Like many others, my laptop has been disconnected repeatedly from the network over the two days of conference. Is this disturbing? Not really, providing you just observe the phenomenon externally while listening to the interesting speakers on stage.

So, to finalize the scientific experience, ladies and gentlemen, let me introduce one nice diagram built during LIFT 2008 by Pingplotter, and reproduced below. Basically, vertical bars reflect the time required for packets to move in the air from laptop to the Wifi antenna and back. And red bars signal packets that vanished and never returned.

Is there a lesson here? Not sure... Well, actually I have observed around me that people with a Mac seemed to suffer less than those with a PC. At least the outcome of the exercise is, for me, a strong motivation to redo the test next year with another machine running Mac OS X...

You will find a French version of this report at my blog, at http://www.yetanothercommunitysystem.com/article-4477-l-acces-wifi-a-lif...

Being a modern sort of chap with my laptop attached as a fifth limb (like many of my fellow Lifters!) I couldn't help notice that during the more engaging or popular presentations and speakers, the Wifi connection speed went up, whereas during presentations by speakers who were perhaps not as gifted as others, or handicapped by very serious buy less entertaining subject matter, the internet connection went down -- or hit rock bottom!

So, at risk of putting a cat amongst the pigeons, wouldn't it be interesting to plot the bandwidth use during the day, against the timeline of the presentations? Giving an honest representation of Lift Attendees interest in different topics?

I'm sure the routes must have management logs that show the traffic for the last few days....?

:-)

Hi,
Have you ever struggled to find a real open & free wifi network while browsing the list of available networks displayed by your notebook or mobile phone?

Wifi networks that are not identified with a locker (and that look like free & open networks) are not necessarily free and open: some are protected by another mean (MAC address list) or require a paying login. That's why the user has no other choice than trying, trying and trying again.

To make things easier, I've though of one simple idea: to identify the open & free networks with a common sign. This sign will be added before the wifi SSID network name.

((o)) is the sign that has been chosen. Its "o" should evoke openness while the parenthesis are here to symbolize the waves and to distinguish the letter "o" from the other letters composing the SSID name. -> A given network could have the following name: "((o)) network_name".

I plan to launch this idea during the 3rd world usability day that will take place on November 8th. A Swiss event is planned at Technopark in Zürich at this date (with showcases and conferences).

What do you think of such an idea? Do you have ideas of potential partners that could spread this free idea?