I’m posting this while logged on from the FON access point in Ireland, at Ormonde Quay in Dublin. FON is a scheme for sharing wi-fi on an international scale. Bernie wrote about the launch on Wednesday. The premise of FON is simple: pay for broadband at home, have bandwidth everywhere. We’ve established the first FON spot in Dublin, at a central location. We;’re still testing to make sure everything is working, but it’s all looking good. Martin Varsavsky has asked me to be ‘chief fonero’ for Ireland. We’d love to get more people on-line before the official launch of FON in the Emerald Isle. If someone can point us at a good supplier for WRT 54G APs, that would be helpful too!

You should sign this

Digital Rights Ireland (of which I am a director) has published a concise guide to dealing with SMS spam you receive on your Irish mobile phone (although much the same principles apply in other European countries). It explains the role of Regtel and the Data Protection Commissioner, and the penalties that can potentially be imposed.

The rumour mills were buzzing for the last two weeks about BT being on the cusp of an important strategic acquisition. But as it turned out, they took over Cara instead. Cara is basically a hardware and software reseller with a services arm. It has been kicked around from owner to owner over the last ten years.

As far as I’m concerned, BT buying Cara is a bit like buying an ice cream while you watch your house burn down.

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Dublin is going to have a transport authority, to sort out the mess on the roads and trains. Margaret O’Mahoney of Trinity College has been appointed to get the whole thing set up.

It isn’t clear what the Transport Authority is supposed to do. Is it going to run public transport, as Transport for London does , or is it going to be a hands-off regulator, like telecomms watchdog ComReg. Personally, I think it needs to be the former, but I have a feeling we’re going to end up with the latter.

One area I am interested in is public transport information. Maps, timetables real-time information and so on are an important part of modern infrastructure.

You should only have to log on once. It’s insecure and awkward to have to log on separately to every different website you visit. Personally, I probably have 10 or 20 different sites that I’ve set up usernames and passwords with and it’s a real pain to keep track of. As John Udell points out in his screencast (flash required) if you use the same password on all the sites you visit, and one of them gets compromised, then you’re in big trouble, because your whole identity can then easily be hacked.

This problem effects nearly every Internet user I know. It’s a really big problem, and no one is taking it seriously enough. There are a couple of solutions, but none of them is quite satisfactory just yet.

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Always On carries an article about not being able to get a seat in Starbucks at 11am and suggests that this is a sign of the strength of demand for wireless broadband. He obviously doesn’t see the obvious reason why people are there: Starbuck’s provide the cheapest serviced office space in New York and other global capitals, whilst at the same time paying some of the highest rents in the world. The whole thing is unsustainable. Having wi-fi in the cafe just makes things even worse. Read about the experience at Victrola in Seattle.

I just bought a new laptop, to replace my aging Toshiba. I bought the Medion MD 96500. ‘The what?’ I hear you ask. It’s a budget laptop sold by discount retailer Aldi. I got it because it was really high-spec, it wasn’t too expensive and I just couldn’t see the point in forking out a few hundred extra extra for a branded version of the same thing.

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I’m speaking tomorrow (Tuesday) at GIS Ireland 2005 on the topic of international practice around postcodes. Should be interesting to talk to to this specialized audience on the topic.