Posted on June 10, 2011
We’re happy to announce that we’ve added support for Blackberry devices. Easy WiFi is now available on App World. Hurrah! This version of Easy WiFi is focused more tightly on the cellular offload problem. It allows users to automatically connect to the Easy WiFi Network or any other WiFi providers they might use, but it drops the map and certain other niceties. It’s just amazing how rapidly the mobile world is evolving and how the platform lineup has shifted so dramatically over the last few years. When we started it was all about Windows Mobile, Windows PC, and Symbian. Then Symbian started to mean “Nokia”. Then iPhone appeared and we saw the ascension of the smartphone but WinMo apparently was in the bathroom while everyone was getting ready to go out to the party. It quickly became iOS, Blackberry and Windows PC and we have to invite Symbian along. Windows PC goes to the gym and tries to lose some pounds with Atom. Suddenly Android hits and the lineup is iOS, Blackberry, Android. Symbian fell off a cliff, and although the PC is still huge the playing field has changed and the Netbook doesn’t allow you entry into the new…
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…
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!
Posted on March 26, 2009
Having a user base in excess of one million enthusiastic members gives us a great opportunity to query the habits, desires, and problems facing Wi-Fi users today. With that in mind, we’ve decided to conduct regular surveys of our membership, where we can ask insightful questions of this leading-edge community. We plan to conduct the survey quarterly, and publish the results in a piece of original research that we call “The Devicescape Wi-Fi Report”. Catchy huh? 😉 We conducted our first survey in January and have now published the first Devicescape Wi-Fi report for Q1, 2009. Some of the things we learned were quite surprising, while others simply confirmed what we already knew. Here’s a sample of what we learned: Most users want Muni Wi-Fi and (surprise!) they’d be willing to pay for it like a utility Most users prefer Wi-Fi to 3G and want it built into all phones and bundled with cellular plans People like iPhone Wi-Fi best while on the road (no surprise!) Now that the first one is done, we’re working hard on the Q2 report. We plan on probing more deeply and hope to invite our friends in the industry to participate through crafting good…
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…
Posted on November 26, 2008
It’s Thanksgiving week here in the US, and while I’m a Brit, I’m always happy to celebrate somebody’s holiday with them! So, for those who will be enjoying large meals and catching up with their family over the long weekend, I wish you all a happy Thanksgiving. And for everybody in our global community, whether you’re on holiday or at work, I thought I’d throw out some statistics about Wi-Fi usage, internet usage and Devicescape usage that I thought were interesting. Mobile Internet I was presenting at a JETRO Houston event last week where one of the many interesting things I learned from my co-presenters was that in the late teen to early twenties age range, more people access the internet through a mobile device than with a computer or laptop. And the next couple of segments in that chart weren’t far behind either. Japan has a great mobile data infrastructure to support this of course, and a lot of public access Wi-Fi networks, all of which help to make mobile access simple. The real surprise for me though was the low number of smartphone users (around 2% of mobile subscribers). I’m sure with the popularity of devices like Apple’s…
