Author Archives: JJ Halans

Free wifi at eastern Sydney libraries

Anna from Woollahra Council lets us know about…
“more free Sydney wifi – now at the Paddington and Double Bay branches of Woollahra Council Library in eastern Sydney. At Double Bay, the network reaches through most of the surrounding gardens too – it’s a beautiful spot and lots of things to help with concentration and/or procrastination! [...]

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Barcamp Sydney 4

We were once again present at Barcamp Sydney on November 15, at UNSW’s Roundhouse. Liam brought in his Meraki with a booster antena, so we promptly recruited him to keep an eye out for things on the network. We started out unthrotled, using the university’s network, but it turned out some people were abusing it, [...]

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Tackling Social Poverty – Blog Action Day

Poverty manifests itself through different guises. When we think of poverty, we’d immediately recall a homeless person or a malnourished African child, a reflection of economical poverty. Social poverty is the result of lack of social capital. As per J.D. Lewandowski, “the concept of social capital refers to the networks of social trust and social [...]

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Free Australia Wireless at Web Directions South 2008

In just over a week Web Directions South, the major Australian Web development conference, kicks of with 2-day workshops and a 2-day conference at the Sydney Expo in Darling Harbour. Free Australia Wireless will be meshing the conference area, so meet us there!
The traditional Port80 pre-Web Directions South (night before the conference) drinks are on [...]

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Municipal Wifi 2.0 = Community Wifi 1.0?

San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom gets the point, over at San Francisco’s SFGate:
San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom said Wednesday that citywide wireless Internet access is slowly becoming a reality despite political infighting – and that 144,000 residents will be surfing the Web for free by the end of the year at no cost to the [...]

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Mobile Monday – WiMAX v 3G+

Next Sydney Mobile Monday is about WiMAX and 3G/4G, euh, next Monday. There is a WiMAX demo and a panel discussion between Mobile and WiMAX operators.
There will also be an introduction to a UTS post-grad project: iWiFi:
Course director Linda Leung : “The goal of the iWiFi project is to create a business model and technical [...]

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ACMA takes notice

ACMA takes notice as it publishes its Top 5 Trends (pdf) in new communications services, applications and emerging technologies to keep an eye out on for the next five years, including Mesh Networks. There’s even an honourable mention of SydneyFreeNet.

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Hotzone How-To

A quick one.
If you’re thinking of setting up a local hotzone, a nice How-To: Set up a Wi-Fi Hotzone Using Meraki part 1 / part 2. Nice general overview, but could be a bit more in depth. (yes, we’ll need to write one ourselves.)

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Free Australia Wireless at BarCamp

BarCamp Sydney v3 has passed again. We set up a wireless network for attendees to use.  With the Internet connection handled by UNSW, so plenty of bandwidth, we set up two gateway nodes and one repeater (one Outdoor and two Mini’s). Of course, we could easily manage the splashpage with a BarCamp welcome, as well [...]

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Wireless World Day 2

Another great day at Wireless World. More positive feedback, support and best wishes – which was really encouraging. Mark Pesce gave a presentation titled “Everywhere” at the main speaking slot at the Wireless and Mobility Summit.
Lots of people were interested in being involved in the project with some even committing to participate in the next [...]

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