Working Anywhere

Meraki Sponsors WiFi Access At San Francisco City Hall Chambers

In what should NOT be considered "Free" WiFi, Meraki, the makers of a lightweight mesh networking platform, have sponsored the deployment of WiFi inside San Francisco's City Hall, reports MuniWireless.com

To me there is a huge difference between "free" and "sponsored" even if the general public perceives it to be "free." The rationales are quite simple as the sponsored model in this case is the same as a park's beautification being underwritten by a benefactor. If the benefactor says no more, the ongoing beautification of the park stops until a new one can be found.

In the case of San Francisco, the city won't be subsidizing the WiFi anytime soon, so Meraki stepped in and in a very self serving (in a good way) developed a plan to bring greater attention to the merits and benefits of WiFi.

Well done by all, and hat tip to Esme Vos for drawing attention to this.

Devicescape Makes Printing Easy, Brother

Devicescape, best known for Easy WiFi, the app that makes connecting to multiple hotspot networks including Boingo, T-Mobile and if you can find one, even FON hotspots, has expanded into the connectivity to printers in a deal with Brother.

Hip Work Spot Opens in London-No More Need For Starbucks

Cameron Sinclair pens a piece about a new hipster style work spot called the "Hub Pavilion" that has opened in London this week, over on the Huffington Post.

I think we are seeing the rise of the temporary office, networking "hub" and candidly think Starbucks really missed it.

For many a year I referred to Starbucks as Conference Room "S" to many. You could head over to one, and then organize a meeting. They had chairs, tables you could rearrange, couches, work desks, all that you wanted, and of course, amazing broadband from T-Mobile.

Then somewhere along the way, as their success overcame them, they lost their way. First they turned up the music. Then they turned down the temperature. Next came less and less tables. And then the final blow. Bye Bye T-Mobile and the amazing bandwidth. Hello AT&T and usually a DSL line. A slow DSL line.

These new Hub Spots though are the wave of the future in my book. Already Regus/HQ has opened a similar spot, dubbed the Business Lounge in Cupertino, CA not far from Apple's HQ. While they haven't added all the glitz and "social" components of Hub and Hub Culture, what they have both done is given the road warrior, and the "no need for an office" type of worker, a series of quiet, well decked out and useful locations to get down to work in environments that are serene and very functional.

Plus, they serve better coffee than Starbucks.

Why Wi-Fi Is The Real 4G

Martin Suter of Bel-Air Networks has penned a very strong case for why Wi-Fi is really in my view the baseline that 4G should be measured with.

One point that Martin left out of his well written and very factual account as to why WiFi is so important and a better performer than Mobile 3G data was the need for backhaul.

Backhaul is what gets the data back onto the Internet, it's the upstream tributary that the bits and bytes ride on to reach the Net to be offloaded onto the main Internet. Over the next few years we'll start seeing backhaul backlog and in my view is when you'll start to see things like first class, second class and third class mail rates being applied.

Get ready for tiered pricing, both for speed and for size. Those reasons are why we need more WiFi access, more local loop fiber rings. More local municipal fiber routes and great capacity.

Tales of Hotels and Bandwidth

As a regular road warrior I can’t stress enough the importance of having really solid bandwidth and decent access when you’re traveling. It may seem like a broken record, but for those of us who actually work on the road and consider hotels, coffee shops, remote work sites and friends’ houses an extension of our own office, try in this day and age of living without it.

First, you have to get past the idea that Internet access should be free. It isn’t. So get over it. And, like most things that cost real money, the better the grade of service you get may not always be at the highest price. Much of what I’ve learned about solid, dependable and reliable comes from two things. Trial and error and the willingness to spend money to be well connected.

Let me first blow through some myths that may help others save their hard earned money:

1.       All hotels with the same brand name will deliver the same experience consistently

FALSE—I’ve stayed in Marriotts, Courtyard By Marriotts, Spring Hill Suites, J.W. Marriotts and even with the same provider delivering the so called “same” experience, after the sign-on screen it remains a guessing game as to what the experience will be like once you hit the Net. I’ve stayed at Hilton’s family of properties, even two owned side by side by the same management company and no two experiences have been the same.

2.       The more expensive the chain the better the connectivity will be.
FALSE-I’ve stayed in some places like Accor’s Sofitel a hotel I love and used both their own wired and the T-Mobile Wireless network in the property. T-Mobile blows away the wired network. On the other hand in the same chain’s Pullman Bercy property in Paris, the connectivity is always better wired. Now let’s step it up to Fairmont in San Jose. In the original and older building the connectivity is never as good as the newer, all fiber tower. Why? The way the network was installed. The older network is similar to DSL, while the new fiber network literally moves things faster than any network around. Difference in download speeds can be as much as 20 megs a second. In San Francisco both the new St. Regis and Intercontinental properties have done it right, dropping in 20-50 megs of available bandwidth. However, get in the wrong end of the hall and use the hotel’s Wi-Fi network and your upload speeds will suffer. Instead pack a travel router of your own (know how to change your IP address to avoid conflicts) and make your own wireless cloud with blazing speeds and your own PUBLIC IP address that lets you use VoIP via Skype or any SIP provider (I use three including OnSip, CallCentric and a private Truphone test account) as well as Vidtel’s video with either Counterpath’s Eyebeam on the Mac or Bria on my Netbooks.

3.       Hotels don’t snoop on you.
FALSE- I was staying in the Hilton Santa Clara within the past few years and my connectivity was detected as to doing something wrong. I was on a Mac running both Mail and Entourage, each checking various email accounts using a combination of Exchange, IMAP and POP. I was also running Skype (P2P), Gizmo (SIP), SightSpeed (SIP Video) and a few other IM sessions. Then there was Flash video and audio, plus some uploading to my blog. The monitoring software kicked in and I was kicked off. A call to the provider yielded some insight, but it was obvious the folks on the other end of the line couldn’t tell what caused it. I went up a few levels and found out that it was what is best called, a false flag alert. Still it slowed me down, and cut into the work time I had before an appointment. Note to hotel operators. If you want business travelers, you better know what business travel technology is today.

4.       Consumer grade access points work just as good as the expensive ones from Cisco.
FALSE-All you have to do is go to the beach front hotel offering free Wi-Fi and compare what their D-Link or Netgear consumer grade router does when the hotel fills up vs. the high end Cisco gear found inside the Hotel 1000 in Seattle or the Intercontinental in Boston. Both properties were built the right way from the ground up and the experience proves it. In the case of hotel infrastructure, you get what you pay for too.

Here are some hotels I like that have given me a great business grade experience over the past few years:

Seattle WA- Hotel 1000-without a doubt the smartest of the smart hotels.

Scottsdale, AZ – Courtyard By Marriott– Mayo Clinic

San Jose, CA – Fairmont San Jose

San Francisco-Intercontinental on Howard Street, as well as he St. Regis and W San Francisco.

Philadelphia, PA – Sofitel Philadelphia, Courtyard By Marriott on 13^th Street, Marriott Airport, Embassy Suites on the Parkway

New York City- Sofitel New York and The London

Miami FL – Hyatt’s Hotel Victor and the Renaissance Eden Roc

Las Vegas, NV – Palazzo Hotel and Casino, Renaissance Hotel, L’Hotel at Mandalay Bay

Chicago, IL – Fairmont Chicago

London England-The Andaz and the Metropolitan Hotels

London Heathrow Airport-The Yotel in terminal 4. For the money, best deal going.

Paris France Sofitel (now Pullman) Bercy

Valence France – Novatel Valence Sud

Montpellier France – Sofitel Montpellier (may now be Pullman brand)

Lyon France – Sofitel Place Bellecour

Beaune France – Novatel Beaune

Munich Germany – Hotel Kempenski Munich Airport and Sofitel Munich Bayerpost

Lisbon Portugal - Hotel Heritage Av Liberdade

Madrid Spain-The Urban Hotel

Barcelona Spain Hesperia Presidente and Hotel Prestige Paseo de Gracia

Valencia Spain-Palau de la Mar

 Bottom line. Be selective. You wouldn’t accept poor water pressure from your shower and stay at the hotel again if you like to take long, hot, and rejuvenating showers when on the road. You wouldn’t accept slow delivery of lousy tasting food from room service, so why accept anything less with your hotel broadband.

Orange Internet Everywhere

In France mobile operator Orange has launched a true pay as you go data plan named appropriately “Internet Everywhere” that combines WiFi access to their nationwide network of hotspots with 3G data over their cutting edge HSUPA/HSDPA network.

How it works is very easy. You buy one 3G data USB stick at a mobile retailer, in my case, FNAC. You install the software (note on a PC it does disable Windows and internal on board WiFi on most laptops but that can be fixed easily). They give you a SIM with a French mobile number (which means the service is SMS capable) and two hours of usage credit.

To use the service you simply log on, buy the amount of credit you plan to use over a 15 day period (for me its six hour blocks at 25 Euros per whack) and start to surf.

Of course there are a few caveats:

1) VoIP is prohibited

2) P2P is prohibited (this means Skype)

3) No streaming.

I can live with this as I can find other access where I can do all that.

For me, this is web and email, some IM and that’s about it. Oh, one more caveat. You have to remember to mail in a form by French post, showing your French address. Agian, for me, no problem. I have an office in Paris that receives local mail for me.

When It Comes To Business HotSpots BT Says "Open Up"

BT (British Telecom) is providing a method to business broadband customers to easily create a hotspot that they can provide to their customers for free or via the sale of BT OpenZone Vouchers.

This is one more way people can stay connected but from a business perspective it provides one more reason for UK customers to think about using BT as their Broadband provider. From a pull through perspective it also means OpenZone and roaming partner customers on Boingo have one more way to ask to connect.

This solution, the BT Business Broadband Hub is ideal for high-traffic retail locations like independent coffee shops, hotels, restaurants, nail and hair salons, or even the kinds of stores which attract a tech savvy and device carrying crowd.

With more light weight and full featured devices having WiFi like the Androids, iPhone, Apple iPod Touch and the hot selling Netbooks, BT is taking the right approach of deploying more hotspots as a way to drive sales of more broadband.

Hopefully USA operators will pick up on this.

The Regus Poster Boy Is A Familiar Name

It looks like the folks who run the Regus Business Center operations around the world know that a discerning and informed business person is someone to highlight. Just this week they issued a press release about one of their new, and very useful business person's essentials for types like me who need to be Working Anywhere.

This isn't the first time Regus has quoted me. Over the past few years I've gotten to know their first rate management team well, as I make suggestions and interact with them, often talking to their team, not only their booking operations folks.

To be totally transparent I am NOT PAID by Regus, nor am I some kind of pitch person who you see on the morning news programs who have been paid by a company to tell a story. I'm a paying customer of Regus/HQ and have for sometime had their Network Access product and now carry their newer product whenever I travel. Their business centers and the added benefits it brings (access to some airport lounges) are essential for my maintaining my busy and global nomad lifestyle.

As a work from home type, I don't have an office per se, but I do hold meetings, and prefer not to hold them in my living room. The Regus/HQ locations provide me that at a very reasonable per hour or by the day price. What's more, I can use their more than 900 centers at any time, and drop in versus sit in a noisy coffee shop and drink all the coffee I want, for free as part of my low monthly fee. When I need a conference room, Regus is where I go first, not always some unknown hotel where I'm unsure of just what level of service I'll receive.

I'm honored that out of all the Regus/HQ customers around the world they have again me as their "Poster Child." Why do I endorse them? Because their service works and delivers a super value that is an essential part of the business person's tool set that's needed today in the world of working away from home or the home office.

I've used their service in Airport Lounges, in locations here in the USA and in foreign lands. My best experience was in Lisbon, Portugal of all places. I strategically chose my hotel to be within two blocks of their downtown office. Not only was a great wine bar a few blocks away, but their location was along the avenue where all the better shopping was, meaning my wife could shop while I did some work. One morning, I woke up to a fire across the street and a crowd of fire trucks and police cars. The hotel Internet was cut off, but the two block walk and the open Regus center made it easy for me to make a SightSpeed call, Skype calls and the cup of "bica" as they call coffee.

To me, having the Regus/HQ card in my wallet is really more than having the AMEX card it bills to. It's like having a key to an office in every major business location around the world that lets you in without any reservation required.

New MiFi Means More Internet for More Users In More Places

At ShowStoppers last week in Las Vegas one of the best products I saw was the new Novatel Wireless MiFi. It lets you set up an instant WiFi hotspot for up to five users. Think Cradlepoint but the size of a credit card. It's small, light and a perfect way to make Truphone calls over 3G from an iPhone or iPod Touch.

Expect availability later in the first half of the year, first on CDMA and then on HSPA platforms around the globe.

iPhone Owners Road Warrior Tips

The Unofficial Apple Weblog's Aron Trimble has a series of tips that make the Apple iPhone an essential tool for the Road Warrior.

I'll add a few more apps that I like which make my road warrior like existence much easier to digest:

Fight Stats--without question this helps keep track of what's happening with your flights, plus gives you the options when I flight gets delayed or cancelled.

TSAwait-- this is a great planning tool. Take a look at what the wait time is on average. If you're early and the lines are short, you may make an earlier flight or, just surf the web using

Boingo Mobile--this app connects you to thousands of hotspots around the globe.

Truphone-like Boingo, they are a client, but the app save you money when you use it via WiFi or via their recently updated Truphone Anywhere service that provides call through service at really low rates per minute which for international calls is hugs savings.

If you visit London much and take the tube Tube Status is invaluable as is there are various London Tube routing apps available too. They make it easy to get around. I've also use the apps for Madrid and Paris with great success.