Wireless Minneapolis

I called in yesterday about Wireless Minneapolis service provided by USI Wireless. The 6mbps service has been dropped for now, no one can really get that fast of a connection. The focus is more on getting full coverage of the city, getting subscribers, then worrying about increasing the speed. That makes sense, as they'd be under the gun to provide full coverage, period, for city use in police cars, and the like. Its easy to see how other muni wifi projects fail, there is so much you don't know about wifi coverage and performance until you start hooking things up. I was in downtown yesterday can coverage at the Chipotle was spotty using the touch, but USI does caution that beefier antennas will offer the best experience, however, that isn't an option on such small devices. Then again, you'd have to double the number of access points to provide service to those gadgets anyway, which would be too expensive, at least right away.

I'm holding off on ordering service until it hits my home. The roaming service is good, but too small of an area.

Touch-a Touch-a Touch-a me, iPod Touch

More details on the Touch later!
Geek Geek Geek Geek!

UPDATE:

The keyboard stinks when vertical. Of course, this could take some getting used to. Jeannette thought that the lack of a stylus was dumb, because it was too hard to hit the right key. At least this is a software problem for now, and could be updated with new firmware, or some third-party modification. The repetitive typing for websites is unnecessary, because the touch does keep a history, like most browsers do.

No flash. I knew about this, but decided that wouldn't matter. Well, it does, but so far web browsing on the touch has mainly been for reading news or blogs, not for playing games or streaming music from Pandora. The Nokia 770 I have does a good job with its Opera browser, but it's slow, and unstable with sites will to much web 2.0 stuff on it. However, the 770 can tether through my LG Chocolate via bluetooth to get access to the EVDO network on Verizon, and the touch can not. In fact, the 770 let me know that touch landed, called over to the Apple Store, booked it over there, and scooped one up. 16 GB is really enough space, if you manage your playlists properly. The people wanting the carry the Library of Congress in their pants are just a bit lazy.

Videos are the best part of the touch. I'd been missing out on some video podcasts, and now I can catch up with them. The video iPod gets to stay in the car, feeding my stereo with not only my music, but Jeannette's as well. While the old iPod serves its purpose, I can wander around and watch videos. While we were waiting for the Elvis Costello show to start, Jeannette and I watched an episode of Atheist Talk TV which I appear in.

Music sounds great, Coverflow still stinks. Half of my music didn't get album covers for whatever reason, and I don't think of my music belonging to an album anyway, so it's not a good tool for finding anything I'd be looking for.

Photos look great on the screen. Who knows, maybe the iPod will start replacing wallet photos?

I use the video iPod everyday, and the touch should be a good addition. With the introduction of municipal wifi in Minneapolis, for as low as 18.95 a month for 3mbps when paid a year in advance, the touch may become more useful, to be used in those times when I've forgotten where something is, when something starts, look up reviews of restaurants, etc, in addition to playing videos and music.

Municipal Wi-Fi Helped During Minneapolis Bridge Collapse

US Internet and the city of Minneapolis had a lot to brag about on Wednesday, August 1st. The coordination of response teams was top notch. The 800MHz radio system worked as planned. Add to that, municipal Wi-Fi. Minnesota Monitor reports on what USI Wireless did to help in the recovery efforts. If you have muni wifi, and there is a disaster, cell phones become useless, because their network gets jammed, and isn't as easy to expand. What USI Wireless did was to boost service in the area to handle more users, and the service around the disaster was made free. Also, to help the emergency response coorindation, they set up wifi webcams to monitor activity on the ground. The benefit of wifi to responders is the ability to have another method of communication, and to download large files, like GIS data of the area.

James Farstad writes a great analysis of the use of municipal wifi in the disaster.

While no one could have predicted what was going to happen, a lot of resources were available to to responders. You have to spend a lot of money to make sure nothing happens, or when something does happen, the loss of life is minimized. I'm going to try out the WiFi once it comes to town. Speed isn't such a big deal, although I'm spoiled with 10Mbps down, I don't download really large files anymore. Gone are my days of downloading large game demos, or linux distros. Those are downloaded from work anyway. You can look forward to a full review of the service once it comes to my neck of the woods, including mobile tests. I'll have a home station, and test out laptop, and Nokia 770 use. I'll make sure to test use with the muni wifi antenna's, and if possible without.