other activities going on as part of the event.

Please join us in Bryant Park and participate! Bring your mobile phones, PDAs, laptops and other wireless equipment. Feel free to host your own live video conference with friends around the world to participate in this event as part of “OneWebDay”:1.

*UPDATE: There is a change of location. We will be at Castle Clinton in Battery Park.*

[1]http://www.onewebday.org
[2]http://www.nycwireless.net

Filed under: Community Wireless, Event, New York City, NYCwireless

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