Tag: internet

Wireless Internet throughout Edmonton with Shaw Go WiFi

I’ve been thinking a lot about wi-fi again lately. I say again because it’s a topic I have written about on this blog for over eight years! Here’s what I wrote in September 2005:

What’s my mantra? Wireless Everywhere! I look forward to the day when wireless is like oxygen; everywhere you go, it’s there.

I was pretty dedicated to the cause. On a business trip in about 2004, my colleague and I were staying in a hotel that didn’t have Internet access in the rooms, though it did have access in the business centre. So we went to Staples, bought a wireless router, and hooked it up. We carefully hid it behind one of the enormous computer towers, and after we checked out we returned it. For the few days we were there, we had wireless Internet access! (After that trip, we started bringing a wireless router with us when traveling.)

A couple of years later, I was intrigued by a device that might alert me to the existence of wi-fi (no longer needed thanks to smartphones). In 2008 one of my first experiences with Edmonton’s NextGen was a result of their focus group on wi-fi. Also that year, the City of Edmonton launched a wi-fi pilot called Wireless Edmonton, the Edmonton Public Library launched free wi-fi, and I got involved in the Free WiFi Project.

Of course, technology has changed dramatically over the years. Mesh networking was initially pretty popular and was used in a number of cities, but you don’t hear too much about it now. Longer-range standards like WiMax never really materialized. And perhaps most importantly, nearly everyone now has a smartphone equipped with mobile data access.

Still, I find the idea of blanket wi-fi coverage intriguing. We all know how ridiculously expensive mobile data is in Canada. And wi-fi is generally faster (though LTE is quick too). I never had much hope that an ISP would make wireless access easier – what incentive did they have? I always figured that the City would have to make it happen, but the reality is we very nearly have blanket wi-fi coverage right now. And it’s because of Shaw.

Shaw Go Wifi

I know this is going to seem like a big advertisement, but I can assure you it’s not. I haven’t received anything special. I am a Shaw customer, and I pay thousands of dollars a year for TV and Internet, just like many of you. I’m a happy customer though, and I like the Go WiFi service so much I wanted to write about it.

It was in September 2011 that Shaw announced plans to build out a wi-fi network (PDF). They had been looking to enter the wireless (cell phone) industry, but decided it was too expensive and risky.

We believe that a more prudent approach for us is to provide a managed Wi-Fi network that will allow our customers to extend their Shaw services beyond the home. This will achieve our objectives without risking well over $1 billion in capital expenditures on a traditional wireless network build.

Shaw launched its first hotspots in the spring of 2012 and has been expanding the network ever since. Today there are thousands of locations throughout western Canada, especially in large urban centres. I find I’m regularly connected to ShawOpen without even realizing it! You can find a location near you here, or you can download one of the mobile apps to find nearby hotspots.

Here’s a quick video from Shaw explaining how to use the service:

Entering your username and password each time is rather annoying, but fortunately you can avoid that. Simply login to the Shaw Customer Centre, and go to the Shaw Go WiFi page. There you can enter up to ten devices (depending on your plan) that should automatically connect (by MAC address). It works perfectly!

Shaw Go Wifi

If you think the network is great now, just wait. In May 2013, City Council approved an agreement with Shaw to expand the Go WiFi service to public areas like LRT stations. They’re even going to be adding hotspots nearly 900 streetlights! The expansion is slated to take place over the next two years and will result in about 1500 new access points and coverage at all public facilities. The City estimated that expanding their own network would cost up to $15 million, so partnering with a telecom provider would be a much more cost-effective approach. The City isn’t directly investing in the project, but is contributing staff time to the tune of about $540,000.

The best part is that you don’t need to be a Shaw customer to take advantage of the new service. Anyone can get access to 500 MB of data each month after you complete a free sign-on (on a Shaw & City of Edmonton co-branded page).

It seems like I’ll finally have wireless everywhere, at least in Edmonton. Thanks Shaw!

Off the grid for the weekend

Tomorrow evening Sharon and I are heading up to Goose Lake for the weekend. My family has property there and my parents are currently on vacation “at the lake” as we say, so it’ll be nice to spend some time with them.

It’s somewhat amazing to me that despite being just a two and half hour drive from Edmonton, the area still has very limited cellular or Internet service. On the other hand, according to the 2011 census just 4300 people live in the entire Woodlands County, so it’s not like there’s a huge customer base. It appears that CCI Wireless recently extended coverage to the area, but it’s somewhat expensive. Just a reminder of how big Canada really is, I guess!

For me it’s an opportunity to go “off the grid”. I don’t think I’d ever attempt Paul Miller’s year without Internet, but a couple of days certainly seems doable. I’ll probably bring my Kindle and maybe even my laptop in case the urge to write strikes as it often does, but I intend to spend most of my time on the water or around the fire pit, beer in hand.

Mack & Sharon
Sharon and I at the Goose Lake sign back in 2008

Have a great weekend!

Free Wireless Internet Lands at the Edmonton International Airport

Since 2004, the Edmonton International Airport has offered wireless Internet access, for a fee. As at many other airports, it was operated by Boingo. Unless you were already a Boingo subscriber, it just wasn’t worth it to get connected for an hour or two, and many people griped (myself included) about the lack of free wi-fi at the airport, especially as other airports increasingly offered it. Starting today, passengers have one less thing to complain about: EIA now offers free wi-fi access throughout the entire airport!

I wanted to learn more about the service and how it came to be, so I sat down with Reagan Winchester, EIA’s Director of IT, to find out. He was quite excited about the free wi-fi, even though it was a challenging project to implement. We started with some background.

It turns out that there wasn’t any broadband Internet access at EIA until Reagan’s team brought in two very large connections from Shaw and Telus. Once those were in place, EIA built a mini DSL network, and started selling access to its tenants in order to recoup the costs (one of its customers was, of course, Boingo). That worked, but everyone still managed their own hardware and services. Over time, it became clear that the many separate networks that existed at EIA (security, flight information, etc) would be better served if they were integrated, running off the same infrastructure, without each tenant having to worry about hardware and maintenance. So EIA started building out a Campus Area Network. Importantly, wi-fi was a key component of the network. With that infrastructure in place, the primary technical hurdle to offering free Internet access went away.

Another hurdle was convincing management that EIA should be offering something for free that previously they had been charging for. Under the deal with Boingo (which expired in June 2009), EIA made only a little bit of money. Boingo installed the access points and managed everything, so they kept most of the revenue. Now with its own wireless access in place, EIA had a few options: offer its own paid wireless, offer ad supported wireless, or offer completely free wireless. One of the tools they used to make that decision was the Airport Service Quality survey results. If you look at ASQ scores, Canadian airports with free wi-fi (like Vancouver) are in the top ten in North America with an average score of 3.61/4, whereas airports with paid wi-fi are in the 20-30 range with an average score of 3.06/4. Of all the different categories that airports are scored on, EIA performed worst compared to others in wi-fi category. So that made it clear that by offering free wi-fi, EIA could improve its ASQ score quite a bit. Further investigation revealed that airports with ad supported wi-fi scored 3.59/4, so the ability to have a little bit of cost recovery and still improve ASQ scores meant that in the end, EIA decided to go with ad supported wi-fi.

The new wireless network itself is managed by EIA, with the gateway and public facing stuff being provided by Boldstreet (the same company that Starbucks and Second Cup use at their locations). Boingo has at least 36 Cisco Aironet access points at EIA, but they’re old and only support 802.11b, so they’re pretty slow (they’ll remain accessible until August 31, 2010). EIA is using Meru access points (with Foundry hardware on the wired side), which support 802.11 a/b/g/n, and there are 31 deployed throughout the airport currently. That’s just a fraction of the more than 300 that they plan to install! The idea is to have VOIP-level wireless, which means three overlapping access points, with five bars everywhere. I tried connecting in the tower (which doesn’t have any access points currently) and I got four bars, so I was quite impressed!

To connect to the free wi-fi, look for the EIA_FREE_WIFI network. On devices like laptops, you’ll get presented with a splash screen that you need to login to. You can either choose anonymous access for 15 minutes (after which you go back to the splash screen and can choose it again), login with Facebook, login with your carrier account (Bell, Telus, Rogers, etc), or you can get a password sent to you via SMS. The authentication helps ensure that the network is not abused. On devices like cell phones that support voice over wi-fi, the authentication step can be skipped. There is no content or port filtering once you’re connected.

I’m really happy that EIA now offers free wireless Internet access. It’s such a positive thing for Edmontonians who are waiting to fly out, and for visitors to our city whose first impression is the airport. To celebrate, EIA is encouraging people to become fans on Facebook. If you do it before August 13, you’ll be entered to win a $1000 travel voucher, a 32 GB iPod, or free parking.

Congrats to EIA on making free wi-fi a reality!

Northern Voice 2009: Stewart Butterfield Keynote

The first keynote of the conference was from Stewart Butterfield, one of the co-founders of Flickr. I really liked his session, mostly because as he said “I don’t need to have a point right?” He started out by sharing his history on the Internet – starting with his schooling at UVic, usenet groups, etc. His first three handles were “ui503”, “sbutterf”, and “dsb26”. Stewart is only ten years older than I am, but that’s enough for many of his first experiences on the net to be unknown to me. Very interesting stuff.

Stewart Butterfield Keynote

Stewart repeated this phrase throughout his presentation: “This is who I am.” He said he didn’t want to talk about identity too much, but he started with that and made his way toward talking about community. Stewart says that community changes the phrase to: “This is who we are.”

Next, he moved on to Flickr and photography. Stewart identified three trends:

  1. Ubiquity of capture devices
  2. Spread of the network
  3. Change in perceptions and attitudes – participation is no longer weird

He said that the desire to participate is becoming widespread. I think I agree with him that one of the most interesting aspects of “Web 2.0” is the drive toward participation.

Stewart’s last point was that we’re in an era of “relationship-based computing”. I think that’s a good way to describe it.

He finished by saying he loves the Internet. Me too!

I think this was a great way to start the conference – entertaining, and not too much thinking required.

Help Edmonton’s Free WiFi Project grow!

free wifi project As some of you know, I’m involved with the Free WiFi Project here in Edmonton (along with Eric, Rob, and Stephen). We’ve been slowly progressing things, trying to figure out how we’d like to grow the project and spread free wireless Internet access across the city. There are a few initiatives in the works, but one I’d like to point out is that anyone can now order a community router from our website!

It’s pretty straightforward. Just head over to the Help Us Expand page to learn more about how the whole system works and what the costs and benefits are (each community router costs $60). When you’re ready, simply click the order link and follow the instructions. You’ll first have to enter some personal details, such as your name and address. Next you’ll be taken off to PayPal to make a payment to us. Finally, we’ll confirm the address we’re going to ship the router to. Within about a week you should receive a package from us with some simple instructions on how to connect your new community router!

Simple right? We’d love to have you join the network! If you give it a shot and have any feedback for us on how to improve the process, please let me know in the comments below or contact me. We want to make it as easy and painless as possible.

Stay tuned for more good news from the Free WiFi Project. As always, you can see a list of our current locations here. Thank you in advance for supporting us!

Faster wireless, everywhere

As a tech geek I’m interested in a lot of things, but I have a particular interest in wireless technologies. I want to have the ability to connect to the Internet wherever I go, using whatever device I happen to have with me. Despite the progress we’ve made in recent years, that vision is still a long way from being realized. A couple of things I came across recently look promising though.

The first is an article in MIT’s Technology Review, discussing research to make wireless faster:

One way to achieve faster speeds is to harness the millimeter-wavelength frequency of the wireless spectrum, although this usually requires expensive and very complex equipment. Now, engineers at Battelle, a research and development firm based in Columbus, OH, have come up with a simpler way to send data through the air with millimeter-wave technology.

Apparently they’ve been able to achieve speeds of 10.6 gigabits-per-second in a point-to-point field test, with antennas 800 meters apart. In the lab, they’ve demonstrated 20 gigabit-per-second speeds. Those are fiber-like speeds! Of course this wouldn’t work for blanket-wireless (like a cell network), but it could have some really useful applications.

The second article discusses a new study by market researcher In-Stat:

In-Stat said that more than 294 million consumer electronics devices with Wi-Fi shipped in 2007. But that number is quickly growing and will likely reach 1 billion by 2012. The fastest-growing embedded Wi-Fi segment is mobile handsets. By 2011, dual-mode cell phones will surpass PCs as the largest category of Wi-Fi devices, the In-Stat report said.

The phenomenal growth of consumer electronics devices is nothing new, but the takeaway here is that wireless Internet access demand is going to grow quite a bit over the next few years. After all, what good is a device with Wi-Fi capabilities if there is no Wi-Fi network available? This is good news for the Free Wi-Fi project.

A world with faster, more ubiquitous wireless Internet access is a world I want to live in.

Podcast Spot is shutting down

podcast spot As some of you undoubtedly know by now, Dickson and I recently made the decision to take Podcast Spot offline. We started notifying our users a couple weeks ago, and today made it public on the website. Here’s our message to users:

We regret to inform you that after two years of helping you share your creativity with the world, we have made the decision to cease Podcast Spot operations beginning on November 30th, 2008.

We’d like to reassure you that we’re not just flipping the switch – our plan is to shut the service down in phases. Starting December 1st, 2008 you will no longer be able to upload files to Podcast Spot, but your domain, downloads, and RSS feed will continue to operate through February 2009. During that time we’ll work with you to redirect users to your new site and feed. Beginning March 1st, 2009 Podcast Spot will be taken offline completely.

We are doing our best to ensure that the entire process is handled as smoothly as possible, and in a manner that is professional and courteous. I know if I was one of the podcasters I’d want lots of notice – so that’s what we’ve done by not taking the site down completely until next year.

Recently we’ve been in touch with Libsyn, and they have agreed to help migrate our users to their system (on an opt-in basis). That’ll be a great help for a number of our podcasters, because it means they don’t really have to do anything – we’ll work with Libsyn to make sure everything happens seamlessly. Thanks to Rob and his team for making that happen.

One other thing I should mention is that I’ve taken the Paramagnus Blog offline – it now redirects to the Paramagnus category here. I’ll post about the reasons why and what I have learned some other time, but the gist of it is that we never updated that blog anyway.

We’ve got more details up on the site, and we’ll post further updates there.

The first question we’ve generally been asked after breaking the news is “why?” Obvious question, but difficult to answer. There are lots of reasons which I’m sure I’ll explore over the next while. Dickson and I didn’t make this decision on a whim, we put a lot of thought into what would be best for us and for our users.

Even though we’re confident this is the right decision, I am still finding it hard to swallow. We put a lot of time, sweat, and money into Podcast Spot and we remain incredibly proud of what we’ve built. I know we’ve both learned an enormous amount from the whole experience. Still, I can’t help but be a little sad.

I’m sure I’ll be posting more about this in the future, but for now, I’d just like to say thank you. To our customers, to our friends and family, and to everyone we’ve met along the way, thank you for supporting Podcast Spot.

Amazon Web Services: Still getting better

aws logo I often think back to 2006 when Dickson and I were in the midst of the VenturePrize business plan competition. It was around that time that Amazon.com launched their first web service, the Simple Storage Service (S3). It had a huge impact on our business, and we’ve been extremely happy customers ever since.

Over the last couple of years, Amazon has introduced a number of additional web services, the most well-known of which might be the Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2). You can think of it like an on-demand computer in the cloud. I had a quick look at it when it launched, but being a Windows shop, we really didn’t have time to invest the extra effort necessary to get it running. Now, Amazon has announced that EC2 will support Windows:

Starting later this Fall, Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) will offer the ability to run Microsoft Windows Server or Microsoft SQL Server. Our goal is to support any and all of the programming models, operating systems and database servers that you need for building applications on our cloud computing platform. The ability to run a Windows environment within Amazon EC2 has been one of our most requested features, and we are excited to be able to provide this capability. We are currently operating a private beta of Amazon EC2 running Windows Server and SQL Server.

Very cool news for Windows developers. It should put some extra pressure on Microsoft too – though apparently they are getting ready to launch something. Watch for more news on that at PDC.

Another interesting new service that Amazon is introducing is a Content Delivery Service:

This new service will provide you a high performance method of distributing content to end users, giving your customers low latency and high data transfer rates when they access your objects. The initial release will help developers and businesses who need to deliver popular, publicly readable content over HTTP connections.

It will run atop S3, so anything that currently exists there can easily be added to the new content delivery network. This is very cool, and will finally bring world-class CDN infrastructure to small businesses. I wish they had introduced this two years ago!

Those are both very important improvements to AWS. Amazon is raising the bar, again. When will Microsoft, Google, and others answer?

Also – I just noticed recently that Amazon has redesigned the AWS website. It looks fantastic, in my opinion, and is much easier to navigate. Keep the positive improvements coming!

Thoughts on Google Chrome

As you probably read or heard today, Google has released a beta version of their very own browser, named Chrome. You can download it today for Windows XP or Windows Vista, and Google promises that Mac and Linux versions are coming soon. I downloaded it as soon as it was available, and have been playing with it all day. Here are some of my impressions and thoughts so far:

  • The interface is surprisingly simple. I like it.
  • Chrome is fast. The two sites I’ve noticed the greatest speed difference with so far are Google Reader and Buxfer.
  • I love the “Create application shortcuts” feature. The first thing I did after testing that out was uninstall Mozilla Prism. This feature is what will keep me running Chrome.
  • I like having the status bar at the bottom of the window, so the fact that it is missing in Chrome will take some getting used to. Fortunately a box still appears when you hover over a link.
  • Firefox made an effort to look more “native” to the operating system with version 3, and I wish Google had done the same with Chrome.
  • A couple of my favorite Opera features are built into Chrome: paste and go, search shortcuts (such as “g” for Google”), and the “Speed Dial” page, though it is automatically created in Chrome vs manually created in Opera.
  • As a web developer, I’m incredibly grateful that Google built Chrome atop the WebKit rendering engine, rather than creating yet another one for us to test against.
  • I find it amusing that the Google Chrome logo has the same color scheme as the Windows logo.

Google very creatively launched Chrome with a web cartoon written by Scott McCloud. It’s quite long, but worth a look.

If you’d like to read more about Google Chrome, I suggest the following:

And for my own reference, here is the NYTimes launch article.

I’ll be sticking with Opera for now, but I’ll definitely keep my eye on Google Chrome.

Please don't send me large files via email

email If you’ve ever sent me a large file through email, you probably know how much I hate it. No one escapes a lecture! Just because GMail and other services give you gigabytes of storage, doesn’t mean that it’s okay to send really large attachments. I was happy to read that one my favorite blogs posted about the subject today. From the Microsoft Office Outlook Team Blog:

Putting any issues with your e-mail service provider’s limits on large messages aside, sending large attachments through e-mail is still a bad idea for a number of reasons.

In the post, Outlook Program Manager Ryan Gregg outlines a few of the reasons why you shouldn’t send large files via email – mail servers may reject large files, mailboxes may go over their quota, attachment bloat, attachments may be out of date, etc. He also outlines a number of alternatives, including SharePoint or a Shared File Server, Office Live, photo sharing sites like Flickr, and video sharing sites like YouTube.

When you use one of these alternative ways to share files with your friends, family, or colleagues you help them keep your mailbox and theirs clean, and you can be sure that your file will be available no matter what service or program your e-mail recipients are using.

I would add a couple more reasons to avoid sending large files: slow Internet connections and small devices. If I’m checking email on an unreliable connection, the last thing I want to do is wait for your images to download. If I’m checking email on my iPod touch or a cell phone, I might not be able to read the files anyway.

If you’re sending photos, why not stick them on Flickr and email a link? Same goes for video – use a site like YouTube. Some other alternatives include Box.net, Amazon S3, and SlideShare.

It doesn’t take a lot of extra effort to stick your file online somewhere first, so why not just do it? Send links to large files via email, not the files themselves!