2007 has been a remarkable year for Devicescape. Although we slyly turned on the service in December ’06, we were in stealth mode until our announcement at DEMO in February. Back then, we supported only three networks: T-Mobile (since there’s a Starbuck$ across the road serving as our test environment), FON (because we’re FON fans), and Google Mountain View (because resistance is futile they’re a useful model for muni installations). Over the course of 2007 we started adding networks, initially by visiting locations ourselves, but later by asking our members to report. Now, we have close to 1000 different networks in our system, and it’s growing rapidly. We have most of the big commercial networks, of course, but the great thing about Devicescape is being able to provide access where our members need it. It’s really exciting for us to see all the usage at local and community networks, especially universities, throughout the world.
Similar to our network growth, we’ve also seen a widening of device support. The distribution on Nokia phones has been cool, swelling our membership along with surprising adoption on the iPhone and iPod Touch (big thanks to Null River for their installer application). It’s somewhat ironic that Devicescape was designed to bring seamless access to simple, low-end devices, and here we are being used on super high-end, multimedia devices with big screens and fat browsers. Weird. It just goes to show what a pain the current sign-in process is, and how people will do anything to avoid it! Next year we should see the fruit of our labors as brand new devices start shipping with Devicescape embedded and a new set of consumers receive seamless access.
Best wishes to all of you and have a safe and happy holiday.