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Thursday, December 20, 2001
Education at work 
| | Weblogs in Education is wondering how many folks they can send my way before I send some back. Answer: as many as accumulate in my referer logs before I look there, which isn't often enough. Reading through the blog, I think I'm in radical agreement with its sentiments. I'll try to stay better tuned. |
Boinger
| | Quite apart from all I've said below about Boingo Wireless, this passage in Glenn's piece stands out for me: |
| | The location finder includes both Boingo partners and free community network hotspots that have allowed Boingo to list them. The software will constantly update its list of locations, checking at each connection, and uses XML-based structures to make downloads and installs quicker and more modular. |
| | Jabber does XML routing, instant messaging and (perhaps most significantly) presence detection. I think Boingo might be very well positioned to do something way cool with the Jabber folks . |
Hang on, I think we're driving into a hole
| | Alan Reiter runs in a celluar direction with Glenn's WiFi stories (see below), and clears up a few things for me along the way. One is that Boingo Wireless is not an Earthlink spinoff, but rather a separate company founded by Sky Dayton, who also founded Earthlink and still remains involved with that company (yes, Glenn said that too, but it wasn't so clear to me at first). |
| | So now I'm not sure I didn't go overboard by lumping Earthlink in with AOL and Microsoft as a company that only sees the Net as yet a handy precondition to yet another kind of lock-in. Earthlink has always been a pretty good ISP, in spite of being a mass marketing juggernaunt. Not an easy ballance, and I credit Sky for that. |
| | Looking at Ben Charny's CNET story again (along with Glenn's), I see that Boingo is basically a distributor (a mundane but clearer label for the 'über-aggregator," Sky talks about). It delivers wireless access from many suppliers with many access points to many users through common client software. Lots of wholesalers, one retailer. Fine. The problem isn't the business model, or even the basic architecture of the thing. It's the user interface. They would rather put the interface in their own proprietary client software than in anybody's browser. |
| | The software includes both a network sniffer and a location finder. The sniffer requires card drivers that support NDIS 5.1, the newest version of a protocol that abstracts communication between an operating system and drivers, allowing more robust, consistent, and simple interchange. Vendors are rapidly deploying updated drivers because of XP's support for them. The sniffer can show all networks and their signal strength in the vicinity, and brands any partner networks with a Boingo label (see screen capture). The location finder includes both Boingo partners and free community network hotspots that have allowed Boingo to list them. The software will constantly update its list of locations, checking at each connection, and uses XML-based structures to make downloads and installs quicker and more modular. |
| | Yet with most wireless client software (sold along with cards and drivers) we can already sniff out signals, and in some cases compare signal strength. Yes, there's trial and error involved. One network might be a closed corporate one. Another might be a free public one (operated by an individual or a community). Another might be a paid access system that asks you to buy or log in through the browser. Not a great system, but not a bad one, either. |
| | The list of virtues built into Boingo are nice, but again, the effect is lock-in, whether or not that's the conscious strategy. |
| | I think what customers would prefer from Boingo is a two-tier service. The base tier would be plain fee-based Net access like we get from any existing WiFi provider, with no proprietary client software required. The next tier would be value added services like profile managment, network priority, key management, QoS tracking and all that other stuff Glenn lists but Boingo fails to mention on their site (unless I'm missing something). This tier would include the proprietary client software. This approach would work by serving everybody at a base level, and it would cast a larger recruiting net for the subset who want the value-added services. |
| | To me the overlooked heroes of this thing are the ones taking a grass roots approach, like Tim Pozar and Brewster Kahle are doing in San francisco. Also what Kevin Werbach is trying to do with Open Spectrum. |
| | It comes down to Dave's JFK-inspired challenge: Ask not what the Net can do for you; ask what you can do for the Net. The challenge to infrastructure-builders is to find ways of doing both, and balancing both. So far, Boingo looks more like the former. At least to me. |
| | By the way, I've been a continuous Earthlink customer almost since Day One, and I consider Sky Dayton an unusually clueful guy (who responded promptly to my emails even though I doubt he knew anything about me). That's one reason I'm struggling to get my head around this thing. |
A deforming event
| | Glenn has a nice scoop on Earthlink's Boingo Wireless spin-off, which promises wireless broadband all over the place. It's a big deal for sure —so big that Glenn calls it a "transforming event." Specifically... |
| | This launch will most likely transform Wi-Fi public space access from a niche market to a national infrastructure and hasten the integration with cellular networks. |
| | Not quite. It will create a big private WiFi space for Boingo customers. And it will do that with special client software that only Boingo provides:: |
| | By requiring client software, initially available only for Windows, Boingo offers a variety of features in one bundle: single user login, WEP key management, Wi-Fi network profile management, preferred network priority, VPN (virtual private network) service to Boingo's public servers, quality of service (QoS) tracking, and connection logging. |
| | Boingo also throws in authenticated SMTP mail service, which allows outbound email service anywhere on the Internet. |
| | There's nothing infrastructural about that kind of system. It piggy-backs on infrastructure that's already there. |
| | If you're a WiFi user already, and you hop on the Web at work, home or on the road at hotels, conferences and the occasional Starbucks over your laptop's WiFi card, you might ask: What's wrong with the way WayPort and MobileStar and the others do it now (including whatever the outfit is that provides service at Mariott hotels), which is with DHCP and a browser-based sales & authentication scheme? With those guys you just set your laptop (or whatever) up for wireless DHCP, fire up a browser, go through a pay-in and/or login routine (if you're already paid up) in your browser window, and bang: you're on the Net, ready to do whatever you like (including your own damn SMTP and POP mail). |
| | Here's what's wrong with it: there's no lock-in. It's just a service. And if you're AOL or Microsoft or Earthlink, it isn't enough just to provide a service. You need to own the user by owning the client. The user is a steer that isn't yours without your brand on its hide. |
| | These guys still see the Net as nothing more than a convenient transport backbone for their own private online services. They constantly want to to fence off their own green pastures in the midst of the Net's wide open spaces. And they think they can only do that with a locked-in client: |
| | A Macintosh version of the connection software is planned for 2002, but the company did not want to issue a prediction for delivery. (Dayton himself is a committed Macintosh user.) |
| | Hey, I'm a Mac user. Linux too. But so the fuck what? The client shouldn't matter. If it can connect by DHCP over a WiFi link and run a browser, it should be ready to use the Web anywhere, anytime. Earthlink deserves good PR for rolling out a big-ass WiFi service. They deserve a chorus of raspberries for making it a lock-in strategy. |
Crediting the guarantors of holiday cheer
| | My Mom, age 88 with congestive heart failure but still a determined trooper, just arrived from North Carolina by way of three car and two plane trips. The last leg, United Flight 117 from O'Hare to LAX, got scary somewhere over Iowa, when Mom got short of breath in the rarefied aircraft air (pressurized for the equivalent of 10,000 feet or so, when she's used to something more like sea level) and developed chest pains. Fortunately there was a cardiologist on board, a nurse, portable oxygen and an extremely helpful crew, even though the flight was short-handed by four flight attendants on a packed 767. |
| | - Maggie, the attendant who came to Mom's aid, along with the rest of the crew
- Doctor Sam, the cardiologist from Chicago who adjusted Mom's medication for the circumstances and offered reassuring professional attention
- Doctor Sam, the cardiologist from Chicago who adjusted Mom's medication for the circumstances and offered reassuring professional attention
- Nurse Norma, also of Chicago, who gave additional medical aid
- Amber at the United counter at LAX, who gave me a pass to get past Security and meet Mom at the gate
- Brad the aid-cart driver, who drove us down that very long corridor between Terminal 6 (at the end of which the flight arrived) and Terminal 7 (where the baggage was delivered)
- My sister Jan, who took Mom the whole way and was rather frazzled by the time this thing was over (a state delayed by the pair having apparently forgotten some necessary medication on the plane, which we found much later was not the case, to everyone's relief). She is now, like Mom, asleep.
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| | ... and the Carnival Restaurant on Woodman Avenue just north of Ventura Boulevard in The Valley, where we stopped for some primo Lebanese food after taking forever to get out of LAX. |
| | A merry whatever to ya'll. I'm going to bed. |
Too much (or not enough) of a varied thing
| | Here's David Weinberger on the 80,000,000:20 rule and other statistics we maybe ought to think about keeping track of around here. He also has some smart shit to say about ClearType and stuff it resembles, plus the silence of journalists on the unpleasant subject of civilian war casualties. So the good doctor wins my Blog of the Day award. Here's a toast: ((clink!)) Salud. |
| | While we're on the subject, sort of, I think it's time once again to urge Clay Shirky to blog. Bring that ratio up to 79,999,999:21. His home site is almost as stale as mine — all fulla stuff about Napster and P2P. Worthy subjects, yes; but a little too this year, no? |
| | I can't think of a more productive distraction for a "profoundly discursive cast of mind" than to blog with it. How 'bout it, big guy? |
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