As I’ve recently disclosed, our main objective at FON is the launch of our next product, the Fonera 2.0. The Fonera 2.0 is a Fonera that will not only make it easy to provide WiFi for yourself and for your neighbors, it will also provide Foneros with great features like the ability to connect a hard drive to it and autonomously upload or download content from the Internet while you’re doing something else on your laptop or your PC is off. In short the Fonera 2.0 will manage your daily relationship with the Web 2.0 doing such thing as sending your pictures to Flickr, your videos to Youtube, downloading your torrents, etc. Many of the things that the new Fonera will do a PC can do of course but why tie up a thousand dollar investment with your vital info doing menial task when you can have a $49 Fonera do them.
The Fonera 2.0 will be an open platform for developers to build their applications on top of, much like a hacked iPhone is now. An open platform is nothing without a community of developers, so we’re announcing today the launch of The Fonosfera, our development community program that will span not only the Fonera 2.0 but all Fon products. We know there are already many communities doing great things with our Foneras, adding new features and fixing bugs. The idea behind the Fonosfera is to bring all the development work the communities have been doing and will do in the future to any Fon user.
The Fonosfera will be a chance for all these communities to keep working independently, while contributing to the development of Fon products including the Fonera 2.0 and the applications that will run on it. The Fonosfera will provide a space for gathering and sharing between developers and to make their projects available to end users all around the world. It will include a framework with development and community tools such as svn, trac, forums, mailing list, wiki etc. We already picked a few communities that have proved they can do great things with the Fonera and sent them a test version of our Fonera 2.0.
The Fonera 2.0 will provide a USB connection and users will be able to plug any sort of USB device to it (as long as there’s software support in the firmware, and we invite developers to add support for any device they might think of). The Fonera 2.0 will provide out of the box the ability to connect a hard drive or pendrive to it, so you can access it on your local network and use it to store the contents your Fonera 2.0 will download from the Internet for you. Another interesting feature we are working on is the ability to connect an HSDPA modem to the USB port of the Fonera 2.0, to share an HSDPA connection on the move or where DSL is not available.
We are working hard to make the Fonera 2.0 as open as possible, and we are willing to take all the help the development community can bring to Fon and Foneros. Our users will still have to wait a few months to get their Foneras 2.0, but we’re sure it will be worth the wait.
2008 8
BT Fon and how to reach the general public with Fon
Published by MartinVarsavsky.net in Fon with No Comments
The Sun‘s coverage of BT FON‘s latest campaign. The girl in the photo is Jennifer Metcalfe, star actress in the UK.
Peter Crouch and Jennifer Metcalfe have grabbed their sombreros to spice up the launch of the world’s biggest ever Mexican Wave.
Liverpool striker Crouch and Hollyoaks stunner Metcalfe are promoting BT FON’s fun new campaign which aims to find out which football team in the UK has the most passionate fans.
Bradford babe Metcalfe visited Arsenal’s Emirates Stadium for Saturday’s clash with Liverpool to meet who filmed their own, unique Mexican Waves.
To me it is fontastic to see all this going on as BT is showing Fon that if you really want to reach the general public you have to go for themes that are less geeky than ours. Who would not dream of being able to connect to Jennifer Metcalfe´s Fonera?
2008 8
The World’s Biggest Mexican Wave
Published by MartinVarsavsky.net in Fon with No Comments
Together with our partner BT, we are launching The World’s Biggest Mexican Wave, an initiative to raise awareness of the BT FON community, which has been growing really fast and has now more then 70,000 members. This post is also an invitation to Foneros from around the world to join in this initiative which while mostly UK it can be joined by people from all over the world.
Why The Wave? Well, first of all it’s fun. Secondly a WiFi community is just like a Mexican Wave: people contribute with their individual (radio) wave, and the more people, the better it gets.
Anybody can be part of The Biggest Mexican Wave. Joining the wave is very easy, watch some tips on how to film and submit your own (you can use a webcam, a camera or your mobile phone). Once you upload your video you’ll be part of the world’s biggest Mexican wave, watch it on the website and try to spot yourself!
You can watch the entire Arsenal football team performing a great Mexican Wave for our BT FON community, or a video with Liverpool’s striker Peter Crouch teaching how to do the perfect robotic wave.
BT FON allows its members to connect for free in thousands of places around the UK and in the world. All BT broadband subscribers can automatically opt-in to join the BT FON Community, share their WiFi and roam the world for free. Of course all Foneros can roam for free on BT FON spots.
2008 31
Advertising can be art
Published by MartinVarsavsky.net in Fon with No Comments
Daniel Alvarez Perez, a Fonero from Spain, sent me these provocative images that illustrate what cutting the cord or making an effective connection can mean. To me these images explain Fon in a better way than some long text in our web site. This is why I think that there is something flawed in the super successful Google AdSense and that is that Google AdSense abandons graphics. I think that even Google will rediscover a graphical way of advertising as I am convinced that it is for a reason why people like Daniel Alvarez Perez are called graphic artists: there is art in graphic design. Having said this I think European advertising in general is more pleasant to the eye than US advertising which is less graphic and more direct.
2008 28
La Ferrera
Published by MartinVarsavsky.net in Fon with No Comments
Alekseij, a Fonero from Italy, today posted on our forums photos of his unique modding of our Fonera: a Ferrari Fonera! He replaced the case of a common Fonera with a Ferrari toy car.
Here is the result:
2008 26
World’s first FON-enabled high-rise building
Published by MartinVarsavsky.net in Fon with No Comments
FON is proud to announce that the Continental Diamond Plaza in Causeway Bay, Hong Kong, is now the world’s first fully FON-enabled high-rise building. Continental Diamond Plaza has 29 floors, and hosts many restaurants and bars in the heart of the city. You will find FON_FreeWiFi signals at every floor, which takes us yet another step closer to covering the entire planet with WiFi!
In other news from Hong Kong, it is with great pleasure that we announce that FON Hong Kong was awarded the Caring Company logo 2007-2008 for its efforts to give back to the community. FON’s operations and charitable activities, donations, and initiatives for the past year were reviewed by the Hong Kong Council of Social Service, who then awarded FON for achievements in all six Caring Company criteria (volunteering, employee friendly, employing the vulnerable, caring for the environment, mentoring, and giving).
2008 26
FON Night in Japan
Published by MartinVarsavsky.net in Fon with No Comments
Last week FON Japan organized an event to celebrate and thank Foneros, bloggers, media and corporate partners in Japan. I introduced the event and we gave an update on FON’s success in the country, our second most popular country after the UK, but the first in terms of connected foneras.
Some of our great partners in Japan gave presentations on their companies and products, as well as on their collaboration with FON: Livedoor, Panasonic, Tsukumo, Sony, Internet ITS Consortium, Mobile MediaNet, Kyushu University, Flight System Consulting and Google Japan.
After our partners’ presentations we enjoyed a live performance by Ochi “Dainoji” Yosuke, a Japanese celebrity comedian and air-guitar performer (air-guitar world champion for the past 2 years!).
Here are photos and a video of some moments from the event (including the air-guitar performance!)
2008 14
WiFi in your car, and why 3G is not enough
Published by MartinVarsavsky.net in Fon with No Comments
A friend suggested me to have a look at an interesting offer by Avis, the rent a car company. They provide a special mobile router to give WiFi connectivity in the cars they rent. It’s based on a product called AutoNet, a device that combines a 3G modem and a WiFi router and turns your car into a WiFi hotspot.
What is very interesting about this is why the service uses 3G and WiFi instead of 3G alone: while mobile broadband is great for its coverage it lacks compatibility with most of the laptops, mobile devices and game consoles on the market. This is one of the many advantages WiFi has over 3G (another big one is cost!) and one that will stay for a long time. You don’t need luxury or supercars to enjoy a vehicle with great technological and safety features; there are used cars in hesperia that are worth looking into.
WiFi has become a standard for device manufacturers like Apple, Sony, Nintendo, Panasonic and others who want to provide connectivity for their gadgets. FON has partnerships with most of these manufacturers and is making it really easy and quick for foneros to connect using their WiFi devices without typing usernames and passwords. This is also great for our partners like BT or Neuf whose users can as easily connect using their gadgets on BT-FON and Neuf WiFi FON hotspots.
2008 12
New Twitxr (pronounce Twitchr) release
Published by MartinVarsavsky.net in Fon with No Comments
Twitxr is a project that started so Fon could have a Twitter like service but that really used bandwidth so we could showcase WiFi is taking off nicely. Fon Labs releases a lot of services but as far as I am concerned Twitxr is the one that I am most addicted to because I can combine text, a picture and geolocalization, post from any mobile phone with camera and email (it works best with the iPhone) and then automatically cross post in Flickr, Twitter, and Facebook.
Yesterday Victor and Albert Martin at Fon Labs made a new Twitxr release available.
The new iPhone app (now called Twitxr, here the details on how to install on your phone) lets you browse your friends’ pictures and updates, take a new picture or choose from one you have taken previously (using the default Photo app). This is great for those who prefer using WiFi to post their pictures: take a photo using the Photo app when you don’t have coverage and post it later with Twitxr. In the application preferences you can also choose to post lower resolution pictures, making it much faster to post via EDGE.
Twitxr now has a great mobile version to view your friend’s updates and upload your pictures from any web enabled mobile device (just point your browser to m.twitxr.com). Posting via email has also been optimized and works on any device with email support (simply attach your picture and send it to Twitxr, here some detailed instructions).
The new Facebook app not only automatically saves your posts to your Photos on Facebook and shares them with your friends, it also displays a box in your profile with your latest Twitx and lets you see your friends’ posts on the application page.
A blog badge tool allows you to put the same box with your latest picture on your blog or Myspace or any other website, just copy and paste two lines of code.
You can now easily invite your friends on Gmail, Hotmail, Yahoo and MSN to join you on Twitxr, see your pictures and share their own.
Twitxr keeps posting your updates to Twitter and Flickr, meaning that you can have all your friends on these platforms see your pictures and read the messages you send using Twitxr. Integration with other popular platforms will keep coming. Send your suggestions to contact at twitxr.com.
As an experiment in Fon we have opened Gmail access in all foneras. We have done this for a while now but we are now promoting this feature. This means that regardless of whether you are a fonero or not (foneros are members of the Fon community who share WiFi) when you find a Fonspot you can check your Gmail. You can also check any Google service including search, maps, news, and so long as you stay inside Google you can surf for free. We are doing this for three reasons. One to thank Google as an investor in Fon. Secondly because at Fon we all use many Google services and so do millions of people around the world and we appreciate the quick access. Third and most important for Fon, because since we opened the 15 minute free access on all Fonspots we have seen that many more people use Fon and even if they are not WiFi donors (foneros) they pay for Fon (buy day passses as Aliens). There was a debate at Fon on whether if we gave free access we would sell more or less passes to Aliens but now the answer is clear. We sell more passes because Aliens now know the service works well before they pay.
We believe that Gmail users will love the fact that Fon lets them check their email without paying or donating. And we think that this will encourage people to become Foneros as most people who use gmail also do many other things, like go to Microsoft sites, or Yahoo, or big local portals like Terra, or Facebok and other social communities and all the other wonderful things that the net has to offer. To do that they will either have to become Foneros by buying a Fonera or buy an Alien day pass. In any way Fon will grow faster.
Fon is always free for those who share so those who share will not be affected. Fon also protects those who share in two ways, one is with a firewall and encrypted personal access so nobody from the outside can enter their network and secondly with a bandwidth throttle that limits those who use their fonera to a small portion of their bandwidth.
To become a Fonero all you need to do is buy a Fon router at our online shop, connect it and never pay again when you connect away from home. If you would like to know if there are any foneros in your city you can go to our maps.