Serengeti: Where your Safari begins

Posted on March 23, 2009

For those who hadn’t already found it, Serengeti is a free app from Devicescape that includes the Easy Wi-Fi functionality and streamlines access to the web while in a hotspot that needs a web based login. How does it work? Serengeti is a very simple front end to Safari. On the cellular network, or your home Wi-Fi, it runs a quick check that you can connect to the internet, and then launches Safari with your selected home page (a side benefit is that you can now define a home page too). The magic comes if you are on a hotspot network, like the AT&T one in Starbucks. When Serengeti encounters a hotspot network like that, it will use Devicescape’s Easy Wi-Fi technology to log you in before it launches Safari. What do I need to use it? You need two things to use Serengeti: A free Devicescape Easy Wi-Fi account, which you can sign up for on the web, or directly from the app’s setup screen; Access to the hotspots you plan to use. Devicescape can handle logging you at lots of commercial networks if you have an account that works for them (e.g. your AT&T iPhone number, which can…

Easy Wi-Fi for App Developers

Posted on March 3, 2009

We just released a brand new product called Serengeti for iPhones and iPod touches.  Shockingly, Apple moved it through the approval process in just a few days, catching us quite by surprise!  We’re pleased about the app because we think it’s a neat workaround to the “Black Hole” problem that John mentioned a couple of posts back.  But, more significantly, it represents a new capability for us: Easy Wi-Fi for Application Developers! Serengeti is the first application that’s Easy Wi-Fi enabled. It embeds a small Easy Wi-Fi library which is used to ensure you have a network connection and log you into your Wi-Fi provider if it’s necessary.  Serengeti does this to streamline your web surfing, but it’s easy to think about the applicability of this approach for many other iPhone apps that benefit from Wi-Fi. Integration of the library is very easy.  The binary itself is small and simple to use.  Each user of an enabled application needs to have an Easy Wi-Fi online account so there is an initial process to link the application to the users account.  That can be done by showing a simple form for signup/signin or – more likely – by throwing the user…

Thanks a Million!

Posted on December 19, 2008

Devicescape passed a cool milestone this week: 1 million registered users for the Easy Wi-Fi application.  Of course, as I write this, I’m immediately reminded of the scene in Austin Powers where Number Two has to disabuse Dr Evil that his $1M demand is impressive.  In the web world, 1M is “no big deal”.  After all, Facebook just published their user base and it was something insane, like over 130 million! Still, in the world of Wi-Fi, we think 1M is a good number, and we’re certainly quite proud and even a little surprised.  It wasn’t that long ago that we were monitoring single digit daily registrations and logins. So, many thanks to all of our membership out there.  Your feedback, enthusiasm and, yes, criticism, has been much appreciated and truly helpful in making more and more out of our service. Now that we’re at this milestone, we’re thinking “what’s next?” and planning for the future.  We have lots of cool ideas in mind.  Please do try to drop us a line on what you’d like to see: leave a post in our forums, on the blog, or even PM us directly.  Thanks again.

Easy Wi-Fi App Store Reviews

Posted on December 9, 2008

First off, we’d like to say thank you to everybody who has downloaded the Easy Wi-Fi application, in either version, and especially to those who have left reviews at the App Store. Unfortunately, Apple doesn’t provide developers with any way to respond to the reviews that are posted there, so to those asking questions in that forum we’re sorry, we have no way to respond to you. If you’re still looking for an answer, please try our own discussion forum where we try to answer every question in a timely manner. On to the reviews now though… I wanted to highlight some of my favourite reviews from the App Store, and perhaps answer some of the questions I see in there frequently. Favourites: From martino13: Awesome Incredible time saver. A must-have app. From KennMSr: It’s About Time It’s a shame AT&T didn’t provide this app themselves when they release[d] the service, considering how many time the[y] released a teaser then retracted the service. … From CieloBrezza: Much needed for Wifi users Awesome app, truely a must-download for AT&T iPhone users. Saves time and trouble. And finally, from TradeYourselfIn: Exactly as advertised People need to read the damn description, before giving…

Easy Wi-Fi for AT&T

Posted on November 30, 2008

A new version of Easy Wi-Fi specifically for iPhone users with AT&T plans went live in the app store over the holiday weekend. This version is trivial to set up – you just need to enter your 10 digit AT&T iPhone number into the settings page – and simple to use: connect to the Wi-Fi network, launch the app and it will log you in. Much simpler than typing your phone number in each time, waiting for the SMS from AT&T and then clicking the link in that to get connected. In addition to all the AT&T Wi-Fi network locations (like Starbucks), it will also connect you to all the networks that have just click through web pages in our list of supported networks. And we’re working on an option to allow you to unlock this version and add more networks, using our web portal. By the way, if you already have the original, multi-network, version of Easy Wi-Fi, then you don’t need this one: you can simply add the AT&T Wi-Fi (iPhone) plan to your Devicescape account and you will have the same capabilities. Do you run a Wi-Fi network? Would you like a version like this specifically tailored…

Devicescape 3.0 and Easy Wi-Fi

Posted on October 30, 2008

Hello Everyone, Those of you with mulitple devices using Devicescape may have noted some inconsistency in our naming convention.  When we first started with the Devicescape automated login product we wanted simply to have the product and the company name be completely consistent.  Hence, “welcome to Devicescape” and “Download Devicescape onto your device”, etc. Unfortunately we faced naming issues, first on the Nokia devices and next on the iPhone, and ended up deciding to use the “Easy Wi-Fi” product name for those platforms.  Now, with the Easy Wi-Fi application the most popular WiFi app on the Apple App Store (!) and just about every Nokia N and E series phone showing “Easy Wi-Fi” we’ve decided to rationalize all of our products under this name. It’ll take a month or so to make it through all of our clients and web site, but expect to see Easy Wi-Fi being the consistent name.  Hope you like it! So, while we’re on this topic, we made a few other changes too.  In line with this mission of making Wi-Fi, well, easy, we’ve decided to consolidate all of our various technologies into one product.  We haven’t yet released it, but this 3.0 version of…