How to Data Roam on the Cheap

By | November 22, 2011
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This week’s column in the WSJ is about finding cheap data roaming connections on the road. I’ll be the first to admit I wasn’t very successful, and hope readers may have better luck than I. But here in the meantime are some suggestions:

Free WiFi connections:

  • AnchorFree offers free WiFi hotspots via partners, in return for ads. Good idea, but poor website.
  • Fon allows members to get free WiFi from other members in returning for sharing their own. Non members can buy WiFi cheaply. More here.

WiFi roaming services

  • iPass Not cheap, but you might already have an account if you have a broadband connection. Check out via your ISP’s website or by checking out the reseller locator link.
  • Boingo offers three packages – Unlimited (North America only; $22 a month), Global ($40 a month) or AsYouGO ($8 within North America, $10 globally.) Once again, you may already have an account if you have a broadband or a mobile broadband account elsewhere.

Alliances

  • Wireless Broadband Alliance (site not active at the moment) supposedly offers a wireless broadband roaming to members of more than 25 service providers, but until the site comes back up I can’t really confirm this. StarHub says it’s a member, and that subscribers to its cellular, broadband or even TV services can use sister WiFi connections for free.
  • Conexus is an alliance of seven operators in Asia which promises flat-rate per-day data roaming. This is good news but won’t be ready until next year (2008).
  • BridgeAlliance an alliance of 11 operators in Asia which offers Bridge DataRoam, a one-flat rate across 11 territories: Airtel (India), AIS (Thailand), CSL (Hong Kong), CTM (Macau), Globe Telecom (Philippines), Maxis (Malaysia), SK Telecom (Korea), SingTel Mobile (Singapore), SingTel Optus (Australia), Taiwan Mobile (Taiwan) and Telkomsel (Indonesia). Four more will be added in the next few weeks: Maxis in Malaysia, SK Telecom in Korea, Singtel Optus in Australia and CSL in Hong Kong. Plans are US$30 for 15MB (Bridge DataRoam15) or US$60 for 40MB (Bridge DataRoam40).

Odds and ends

  • If you have a UK bank account you could sign up for vodafone’s Mobile Broadband service which costs £9.99 per 24 hrs (500 MB limit).

Investigation Step #1: Google Suspect

By | November 22, 2011
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image

Every journalist (and police officer, for that matter) should start their investigative work with a Google search. They may find it’s all they need.

You’ve probably read by now of the disappearance, reappearance and arrest of the former British prison officer John Darwin, who turned up at a police station this month saying he’d lost his memory after a kayak incident in 2002. Everyone was relieved, including his wife, who had apparently reconciled herself to his passing and moved to Panama a week earlier. But one person was skeptical: an unnamed woman who turned to Google, as this Guardian story by Matthew Weaver reports:

A single mother put police and journalists to shame in their attempts to unravel the mysterious reappearance of the canoeist John Darwin by using a simple Google search, it emerged yesterday.

The woman found the picture that apparently shows Darwin with his wife, Anne, in Panama City in July last year.

When confronted with the picture, which was published in the Daily Mirror yesterday, Anne Darwin is reported to have admitted: “Yes, that’s him. My sons will never forgive me.”

The photograph was available on a website of the firm Move to Panama. It was found by the anonymous woman after she tapped in the words “John, Anne and Panama” into Google. She forwarded the picture to Cleveland police and the Mirror. She said that when she sent the picture to detectives, she was told: “You’re joking.”

I believe she actually did a Google image search, which, at the time of writing, still throws up the same image as the number one result, although the actual image has been removed from the site.

Police and journalists should share the shame and blame for not doing some basic Google sleuthing.

Caught in the web | Special reports | Guardian Unlimited

Broadband on a Moving Bus

By | November 22, 2011
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I don’t know if it’s anything to do with my recent column  (probably not) about the need for flat data rates(“The Price is Wrong,” from Nov 2’s WSJ.com), but m1 of Singapore is now offering unlimited data for its mobile broadband plans. So now you can get 512 kbps for about $15 a month, 1.8 Mbps for about $25, and 3.6 Mbps for $45.

I use the 512 kbps service and frankly, it’s fast enough for me. Of course, with the island state embracing free WiFi this all becomes a bit academic at some point, but I still find it easier to crank up the Huawei modem than log in to the WiFi, and there’s something about surfing on a bus that is positively liberating. Not something I ever tried on the moving robbery carts that are buses in Jakarta, I must say.

M1 broadband

Sodden Feet

By | November 22, 2011
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Sodden Feet
Originally uploaded by Loose Wire.

Standing at the bus stop outside one of Singapore’s most impressive-looking office buildings, I couldn’t help but wonder whether the architects who design these things have ever actually visited the site, or have ever stood at a bus stop for that matter.

Admittedly it’s been raining heavily all day, but the torrent of water running off the paving and over commuters’ feet was staggering. With no drains or diversions to stop it, the rain was an estuary rushing for the delta of the street, and we poor soaked bus takers were in the way.

Great looking building, not designed for people.

Closed for Business

By | November 22, 2011
3 Comments

051220071273
Originally uploaded by Loose Wire.

I’m amazed by how many restaurants, cafes and bars scare away business by not allowing patrons to use their power outlets.
In Hong Kong, the manager at Dan Ryans in Pacific Place said they were worried that people recharging phones or running laptops off their outlets would damage the circuitry or, somewhat less plausibly, interfere with the train set that runs above the tables and bar.
In coffee club in Singapore, I noticed the above: tape over all the power outlets.
Sorry, but this kind of thing is lame, especially when the place is empty. If they’re scared folk are just going to buy one drink and lounge all day, so be it, but I don’t see many people doing that, to be honest. Better would be an approach that said, here, use our power, just don’t do it when we’ve got a restaurant full and people waiting. Instead, I found myself sitting in an empty cafe save a woman complaining to a man about how hard it was for a beautiful woman to grow old.