July 1, 2009

Firefox 3.5 Brings Geolocation to Mass Users

By Glenn Fleishman

Firefox 3.5 has shipped with location finding turned on: The latest release of Firefox includes by default the option to use a computer's IP address and, if available, a scan of nearby wireless networks to provide a location to Web sites that use appropriate JavaScript to request a position. Users can opt out when asked, disable location requests for a site, or disable location requests entirely. However, "ask for permission" is on by default.

Firefox is using Google Location Services, which is a combination of cellular tower data that the company has assembled along with some unknown method of collecting and locating Wi-Fi hotspots, much as Skyhook Wireless has been doing for years. Likely, Google gathers this information as it drives the streets for Google Maps.

With several tens of millions of smartphones (iPhone and Android-based models mostly) and handhelds (almost entirely the iPod touch) providing location data through various combinations of Wi-Fi, cellular trilateration, and built-in GPS, getting a location instantly may not seem that interesting any more on the desktop or laptop.

But it still seems to have a place. Location has two purposes. One is to find oneself, an existential proposition if I ever heard of one, because you don't know where you are. But the other is to identify your location to someone else because you want them to know where you are for some purpose: personal, commercial, or otherwise.

In the latter category, having location built into a browser lets Web sites offer rich location data even when you're at home. Aren't you frustrated about having to type in repeatedly your street address for work or home to find something in proximity, such as with a store locator? Wouldn't you like to have Web applications that automatically took advantage of your location by providing relevant data you didn't need to look up separately? (There are already plenty of utilities for Mac OS X and Windows that can use location to change system-wide settings, such as backlighting, r to launch or quit programs, or change your instant messaging status.)

Smartphones work best at giving you instant proximity data when you're out and about, because there's zero startup time. You take the phone out, hit the wake button, and run a program. I've become addicted nearly instantly to Urbanspoon after installing it on my iPhone because it tells me with incredibly little fuss what's near me. I needed to find a place to take my older son for lunch, and his appetite doesn't mesh well with restaurants. He agreed to eat a hot dog. I punched hot dog into Urbanspoon and within a few seconds found a suitable place. (He did eat the hot dog, and about a million fries. We went to Schultzy's.)

A laptop is a much more tedious operation for a spur-of-the-moment check. You have to dig it out, find a surface on which to balance it or hold it in your hand, wake it or power it up, find a network connection (unless you have a cell data card), find the Web site you want, and so forth.

The flip side is that when your desktop or laptop is already running, and you need a location-based piece of information, it's far more convenient to get a full, fast browser experience, with a real keyboard you can use to type in what you're looking for.

We'll see how it pans out. Sites have to enable location services, which should work identically in Firefox 3.5 and Chrome, and which will likely spread to other browsers over time if there's interest. (I suspect indexing software can identify if the JavaScript used on sites contains location calls, and smart people will use that to quantify geolocation-aware sites.)

There has to be a pull from sites to make people interested in and expecting to use location services. If all that sites do is enable store locators via this option, I can't see much interest developing over time. But if sites can find unique ways to let the browser plus location combination provide the social networking or sheer utility of many smartphone apps, then the uptake could be large.

Part of this could happen through making laptops act more like smartphones, too, trickling technology back up. While Sprint includes GPS technology in all its 3G networking cards and dongles--and an API for developers--that's about the extent of GPS in most mainstream products.

Netbooks already have many of the attributes of smartphones (small, fast turn-on time), and are starting to gain ubiquitous networking via built-in 3G cell cards. This makes Dell's decision to put a GPS chip in its Mini 10 quite fascinating. The company has also paired with Skyhook Wireless, which will integrate Wi-Fi and GPS data for a location result. The GPS-equipped model ships next week. Pricing is still unknown, but a reputable gadget site puts the cost at $70 above the current $300 to $350 price tag.

This turns a cheap netbook into a potentially fabulous turn-by-turn navigation system--although you certainly want to have a passenger holding it or figure out a mounting system. The Dell Wireless 700 option, as the company labels it, comes with CoPilot software as part of the cost. But it also means that people with netbooks and without smartphones will have fast and accurate location data.

Is this part of a revolution? Location-based services (LBS) have been discussed as the next big thing for targeting advertising, coupons, and, well, information of use for several years. The stars (and satellites) may finally be aligning.

Location preferences are a bit obscure. By default, permission-based location access is enabled in Firefox 3.5. If you click a link where a site is attempting to use the Geolocation API's JavaScript, you're presented with a prompt along the top bar of the browser, much as with pop-up windows and certain security alerts. On the left you see a message, with the site requesting location data:

On the right, a set of options, which let you set a once-only share (Share Location by itself) or a site-based share (check Remember for This Site and then Share Location). You can also click Don't Share or click the X to close the bar.

If you set site-wide location permissions, then you have to be on a page at the site in order to disable this permission. Select Page Info from the Tools menu, click the Permissions tab, and then you can modify the options for Share Location. You can use a combination of options, such as unchecking Always Ask and setting the radio button to Block or Allow. Or check Always Ask to re-enable that behavior.

To disable geolocation for the browser, type about:config in the Location bar, then type geo.enabled, and finally double click the geo.enabled preference. Repeat these steps (or double click the preference again while displayed) to turn location back on.

Posted by Glenn Fleishman at 3:59 PM | Permanent Link | Categories: Location, Road Warrior | No Comments

June 30, 2009

Metageek Adds 900 MHz Spectrum Analzyer

By Glenn Fleishman

Metageek drops down a few gigahertz with the Wi-Spy 900x: The new spectrum analyzer from Metageek, in a USB dongle form factor as with previous offerings, extracts data from the 900 MHz band, an unlicensed band used for cordless phones, baby monitors, RFID tags, ZigBee, and other mishegas. The price is $199. While WLAN use 2.4 and 5 GHz, there are still plenty of purposes for 900 MHz devices, which take advantage of the better propagation available at this frequency range.

Posted by Glenn Fleishman at 2:38 PM | Permanent Link | Categories: Monitoring and Testing | No Comments

June 29, 2009

Comcast Starts Offering Clearwire WiMax Service

By Glenn Fleishman

As expected, Comcast will resell Clearwire's WiMax service: The Comcast High-Speed 2Go brand will be powered by Clearwire, starting in Portland. Comcast is focused on the mobile part, of course, since the company has its own extensive residential and business fixed broadband portfolio. Comcast has invested in Clearwire, and has previously resold Sprint Nextel service, as well.

The company will offer a Metro plan and card that works only in the WiMax footprint area, and a Nationwide plan and card that offers 3G everywhere Sprint has it, and 4G within WiMax footprints.

Comcast is using the power of the bundle, where the reduced cost in presenting and collecting multiple bills results in savings for the company and the consumer, with a 12-month introductory rate. A $50/mo bundle pairs 12 Mbps home cable broadband with WiMax service; consumers can add national 3G service for another $20/mo. The rate after 12 months is $73/mo for WiMax and $93/mo for 3G+WiMax, or $30 to $50 above the current 12 Mbps broadband rate. You pay separately for a broadband dongle, likely under $100, but that information wasn't provided yet.

Clearwire charges $50/mo for unlimited consumer roaming, and has a variety of business plans for shared bandwidth among multiple accounts. Sprint has a combined 3G/4G plan that's $80/mo (with a 2-year contract) that includes 5 GB per month of 3G bandwidth and unlimited 4G bandwidth. Comcast appears to be following both firms' leads on that topic.

With either plan, it looks like a fairly enormous discount, especially during the introductory year, but also thereafter.

Posted by Glenn Fleishman at 3:57 PM | Permanent Link | Categories: 4G, Road Warrior, Roaming, WiMAX | No Comments

June 25, 2009

Not All Camera Makers Are Clueless about Wi-Fi and Eye-Fi

By Glenn Fleishman

I complained the other day that camera manufacturers weren't integrating support for Eye-Fi's Wi-Fi SD cards: But that's not quite right: a few camera makers have the religion. Eye-Fi is the only generic solution to moving images (and now video) from a camera to a computer or photo-sharing service via Wi-Fi. The market seems to me huge, and Eye-Fi continues to expand models, features, and distribution channels, as well as upload partners. This makes me think the market is robust, too.

However, no competing product has entered the field. Eye-Fi is a startup, and you might expect another firm--a memory-card maker, certainly--would add up the potential and try to compete. It has not happened after nearly 2 years of product in the market.

Camera makers should thus wake up: if they can't properly integrate Wi-Fi into the firmware and hardware of their cameras--and I'd argue no Wi-Fi equipped camera below the expensive professional level has yet done so--then the only reasonable partner is Eye-Fi.

Eye-Fi has two limitations in operating as a separately functioning computer-on-a-card independent of the camera's gear. First, a camera's standard power-down operation will remove the power to the card before all uploads have completed in many cases. I upgraded my Wi-Fi network by moving to 802.11n, and that reduced congestion and seems to make the Eye-Fi cards I use--which have 802.11g built in--more efficient at uploading.

Second, the camera can't alert the user that the uploads have completed. Eye-Fi gets around this with notification services via email or SMS that you can set up for each card. But a ding or dialog would go a lot further.

Eye-Fi has a page at its site that I was unaware of that lists all the camera models that have Eye-Fi integration. This includes 5 recent Casio models that signal whether an Eye-Fi is inserted, allow Wi-Fi to be turned on or off, that stay powered up until uploads are completed, and which indicate transfers in process.

I expect it's a multi-year process for Eye-Fi to convince cameramakers that the company will be around in the long term, that it is sui generis for Wi-Fi digital cards, and that firmware integration enhances the value of a new camera (i.e., more sales from people who thus need the new cameras) instead of pushing money over to Eye-Fi that the makers would rather keep themselves.

Posted by Glenn Fleishman at 3:30 PM | Permanent Link | Categories: Photography | 1 Comment

June 16, 2009

Atlanta First Big Move for New Clearwire

By Glenn Fleishman

Sure, Clearwire has Baltimore and Portland, but Atlanta eclipses those: The Clear network in Atlanta spans 1,200 sq mi and passes 3m people. Given the hideous commute and highway backups, I can see a ubiquitous network that's cheaper than and faster than 3G competitors being a windshield warrior and mobile work team must-have. Clearwire maintains that 4 to 6 Mbps downstream is typical, with an over 15 Mbps burst rate.

Clearwire pairs the Atlanta announcement with a laundry list of gear customers can use to connect, which has increased considerably in the last few months.

Wireless networks are always a chicken-and-egg problem. Wi-Fi insinuated itself into nearly every mobile device because there was no network lock in. You could install one hot spot and have one adapter and have all the freedom you needed to cut the cord. Wi-Fi became cheap to include in mobile devices years ago, and required no carrier or regulator relationship.

Cellular 3G and 4G networks have a harder row to hoe because every adapter will have both high cost and provider lock in. 3G cell modems are starting to become a standard feature on some netbooks and laptops, although it's a financial risk to the makers of these computers, as the underlying cost of mobile broadband modems remains high. If the user never activates the modem, or cancels within a short period, the buyer isn't bearing the full cost of that adapter based on the current model. (It's not clear whether carriers and/or modem makers absorb some of this risk to ship more adapters and gain more customers, too.)

For Clearwire, it's a bit different, because Motorola and Samsung are both major investors and principle equipment manufacturers. This can be awkward, because the two makers can't offer gear to Clearwire at cost, but neither do they have a motivation to extract every last dollar.

Clearwire notes in this release how many WiMax adapter are now available, and in what variety. For laptops, there's a $60 (or $5/mo) USB modem. This takes care of legacy laptops and even desktop computers. USB modems for 3G networks have multiplied and added features (such as having a microSD slot) because the ability to move the modem among multiple computers is desirable.

For home users, there's the Clear Residential Modem, which is $80 or $5/mo; voice calling requires an additional $15 adapter and a $25/mo calling plan (competitive with Vonage, and from half to one-third less than Comcast's).

Apparently, this is the soft launch of Clearwire's Clear Spot, a Wi-Fi/WiMax gateway ($140), which is battery powered and requires a Clear USB modem. As I previously noted ("Clearwire Offers CradlePoint WiMax/Wi-Fi Hotspot," 31-March-2009), this is a Clearwire-enabled version of a product that CradlePoint has offered for some time. On the laptop side, Clearwire lists a variety of Dell, Fujitsu, Lenovo, Samsung, and Toshiba notebooks and netbooks. A Panasonic Toughbook is coming later this year.

An anticipated 3G/4G broadband modem is due "this summer," which will combine Sprint 3G with Clearwire WiMax, and start allowing business customers in Clear coverage areas to upgrade to have the benefit of a faster network at home and roaming while away, or in weak WiMax coverage areas.

Posted by Glenn Fleishman at 11:34 AM | Permanent Link | Categories: 2.5G and 3G, 4G, WiMAX | No Comments

June 15, 2009

MetaGeek Delivers $99 Spectrum Analyzer

By Glenn Fleishman