It looks like the challenge to blog the UK political conferences is looking up. VoxPolitics is acting as the hub. At least for Brighton (Labour Brighton Centre, Brighton from 26-30 September 2004), there's free Wifi on the beach.

Now what about the Conservatives (Bournemouth Monday 4th to Thursday 7th October 2004) and the Lib-Dems (Bournemouth (19-23 September) ?

Are there any Ecademists from the South of England that fancy getting in there and telling us and the world what's really going on?

See also my aggregator of UK political blogging. [from: JB Ecademy]

AKMA's Random Thoughts: So Weirdly Wrong This is a story from the good Rev AKMA about using a laptop while sitting on a park bench outside a library. Now AKMA is not exactly a threatening looking person. And sitting on a park bench using a laptop never used to be a crime in the USA. But he describes being hassled by a policeman because he was "stealing" Wifi from the library. When he dutifully shut down WiFi and then showed the policeman that his Apple had no antenna symbol he still got moved along. “It’s a federal law, sir; a Secret Service agent came and explained it to us.” Now the library offers free WiFi but apparently being outside the libraries doors doesn't make it ok to use it.

I don't know where to begin with this story. I could start ranting about police states but that doesn't help anyone. I could ask where the Library's T&Cs were but there probably aren't any. I don't know if they used a captive portal with a click through to a T&C page, but I'm willing to bet that probably all they've got is a photocopied sheet on a pinboard. I could rant about the morality and legality of using open WiFi internet access that you happen to find but then we'd get into another clone of the usual pointless arguments with bad metaphors about whether it is actually illegal or moral. In any case, here AKMA was using a deliberately open, deliberately free access point.

As one wag put it, maybe the policeman was sponsored by Starbucks and got his donuts via T-Mobile. But that's a cheap shot.

I do kind of wonder if laptops with WiFi are now instruments of terrorism along with toenail clippers. Can we expect the police to start rounding up people in Bryant Park with laptops open? Especially with the RNC coming up? Oh dear. And I said I wouldn't rant about police states as well.

Really, the whole episode is just bizarre...
[from: JB Ecademy]

Linksys, Vonage connect on VoIP | CNET News.com

Linksys and Netgear have announced Wireless access points and routers that have two analogue phone ports that work with the Vonage VoIP system. Linksys also have a plug in module that converts an existing ethernet port to an analogue phone point.

While I welcome it, the big question for me is how closed this is. Can you use other services apart from Vonage? [from: JB Ecademy]

Get Paid to Wardrive

Quaterscope is building a database of access point locations to build a cheap and dirty location system. They're paying $0.01 to $0.05 per access point-GPS

Anyone for Cellphone Cell-ID-Lat/Long collection?

BTW. I'm still on the lookout for a really cheap NMEA compatible GPS add on for a laptop. New, 2nd hand I don't care, just as long as it's NMEA compatible and will work with a laptop. Anyone? Anyone want to sell me one? [from: JB Ecademy]

Following yesterday's news about record oil prices. OPEC is pumping to capacity. Iraq is effectively off-stream. China is now the second largest oil importer after the USA and ahead of Japan. China's oil imports are growing at 20% a year.

Something's got to give. This wasn't supposed to happen for another 10-20 years. Looks like the curse of "Interesting times" is upon us. So how do we get out of this one?

Detailed analysis here. [from: JB Ecademy]

Blunkett's latest initiative (don't get me started) to get tough on crime (and the causes of crime) is an initiative to banish the scourge of graffiti from our inner cities.

I dont have a problem with graffiti. I have a problem with how bad it all is. If all graffiti artists were as good as Banksy, I wouldn't mind a bit. But the vast majority consists of little more than a hasty and unreadable tag layered on top of hundreds of other hasty tags.

Rather than an on the spot fine or temporary incarceration in a police cell, maybe what we should actually be doing is sending them to art school. [from: JB Ecademy]

MS have a beta of a Web version of MSN Messenger.

Unfortunately you can't be in two places at once, so if you sign into this it will knock you off a real MSN messenger somewhere else. [from: JB Ecademy]

I'm looking for UK Political Blogs, commentators and newsfeeds. Can anyone recommend some good lists or URLs? [from: JB Ecademy]

Late last year and this year has seen a huge increase in the use of the internet by the USA political parties and action groups. From the Dean campaign to the (somewhat fake) weblogs from the Presidential Election candidates, to Kerry's donation drive, to bloggers at the Democratic Convention, to local activist websites, it feels like they've finally embraced the Internet as a means to do politics.

By contrast, the UK's political use of the net is primitive and stuck in a time warp from 5-8 years ago. There are some bright spots in sites like They Work For You but that's about it. Quite a lot of MPs have websites. But they are generally static, driven by Frontpage and rarely updated. The main sites are formulaic with no community, no route to talk back, no attempt to engage. Amazingly the Conservatives have an RSS feed of news but they are alone. There's surprisingly few weblogs that focus on UK Politics.

Generally the Internet side of UK politics looks about as apathetic and uninterested as the offline side.

So what I'm looking for is people who can help change this. Specifically,

- An email writing campaign at anyone involved to encourage them to build interactive community sites and to get the current sites to generate RSS from the existing news pages. This includes the major media. The BBC, Independant, Scotsman have RSS feeds. That's all. The Telegraph and Guardian have some feeds but nothing specifically on Politics.

- People who can build and host community sites for local political chapters and activist groups.

- People prepared to lobby their MP or councillors to start a blog. And if they won't, to start a blog on their behalf.

- People who can try and get themselves accredited to the upcoming party Conferences as "Blogging Journalists" and then provide an alternate view to the traditional big media TV clip of "Auld Lang Syne".

- New and interesting hacks that leverage the existing sites in the style of FaxYourMP or Public Whip.

I'm sure there are plenty of other ideas. The aim is to try and drag UK politics into the 21st century.

If enough (any!) people come forwards, we can at least start a club here on Ecademy and then whatever else it takes.

As a start I threw together a site over the weekend that provides an aggregated view of all the news and Blog sites I could find in UK Politics. This was inspired by a US site that did the same thing for the Democratic party convention. [from: JB Ecademy]

Cox hoists broadband speed limits | CNET News.com

So now they're offering 4Mbps down, 512Kbps up for $39.95 or about £22 pm. That's about the same price as NTL's 600Kbps/128Kbps (shortly becoming 750Kbps). They have a premium service at 5Mbps.

So tell me again why NTL/Telewest is slower and/or more expensive And where does this end with current technology? Around 10Mbps? [from: JB Ecademy]

MP hits back over spoof weblog

Proxy Blogs for MPs hits pay dirt. Compare the proxy here with David Lepper's official site here. Even a blind bat could not mistake one for the other.

I particularly liked these comments from David and others.
Mr Lepper said: "It's highly objectionable that someone is posting information on the internet claiming it has been written by me. "I'm particularly concerned because there is an email address given which purports to be my own. "I would hate anyone to think the responses from this address came from me."
The MP believes he was contacted by the author of the web site who complained his real web site has not been updated. Dr Nick Palmer, secretary of the all-party Parliamentary internet group, said: "Blackmailing MPs into creating blogs is not the best way. If they want the MP to blog, they should get in touch and ask. "David Lepper is a serious and dedicated MP and does not deserve to be ripped off in this way."

I wonder which bit of Almost David Lepper, MP. I'm NOT David Lepper, the MP for Brighton Pavilion. Brighton Pavilion has to be one of the most wired places on the planet. I believe in democracy and I believe in the media networking revolution. I believe MPs should blog. If David Lepper, MP, did blog, it might look something like this. they find hard to understand?

I guess David prefers to keep his head down and out of the blog spotlight. Welcome to the Internet, David!

Incidently I discovered all this from a news aggregator of UK Political blogs that I recently launched.

[Edited to add] Compare this with Alan Milburn The proxy author went in to an MP Surgery and has convinced Alan to allocate one of his constituency workers to start posting items to the blog. [from: JB Ecademy]

LinkedIn was on the front page of the business section of The Times today.

Does anyone know the journalist, Elizabeth Judge, or David Bishop, of the Federation of Small Businesses, who said: "We think there is no substitute for personal contact. Face-to-face meetings remain the best way of doing business."? [from: JB Ecademy]

This article proves the point.Prescott leaps to aid of kayaker. Prescott is surely the best Prime Minister we've (n)ever had since nothing bad ever happens during his watch. And he's not afraid to get stuck in when the worst happens.

It must be wonderful for Tony Blair to relax in the Tuscany countryside secure in the knowledge that the country is in such safe hands.

*Grin*!
[from: JB Ecademy]

See What You Share on P2P is a site that provides examples of documents that were found on P2P file sharing networks. These were almost certainly not shared deliberately but turn up because people do stupid things like share their whole C: drive.

So if you or your children (or parents, or employees) use file sharing systems, please make sure that the first thing you do is to limit sharing to a directory you actually want to share and to people you actually want to share with. This is probably something like "c:My Musiclibrary" and "People on my user list".

While we're at it, be careful of which P2P file sharing system you install. Most of the well known ones are riddled with spyware. I spent a happy 2 hours last night removing all traces of Kazaa and all it's spyware from my son's computer and replacing it with Kazaa Light Resurrection. The first is a nasty collection of browser enhancers, popup managers and intrusive advertising, the second is a nicely hacked and improved version that is completely clean.

And please people can we not have a huge thread attached to this about the immorality and legality or otherwise of P2P sharing. This has been a public service announcement on the associated dangers of sharing not promotion or otherwise. It happens. It exists. Deal with it. [from: JB Ecademy]

PBS | I, Cringely . Archived Column

He's let his imagination run a little far, but it's a good intro to what can be done with alternate Linux distributions loaded onto a commodity, cheap wireless router. [from: JB Wifi]

Symbian loophole 'threatens operator revenue' | The Register : The Symbian Series 60 OS works in a similar fashion to a Microsoft Windows PC. The user can install new applications and software while also uploading a range of consumer content such as ringtones and Java games.

From such simple content to complete service offerings such as mobile music or instant messaging, an open OS can bypass, and therefore potentially eliminate, any revenue from these services, according to Mako.

Wait a minute. An open environment on a commodity device means that the supplier cannot make money from the distribution of content and applications? Well Shock Horror! As a consumer, all I can say is "about time". But I guess if the network's business plan is dependent on screwing money out of *everything* a consumer does this might come as a bit of a shock.

If we look to the past and the development of PCs, an open platform was a huge driver to innovation. The difference now is that the networks aren't in the hardware business, they're in the enabling business. And when there's less to enable, there's less opportunity to profit. Over time I think we'll see lots of fairly stupid activity from the networks to try and stop this, but eventually they will become commodity suppliers of connectivity, and nothing else, in the same way as the broadband ISPs. [from: JB Wifi]

The State Of Wireless London is an excellent analysis of WiFi coverage in London. Particularly interesting is the effect of WiFi APs that have been installed with everything on default. "In fact the coverage is such that just considering the percentage of nodes either open intentionally or by default, there already exists a wireless freenetwork in much of the city." It would seem that the "Default Community Network" is thriving

London and the UK is still very under-represented in the various war driving maps. Can anyone help to rectify this? Can anyone lend me (or buy me!) a GPS?

[from: JB Wifi]

The Wi-Fi explosion: a virus writer's dream | The Register is an article apparently about the way that the proliferation of open unsecured Access points makes it possible to launch a virus with almost perfect anonymity. Shock Horror. But there is another side to the coin.

At the weekend I was at NotCon and there was a talk given on the legal issues of setting up a comunity wireless broadband network. The speakers were still worrying about the same issues as 3 years ago. It was all about signed agreements and T&Cs and commercial, legal entities to provide the access.

The truth is that the genie is out of the box. Wireless routers can be had from PC World or Amazon for less than £75 or ($75). Broadband is relatively cheap and people are buying it. Put the two together and turn on the power and WiFi "just works". Since most people don't have the knowledge or inclination to mess with the sttings any further than that (why fix it if it ain't broke) the "Factory Default Community" is alive and well. In fact it's now ubiquitous in any moderately urban area. Last time I went looking, I had to walk 100 yards in Faringdon to find an open connection. Even in boring, provincial Hertford, there's an open access point every 400 yards or so.

So whether we think it's a good thing or not and whether it's deliberate or not, and whether it's illegal or not, widespread open WiFi is already here.

Which means that the end point of the internet just went completely out of control.

So now what do we do? [from: JB Wifi]

Warchalking || London: British Library : The British Library has free Wifi access in their cafe and resturaunt until June 30

Does anyone know which hotspot provider they're using or what the charge will be after 30th June? [from: JB Wifi]

Feelings of Insecurity is an article about the 4th World Wide War Drive.

288,000 access points found
> 50 percent with no security
30 percent with default SSID

So the Factory Default Community Network is alive and well. Now is this a good thing or a bad thing?
[from: JB Wifi]