Venture for sharing wi-fi has big-name backers

In the US., a telecommunications executive said on Sunday that he had received US$21.7 million for what he called "a global network of shared Wi-Fi connections" from backers, including Google, the internet phone service provider Skype, and the venture capital firms Sequoia Capital and Index Ventures.

The New York Times reports (5 February) that the network is being created by a software venture called Fon, which was started by Martin Varsavsky in Madrid three months ago. The service permits subscribers to modify their own routers so that users of Wi-Fi wireless technology can connect to the internet at many physical locations, in contrast to the limited range of access that is often available now.

According to the report, Mr. Varsavsky said the company would receive revenue from a multi-tiered subscription model, which would permit users to share their Wi-Fi access point with other Fon members freely or sell the service. The network is operating in Europe, and Mr. Varsavsky said that he planned to expand it into the United States and other countries this year.

Mr. Varsavsky, a technology executive born in Argentina, has founded a number of internet businesses, including the Spanish firms Jazztel and Ya.com.

But, according to the NYT., the stumbling block for such schemes is that many internet service providers prohibit the reuse of network connections. But Mr. Varsavsky said that Fon had already succeeded in interesting European internet service providers in revenue-sharing arrangements. He also said that the company planned to approach major United States internet providers with a similar proposal.

The idea of aggregating Wi-Fi hotspots is not a new one, reports the newspaper, and not without financial pitfalls. The NYT says that Boingo Wireless, started by the EarthLink founder Sky Dayton is one of the largest Wi-Fi aggregators and currently claims 25,000 Wi-Fi hot spots; it charges users a US$21.95 monthly subscription fee for access.

But, says the NYT., other schemes to build large Wi-Fi networks have failed. Joltage, a start-up firm in New York, was founded in 2003 and went out of business the following year. Cometa Networks, a San Francisco-based start-up with backing from IBM, Intel and AT&T, began in late 2002 and went out of business in May 2004.

The newspaper reports that a Google spokeswoman said that the company was an investor in the project but that it was not in a partnership with it.

Google has been experimenting with Wi-Fi networks and is a bidder for the San Francisco municipal deployment of a Wi-Fi network.

{mospagebreaktitle=Cables may become obsolete}Cables may become obsolete

A team of IBM researchers plans to report this week that they have used standard chip-making materials to develop a high-speed wireless technology that could do away with the bulky cables that now connect electronic devices in the living room.

The New York Times reports (6 February) that in the past, high-frequency wireless technology has generally required exotic semiconductor materials like gallium arsenide that are costly to work with and difficult to miniaturize.

On Tuesday, at an annual semiconductor industry design meeting, the researchers are expected to describe a design that is capable of transmitting more than 10 times the data of today's Wi-Fi using lower-cost silicon germanium material.

According to the newspaper, the researchers said the new technology would be ideal for moving HDTV video signals around the home wirelessly in the unlicensed 60-gigahertz portion of the radio frequency spectrum.

{mospagebreaktitle=Firms 'cyber sleuths' with cell phone technology}Firms 'cyber sleuths' with cell phone technology

Advances in mobile phone tracking technology are turning British firms into cyber sleuths as they keep a virtual eye on their staff, vehicles and stock, according to a Reuters report in The New York Times (5 February).

Reuters reports that in the past few years, companies that offer tracking services have seen an explosion in interest from businesses keen to take advantage of technological developments in the name of operational efficiency.

According to Reuters, the gains, say the converted, are many, ranging from knowing whether workers have been ``held up'' in the pub rather than in a traffic jam, to being able to quickly locate staff and reroute them if necessary.

However,. Reuterssays that not everybody is happy about being monitored and civil rights group Liberty says the growth of tracking raises data privacy concerns.

Kevin Brown, operations director of tracking firm Followus, said there was nothing covert about tracking, thanks to strict regulations.

All that is needed to trace a mobile phone is a computer with an internet connection. Once a phone is activated for tracking, it becomes a mobile electronic tag and its approximate position can be followed using the service provider's web site, Reuters reports.

{mospagebreaktitle=Online console gaming ready to take-off}Online console gaming ready to take-off

In the online video game playing industry, a new generation of game consoles is ushering in online features that promise to make playing with others over the internet easier and more compelling than sitting on the couch and playing solo or with a friend.

According to a Reuters report in The New York Times (4 February) console makers, eyeing a much larger market, are stealing a page or two from the PC gaming playbook.

Reuters says that hard-core PC game enthusiasts spend a fortune ``tricking out'' their machines with lightning-fast memory, bleeding-edge video cards and even water-cooling systems to get an edge in multiplayer online games that can take on a life of their own.gaming cousins and consoles themselves are less easy to modify, which levels the playing field. That is set to change.

Game enthusiasts say Microsoft's (MSFT.O) Xbox Live online game service has gained share with help from its blockbuster game ``Halo 2'' as well as its new Xbox 360 console. The service offers multiplayer competition and skill-matching, voice and text chat, buddy lists and shopping -- all key pillars of online gaming.

The Reuters report adds that Sony has 180 online-enabled games for its current PlayStation 2 and 2.7 million registered users in its North America online console gaming community.

{mospagebreaktitle=Web affects book industry more than magazines: survey}Web affects book industry more than magazines: survey

Internet users are more likely to cut back on reading books than to curtail their magazine consumption, according to a recently released survey by Jupiter Research.

The New York Times reports (6 February) that the finding contradicts the long-held assumption that periodicals are more vulnerable than books to competition from the internet.

According to the newspaper,a senior analyst for Jupiter Research, said that books and magazines suffered differently from online competition.

Internet users, the firm said, may read magazine content online, but were less likely to give up buying hard copies entirely.

Not so for books: "The kind of information you can get online is a lot like magazines," the analyst said. "But the way people read books does not migrate easily to the Web. With books, there's not channel shift; there's substitution."

The NYT says that books are still not widely available online. Services that do exist '” among them Google Book Search and a feature of Amazon.com '” show only a few pages at a time.

{mospagebreaktitle=Trump's. GoTrump.com travel offering}Trump's. GoTrump.com travel offering

American real estate mogul,reality series star and failed airline executive, Donald Trump, recently re-entered the travel industry with GoTrump.com, an agency that promises bargains on airfares and hotels, and includes vacation tips from (of course) the Donald himself, according to a report in The New York Times (6 February).

The newspaper says that aside from providing a high-profile experiment on the possible limits of celebrities in e-commerce, the site points to the state of the online travel agency industry, which despite its best efforts remains the place where people click around endlessly to save US$10 on a US$300 ticket.

GoTrump offers, among other things, "affordable luxury" vacation deals, like a nine-day South African trip for us$2,000 per person, that are listed as being exclusive to the site.

The newspaper says that Mr. Trump contends that the site has already attracted many customers '” a claim that independent research firms were unable to support, given how new the site is and the fact that its traffic is not yet heavy enough to measure on the scale of its competitors.

But, says the NYT., not all of the offerings on the site are priced at rock bottom. GoTrump offers "Trump Picks" for hotels he personally recommends, like the Fairmont San Francisco, the Mirage Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas and, naturally, the Trump International Hotel and Tower in New York.

{mospagebreaktitle=No more telegrams in e-mail era}No more telegrams in e-mail era

Sometime on Friday, 27 Jan., Western Union, bowing to the ascendancy of modern technology like e-mail, sent its last telegram.

The New York Times reports (6 February) that Western Union had its beginnings in 1851 in Rochester. Messages were transmitted by Morse code over wire, then hand-delivered by a courier. Ten years later, the company completed the first transcontinental telegraph line.

That, says the newspaper, drove the Pony Express, which had been operating for less than two years, out of business by offering customers delivery of a message across the US in less than a day (the average Pony Express delivery took 10 days). In the relatively recent era of e-mail and instant messaging, telegrams were usually delivered by overnight courier services.

The newspaper says that at the height of business in 1929, more than 200 million telegrams were sent around the world. Just under 21,000 were sent last year.