fontastic.org - FON and free WiFi blog

Free WiFi at Starbucks for T-Mobile and all May 6, 2008

Although Starbucks loves AT&T now and has discontinued going with T-Mobile HotSpot for their WiFi services, T-Mobile HotSpot customers can still use Starbucks WiFi for the next five years free of charge. T-Mobile customers may only roam for free on AT&T's WiFi at a Starbucks, the roaming agreement does not cover any other location.

For everyone else Starbucks offers 2 hours of free AT&T WiFi per day. All you need to do is get the Starbucks Card. This offer will be available in "Spring 2008".

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According to wifinetnews.com Panasonics new WiFi enabled digital camera DMC-TZ50 comes with 12 months of free T-Mobile HotSpot WiFi. The 9 Megapixel camera features a 10 x zoom lens and 802.11b/g WiFi build in. List price will be $449.95 when it's launching next month.

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Earlier this week Fring, an Israeli VoIP startup launched a Fring client for the iPhone. Fring allows you to chat with or speak to buddies across multiple platforms such as Skype, MSN Messenger, ICQ, Google Talk, SIP, Twitter, AIM & Yahoo!. Installation is a breeze, you just add another source to your installer on a jailbroken iPhone and download the software. It took me only a couple of minutes to add my Skype and Gtalk account. You can make outgoing calls to any phone in the world with SkypeOut and a SIP account. I have tried it via Skype over WiFi and it works well. Attempts to use on T-Mobiles EDGE failed so far.

See video here:

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Fon adds more funding, now at $50 mill April 16, 2008

Led by Coral Capital Management Fon raised another $9.5 mill and now has a total funding of $50 mill. The new money is planned to be used for a roll out of Fon in Russia this June. It will also help pushing a new generation of La Foneras, including USB ports (for external harddrives) and the faster 802.11n WiFi standard.

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BT and FON launch World’s largest Wi-Fi network October 4, 2007

BT and FON have finally put their efforts together and offer joined WiFi services. All 3 million BT broadband customers will be invited and joining members will be able to use all 190,000 FON hotspots around the globe as well as all new BT FON hotspots. Find out more about it on their new website.

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Seriously, I thought my Nokia 770 offered the best mobile browsing experience ever and I still think the browser is great. Two things were not so great, though: mediocre storage (128 MB plus 64 MB MMC included, yes, I am not kidding) and no thumb board (virtual keyboard only works with pen). Ever since I first browsed the internet on an iPhone I became a big fan of it, but there was the prize tag and AT&T that hold me off for now.

Since yesterday the most powerful mobile WiFi device is there and it is called iPod Touch. It doesn't come with a lot of storage (like big brother 120 Gigs iPod Classic) but 8 or 16 gigs will do for most tasks. And it has the best mobile bowser ever plus build in WiFi for only $299. I don't see how Nokia is competing here with their Nokia N800 Internet Tablet PC at $360 (Amazon). Ok, Nokia has the bigger screen (4 inch vs. 3.5) and open source platform but if it is about mobile surfing and media, the Apple iPhone Touch is it.

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Some Silicon Valley companies want to partner to bring a giant WiFi network to the bay area spanning over 37 cities. Services will include free, payed and business plans as well as secure access for police and firefighters. Free services will be ad-financed, the network is planned to being build as of 2008.

via Engadget

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Last week FON updated the La Fonera to the La Fonera+. It finally adds another LAN port ad thus you can now connect the La Fonera to your router and not loose a port. Here in the US you often get DSL modems with only one port and so far it was impossible to use another cabled device (e.g. a VoIP adapter like my Grandstream 496 box). Now we are waiting for the next update which might feature a USB port.

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iRiver announced a cell and VoIP phone that looks a bit like the iPhone (or a white version of it). It also features a portable music player of course. Some other extras comprise a FM radio and a positioning system based on WiFi not GPS. It seems that regardless of the success of the iPhone Apple defined a new design and set of functionalities for the cell phone 2.0 market.

via electronista.com

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A new social network basedon WiFi recently launched. WeFi requires you to download a WiFi manager (replacing your Windows wireless network manager) which automatically finds and connects to free Wifi. The WeFi map shows those free access points and also shows other WeFi users who are connected thus encouraging them to get in touch. It looks pretty neat and given the success of Twitter this might be a great concept as it adds more social features to free WiFi than the current Fon hotspot website users can customize. Obviously, WeFi relies on the availability of free WiFi and would even win if they collaborated with Fon. Let's see what happens.

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Free calls, Skype and SIP on an iPhone

Apple iPhone - a good WiFi phone? June 11, 2007

Now it's coming - only a few days left until the Apple iPhone hits the shelves on June 29th. It looks like the iPhone focusses a lot on web browsing and internet capabilities (amongst other things like trying to be an iPod). With it's WiFi option, big screen, virtual QWERTY keyboard, automatic switching between landscape and portrait view and a new kind of rendering of websites it might be the ideal portable web tablet in the sub-UMPC class. We asked our readers and it seems that the Cingular/ AT&T brothership might be contraproductive, though.

Go away! Never ever. (38%)
Yep, but w/o Cingular. (24%)
Yeah, at any price. (23%)
Not sure yet. (14%)

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FON needs beta testers June 4, 2007

FON is adding on more web applications and is asking you, the FON community to apply to the beta tester program. You need to

be over 18 years old
be an English speaker (communication related to this program will be sent in English only)
have a registered FON user name that has been active for over 6 months
have a La Fonera installed and registered for over 4 months
live in one of the following countries:Germany, Austria, Bulgaria, Belgium, Cyprus, Denmark, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Estonia, Finland, France, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxemburg, Malta, Norway, Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, United Kingdom, Czech Republic, Romania, Sweden, Switzerland, Canada, USA, Hong Kong, Korea, Taiwan, Japan

Send an email to beta@fon.com until June 10th and you will receive notification whether you have been chosen shortly.

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