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05/18/2013 10:26:35 Daily, February 07A Brilliant Idea For Making Money By Giving Away Wi-Fi
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In This Issue:
1. Editor's Note: A Brilliant Idea For Making Money By Giving Away Wi-Fi
2. Today's Top Story
- Islamic Messages Deface Hundreds Of Danish Sites
- Microsoft Says Kama Sutra Overblown
- Spyware Triples During 2005
3. Breaking News
- Jobs Report: Salaries Up For The Highly Skilled
- Bush Proposes $64 Billion Federal IT Budget
- Internet Expected To Influence Nearly Half Of Total Retail Sales
- Intel Turns On Virtualization Technology In 'Paxville' Processors
- Apple Offers 1GB iPod Nano For $149
- HP To Acquire OuterBay
- Intel Seeks Rebound In PDA Processors
- Oracle Lifts Lid On Transportation Management
- First Person: Point-Of-Sale Becomes Pop Culture At The Apple Store
4. Grab Bag
- Hotels Offer Incentives For Positive Reviews On Travel Sites
- Agencies Track Internet Afterlife For Super Bowl Ads
- Blowing the Horn for Other People's Blogs
- Robotic Toys Take Stage at Demo Conference
5. In Depth: Internet Business
- Google, Telecom Execs Stir Up The Internet Access Debate On Capitol Hill
- AOL, Yahoo Plan To Launch Paid Certified E-Mail Service
- Demo To Feature Search, E-Mail, RSS Tools
- Welcome To The Blogosphere: Population 27.2 Million And Growing
- Google Embeds IM Into E-Mail
6. Voice Of Authority
- GM's Outsourcing Risk: Vendor 'Dream Team' Can't Be Anything Less Than Gold Medalists
7. White Papers
- Single Sign-on: Putting An End To The Password-Management Nightmare
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Quote of the day:
"Nobody in the game of football should be called a genius. A genius is somebody like Norman Einstein." -- Joe Theismann
You know one of the things that make it great to be me? I've been doing this business-technology journalism thing for 17 years now, and still, every once in a while, I stumble across something that makes me want to exclaim, "Brilliant!"
For example: Fon is working to build a volunteer network of Wi-Fi hot-spots. The idea is that anybody can download software, install it on their Wi-Fi access points, and run a public-access hot-spot on the Fon network.
Fon is now in beta, but when it rolls out, it plans to offer three tiers of service: "Aliens" are just plain customers, no different from people who subscribe to public-access, paid Wi-Fi networks like the T-Mobile service.
So far, nothing new there. But here's where it starts to get brilliant.
The second level of service is called "Bill," named for Bill Gates. These are people who are renting out their Wi-Fi hot-spots, through Fon. The Aliens of the world use Wi-Fi provided by Bills, and Fon and the owners of the access point split the proceeds.
What that means is: You know the access point in your guest bedroom? The one that your partner says is horribly ugly and clashes with the curtains? The one that sits there and collects cat hair all week? You can be making money off of that thing!
Isn't that brilliant?
The third level of Fon membership is called Linus, for Linus Torvalds, who invented Linux. Linus members share their Wi-Fi access for free, and are entitled to use other Fon access points for free.
Another thing that makes Fon brilliant is that they have an admirably playful marketing sense. A
playful marketing plan won't make a losing company a winner. (I saw the Pets.com sock puppet panhandling for Snausages on a street corner the other day; it was heartbreaking.) But it can push a good company over the top, by capturing consumers' fancies.
Fon still has several obstacles. First: Is it legal? Many consumer Internet service providers have strict rules against sharing connections.
If that hurdle can be surmounted, it's still unknown whether the business model will work. Sure, Fon's business plan is brilliant, but lots of business ideas that seem brilliant shrivel and die in the real world.
One of the reasons that brilliant business ideas fail is that they simply run out of money. Fon got some help clearing that hurdle this week when it got $21.7 million funding from companies including Google and Vonage.
What do you think? Will Fon succeed? What other crazy, brilliant business ideas are in their infancy on the Internet? Leave a message on the InformationWeek Weblog and let us know.
Mitch Wagner
Islamic Messages Deface Hundreds Of Danish Sites
Related Stories:
Microsoft Says Kama Sutra Overblown
Spyware Triples During 2005
Jobs Report: Salaries Up For The Highly Skilled
Bush Proposes $64 Billion Federal IT Budget
Internet Expected To Influence Nearly Half Of Total Retail Sales
Intel
Turns On Virtualization Technology In 'Paxville' Processors
Apple Offers 1GB iPod Nano For $149
HP To Acquire OuterBay
Intel Seeks Rebound In PDA Processors
Oracle Lifts Lid On Transportation Management
First Person: Point-Of-Sale Becomes Pop Culture At The Apple Store
John Soat with "Tough News" in the current episode of The News Show.
In the current episode:
Eric Chabrow with "Payroll Realities"
Lori MacVittie with "Patent Loss Poses Problem"
Peter Gorenstein with "Super Bowl R.O.I"
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How Does China's Information Security Measure up?
-----------------------------------------
Hotels Offer Incentives For Positive Reviews On Travel Sites (New York Times)
Agencies Track Internet Afterlife For Super Bowl Ads (New York Times)
Blowing the Horn For Other People's Blogs (New York Times)
Robotic Toys Take Stage At DEMO Conference (Yahoo News)
Google, Telecom Execs Stir Up The Internet Access Debate On
Capitol Hill
AOL, Yahoo Plan To Launch Paid Certified E-Mail Service
Demo To Feature Search, E-Mail, RSS Tools
Welcome To The Blogosphere: Population 27.2 Million And Growing
Google Embeds IM Into E-Mail
GM's Outsourcing Risk: Vendor 'Dream Team' Can't Be Anything Less
Than Gold Medalists
Single Sign-on: Putting An End To The Password-Management Nightmare
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InformationWeek Daily Newsletter
1. Editor's Note: A Brilliant Idea For Making Money By Giving Away Wi-Fi
mwagner@cmp.com
www.informationweek.com
Muslim protests over editorial cartoons originally published by a Danish newspaper have spilled onto the Internet.
A manager of Microsoft's antivirus development team warned that overhyping threats could lead to a "cry wolf" syndrome where future alerts aren't taken seriously.
Spyware tripled during 2005, became ever-more sophisticated and stealthy, and attached itself to U.S. computers at rates above any other country, a security company says.
The Yoh Index of Technology Wages reported Monday that IT wages increased 3.1% overall in the fourth quarter of 2005 over the like quarter in the previous year. Oracle database experts and SAP specialists are among the higher-paid workers.
The slight increase would mostly benefit civil agencies, with the Defense Department's budget remaining flat.
Within four years, 71% of people with a Web connection will use
the Internet to shop, compared with 65% last year,
JupiterResearch says.
The idea is to shift some of the heavy lifting necessary to run
multiple operating systems from software to the Xeon processor.
Apple Computer unveiled a 1-Gbyte iPod nano for $149 Tuesday, filling
out the flash-memory-based nano family on the low-price end.
OuterBay's archiving software could help boost Hewlett-Packard's
database performance by as much as 80%, the firm claims.
The chipmaker is looking to regain its footing in the processor
market for PDAs -- a business that is heating up again, according
to IC Insights.
Oracle on Tuesday unveiled Oracle Transportation Management, a
platform which provides visibility into the flow of goods across
the supply chain.
Heather Clancy gets a backstage pass to an Apple Store on opening
night, and learns how retail space becomes a pop-culture hit.
Fed budget increases IT spending, Google boots BMW and Ricoh and
blogs -- everyone's got one...
Payrolls at IT services and software companies are on the rise
while payrolls are down at computer makers.
Microsoft's recent patent loss may complicate things for users of
Office Professional.
Advertisers make Super Bowl XL ads available for free on several Websites.
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4. Grab Bag: News You Need From Around The Web
Web sites that publish hotel reviews from guests are becoming
more influential, and some chains are cheating to beat the game.
Madison Avenue is monitoring downloads and online discussion of
the more than 50 commercials that appeared during Super Bowl XL
on Sunday.
A number of blogs and Web sites devoted to travel issues carve out
niches that simply do not exist in print or broadcast travel journalism.
Sony may have put its Aibo robotic dogs to sleep, but the
inventor of the popular Furby toy said on Tuesday the market for
toy animatrons is anything but extinct.
5. In Depth: Internet Business
The issue is network neutrality: Should telecom and cable
companies charge premiums for companies such as Google and Skype
that benefit from broadband pipes?
Companies will be able to pay to bypass spam filters and get
their messages delivered directly to users' in-boxes. Critics say
the service is a step backward, and violates the spirit of the Internet.
The annual conference focuses on live demos of innovative
technology; products and services debuting this week include a
search engine for software developers that looks for source code
and technical specs on the Web; and the debut of a vendor offering
enterprise software for companies with 10 or fewer employees.
A new blog is created every second and the phenomenon has grown
60 times larger than it was three years ago, says Technorati in
its periodic State of the Blogosphere report.
Seeking to play catch up in the instant messaging market, Google
is offering a new service that embeds IM into its existing
E-mail. Ditching the technical divide that exists between
browsers and messaging software will let users chat from a Google
Web-browser window, alongside their E-mails.
Paul McDougall says: General Motors' handoff of up to $15 billion
in technology contracts to a handful of service
providers--including one offshore player--represents more than
just a make-or-break IT strategy. It's a test case for the notion
that bitter rivals can be forced to play nicely together on
behalf of a single customer.
Password protection is inherently insecure, leaving your network vulnerable to attack. In this informative paper you will learn how single sign-on solutions can help assure heightened security and compliance, reduce administrative complexity and costs, and improve the user experience.
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