Gerry Blackwell

Municipal hotzones that provide ubiquitous Wi-Fi coverage throughout a community have been a gleam in the eye of this industry for a couple of years. A few towns and cities have created multi-block hotzones in downtown cores and business parks. For example Whistler, a ski resort in Canada, plans to have ubiquitous coverage of one […]

WLAN operators are starting to look for ways to leverage their investments in Wi-Fi by adding new services beyond simple network access — and if they’re not, they probably should be. Location-based services look like a good bet, especially given the growing market penetration of Wi-Fi-enabled mobile devices. WLANs in complex environments such as college […]

Canada’s four major cellular carriers last month scored a North American first when they agreed to work out details on a Wi-Fi hotspot roaming arrangement that would let users of one company’s hotspots easily use others’ hotspots as well. It wasn’t quite a global first — a group of mobile carriers in France announced a […]

Audio guides at museums and galleries are old hat, but visitors to London’s Tate Modern gallery — home to some of the wildest modern art on the planet — can take advantage of a unique multimedia guide that uses Wi-Fi-enabled iPAQ PDAs from Hewlett-Packard to deliver, audio, video and text and graphics content. What makes […]

When representatives of a major vendor of Wi-Fi equipment come to you and say they have a good story to tell about how the company uses Wi-Fi in its own operations, you can be forgiven for reacting a little cynically at first. Well, of course, they use it in their own operations. Why wouldn’t they? […]

When a patient comes into any one of the four Baptist Health System of East Tennessee hospitals in Knoxville, Tenn., doctors, nurses, pharmacists and clerks can instantly get access to everything about that patient — records of past visits, allergies, x-rays, MRI scans, medication, clinical notes. Even better, they can get the information wherever they […]

Chris Gilbert, CEO of IPWireless, is loath to admit that service providers using his company’s 3G-based wireless broadband data technology might actually be in competition with Wi-Fi hotspot operators. He’d rather dwell on how the two wireless technologies can complement each other — which they certainly can. Gilbert is a good-news kind of guy. He […]

Telenor, the former Norwegian monopoly PTT, is not exactly breaking new ground with its project to put Wi-Fi hotspots in 300 service stations owned by Norwegian oil company Statoil this year, but it is threatening to pull out in front in the race to unwire the gas stations of the world. In September 2001, Shell […]

Several manufacturers already offer CompactFlash-based 802.11b cards that can Wi-Fi-enable some PDAs and smart phones, but SanDisk is the first out with an SD (Secure Digital) Wi-Fi card. The SanDisk Connect Wi-Fi product was due in stores August 1. The unit lists for $129. Eventually, many more PDAs and smart phones will come with slots […]

One does not normally associate lady golfers with cutting-edge technology — although, as Annika Sorenstam has amply demonstrated, they are not what they used to be. This week’s Ladies Professional Golf Association (LPGA) tournament, the Sybase Big Apple Classic 2003, may change the image of women’s golf even further. It is the first LPGA event […]

Alex Neihaus has the passion of a Wi-Fi true believer, and a missionary’s zeal. As president of Air11 Technology, a New England reseller of Toshiba‘s Wi-Fi hotspot service, it’s his job to make converts, of course, but Neihaus shows signs of being better at it than most. After operating for only 90 days, he already […]

Small businesses are notorious for not managing data well. Information critical to the company resides on distributed desktop PCs and laptops, and backing it up is too often left to individual employees. With no information technology department to ride herd, many small businesses are data disasters waiting to happen. If a hard disk crashes, vital […]