Easy WiFi selected for iRiver's eBook Readers

Posted on April 29, 2010

iRiver announced today that they are using Easy WiFi to provide global hotspot connectivity for their eBook readers!  The announcement showed the iRiver Story as a first recipient. Of course eReaders are just one category of emerging WiFi devices, but a good one for Easy WiFi.  The devices typically don’t include web browsers and need to be simple for all types of people to use.  Manually logging into public networks is so incredibly painful it’s doubtful users would really subject themselves to it. Easy WiFi gives iRiver’s users the capability to choose the WiFi providers they want, and be logged in automatically.  And, since Easy WiFi supports thousands of providers all over the world, iRiver get a single solution for a global market.

Eye-Fi and Easy WiFi

Posted on April 27, 2010

Eye-Fi announced today that their new X2 cards are being upgraded with Easy WiFi!  If you don’t know Eye-Fi, they make super cool SD storage cards for digital cameras which contains a WiFi chip that can automatically upload your photos to the web. What this means for users is that they can now upload their pictures all over the world, at the many hundreds of Easy WiFi Network locations!  Imagine being able to share your photos quickly, have “endless storage” because your card is never full, and have a web backup in case you lose your camera.  The Eye-Fi card does all that! We’re very excited to be working with Eye-Fi.  Aside from a great product, it’s an amazing example of what Easy WiFi can do.  An SD card is a challenging environment to say the least – despite the lack of UI and limited resources, Easy WiFi still allows the X2 card to access a world of WiFi automatically. Congrats to our partners at Eye-Fi for this groundbreaking new product!  Learn more at eye.fi.

Q1 2010 WiFi Report – A Wish List

Posted on April 23, 2010

We just completed the Q1 survey for our quarterly WiFi Report, where we probe into the opinions of our membership about WiFi.  I thought I would share a few of the interesting findings. Check these charts out (sorry for the squeezed font size): Bit of an obvious response, perhaps, given that the survey was done to the Easy WiFi membership, but it’s still a big datapoint for device manufacturers.  With so much attention on 3G connectivity it’s great to know that there’s such demand for WiFi. So, if users want WiFi enablement, what types of devices do they use today? Today it’s a PC and smartphone market.  What’s in the shopping wish-list though? The iPad is a runaway hit with almost 59% of respondents wanting one!  This could have something to do with the survey being conducted right at the peak of the iPad launch, of course.  Number 2 is for digital cameras.  Interesting.  Having lost an SD card full of vacation photos last year I love the idea of photos being stored up on the web! Check back later for more insights.  If you’re interested in getting a copy of the WiFi Report you can request it here and…

Apple 1, Nokia 0

Posted on April 23, 2010

First the good news: Easy WiFi is back in the Apple App Store.  Yay!  Now the bad news: Easy WiFi is out of Nokia Ovi  Huh?! Yes, it’s been quite interesting recently with these App Stores.  In the case of Apple, we’ve been out of the store for a while, reworking the app and resubmitting to conform to their every changing policies.  Still, we’re very happy to be back and looking forward to getting some real development done that adds value in a future release. For Ovi, distribution was halted because of a policy change for products containing encryption.  Quite draconian.  We’re not alone in being impacted, and it’s probably going to take a month or two to sort out.  Meanwhile, Nokia users can download the app directly from us at www.easywifi.com/download. Although we’ve been quiet for a while, there lot’s of new development activity at Devicescape.  There will be a bunch of new releases coming soon, and you’ll see them first on Android.  See if you can guess why!