HypeWifi Blog

Changing WiFi Channels in These Uncertain Times

Mon, 28 Aug 2006 09:57:00 -0500

After working with Wi-Fi equipment for quite a few years, sometimes the most basic things can a huge difference. We have installed indoor and outdoor equipment, using off-the-shelf and proprietary hardware and software. We have been through every imaginable configuration and have tried almost every antenna on the market.

It is sometimes the oversight of the basics that frustrate WiFi operators the most, as it seems that we all want the problems to be solved from a systemic discovery of a a problem that is hardware related. However, looking into interference can and should be considered the first thing checked.

Some of the installations we have managed for over a year suddenly became unreachable and did not sometimes respond to any connections (via IP Address lease) from users trying to connect. After a routine inspection, all seemed to be fine with the equipment. It was not until we Net Stumbled the area did we find that a slough of new devices were using the same channel we configued out routers to use.

Once we changed the frequency on the radio card to use another one, access returned to normal. The moral of course is to always check the channel first, and you might avoid having to climb or rustle with equipment.

Back to Full Power

Mon, 28 Aug 2006 00:45:00 -0500

Over the past week and a half, we have had a few issues with our locations and hardware. We have since found the problem and should not experience outages in the future. We have also procured alternate backhaul for a few of our locations to make sure that Internet outages will not affect our service.

We appreciate the patience of those who use our service and want to make sure that we provide the highest level of satisfaction with both our service and our technology.

On the development front, we have been working steadily on an upgrade to our platform as well as new hardware options that should allow us to offer our unique service to many new places and locations.

New Version Coming

Fri, 18 Aug 2006 01:14:00 -0500

We have been working on a new version of our Hotspot portal page that will allow for quite a number of new possibilities for advertisers and for those visiting our HypeWif Zones (hotspots). Here is a brief list of a some of our enhancements:

Updated interface layout to maximize ad space
Additional banner inventory to allow for a possibility of four advertisers per hotspot (at any one time)
Updated information detail page section for locations that will contain a new window with unlimited pages
Tabs for gender selection
Improved marketing interface with rich media integration
Uniform color scheme throughout for branding and navigation

We will add screen shots and updated demos through the hypewifi site as soon as possible. If you have any suggestions, please let us know.

Christian's Tailgate - Better Than Ever...

Thu, 17 Aug 2006 09:15:00 -0500

Christian's Tailgate was our first Wi-Fi installation and has been a great location for us over the past year. Steve Christian is one of the most supportive and generous customers we have had, and we appreciate everything he has done for us. Since he opened his doors just over a year ago, he has constantly changed the look of the restarant, adding features that help bring in more customers while staying true to the "dive bar" motif he created.

This month, Steve decided to install a set of doors leading outside to the patio. It looks great so far, but I think it will be awesome this Fall, as people can now enjoy a burger and beer on the patio while watching their favorite football game.

We have also upgraded our presence at Christian's by installing an outdoor router there. Users might have noticed that access there has been spotty over the past few days, as we have had to deal with the construction going on. We have decided to add a repeater inside so as to maximize access throughout the restaurant. We can also service other locations on Bagby in moving to our preferred hub/spoke model.

Come by The Tailgate soon for one of the best burgers in Houston and enjoy the WiFi while watching your favorite team this fall. Steve will be glad you did.

Christian's Tailgate
2000 Bagby St, Suite 106
Houston, Texas 77002

Now at The Fish

Thu, 17 Aug 2006 09:05:00 -0500

We now have a HypeWifi Zone at The Fish, a Sushi Bar & Restaurant in Midtown, Houston. Tommy, the manager at The Fish is a great guy and was instrumental in helping us with this site. The owners of The Fish also have another Sushi restaurant, Uptown Sushi, that we might also light up.

Make sure you come by and try to excellent food and atmosphere at The Fish. You will be glad you did.

The Fish
309 Gray
Houston, Texas 77002

The Fish's website

Looks like Mobile is a go!

Tue, 15 Aug 2006 00:59:00 -0500

After a good sight survery, it look likes we will be installing a cluster of Wi-Fi hotspots in Mobile, Alabama near the airport.

If all goes as planned, we should have our first Alabama locations up by the end of the month with more to follow in the Southern ten states. We have spoken with quite a few people who are interested in setting up Wi-Fi, and it looks like a great opportunity to cover some really needed areas. We are also planning locations in Georgia and Florida in the coming weeks.

The New Cyclone Anaya's

Tue, 15 Aug 2006 00:40:00 -0500

We installed a hotspot at Cyclone Anaya's last week, and I wanted to say how much I have enjoyed the food. The restaurant opened its doors just over a week ago, and the food is fantastic and the margaritas out of this world!

Make sure you head by Cyclone Anaya's at 309 Gray if you are ever in Houston. The prices are a bit steep for Mexican food, but you are in Midtown.

Great Job, Rico!

HypeWifi's First Press Release

Mon, 14 Aug 2006 09:45:00 -0500

On August 8, 2006, we issued our first Press Release.

Here's the link to it on Business Wire:
http://home.businesswire.com/portal/site/google/index.jsp?ndmViewId=news_view&newsId=20060808005894&newsLang=en

Here is a link to the full Press Release containing more details.

http://www.hypewifi.com/index.cfm?area=press&action=content&page_id=37

We want to emphasize the privacy that users maintain while logging on and using our service. We do not collect personally identifiable information from users. We simply ask for an answer to a marketing question in exchange for free Wi-Fi service.

Wi-Fi Planet Article

Sun, 13 Aug 2006 16:54:00 -0500

Here is the article from Wi-Fi Planet from August 10, 2006:

The HypeWifi Advertising Platform will serve up targeted advertising to hotspot users, based not just on location but also demographics. End users are given marketing questions (nothing personal, they promise) to answer before can log in to the free Internet access. HypeWifi is a provider of hotspot services in the Houston, Texas area, and will, naturally, launch the platform at those locations.

http://www.wi-fiplanet.com/news/article.php/3446611

New Locations on West Gray in Houston

Sun, 13 Aug 2006 00:16:00 -0500

We have just added a few new locations to our list of WiFi Zones in the Houston area.

Charlie's Texas Grillery
1440 West Gray
Houston, Texas 77019
713-520-1744
SSID: CHARLIES-FREEWIFI

Fit Athletic Club
1532 West Gray
Houston, Texas 77019
713-782-9348
SSID: FIT-FREEWIFI

New York Pizzeria
306 Gray
Houston, Texas 77002
713-533-1140
SSID: NYPIZZERIA-FREEWIFI

Quiznos (West Gray) No. 468
1428 W Gray
Houston, Texas 77019
713-522-7827
SSID: QUIZNOS-FREEWIFI

Quiznos (Midtown) No. 9087
2101 Smith
Houston, Texas 77002
713-739-0400
SSID: QUIZNOS-FREEWIFI

Cyclone Anaya's
309 Gray
Houston, Texas 77002
713-520-6969
SSID: ANAYAS-FREEWIFI

Click to view our complete list of hotspots. More will be coming soon.

WiFi Networking News Article

Thu, 10 Aug 2006 17:02:00 -0500

Here's the article posted at WiFi Networking News on August 10, 2006:

Another Free Wi-Fi through Advertising Model from Hypewifi

By Glenn Fleishman

Don’t prejudge them by the word hype in their name: Hypewifi has yet another model of providing users with free Wi-Fi through support from advertising. In their model, a user must answer a few demographic questions which are tied to their profile in order to surf. These demographic questions allow more closely targeted advertising, they say, without exposing a particular user’s details. Advertisers can choose to only target those whose profile matches their needs extremely closely.

This kind of approach requires a very high volume of users as qualifying users because winnowing down all users to find just the reasonable targets of ads means that an advertising inventory can’t be served uniformly. Sell a million ad impressions and you see just 50,000 qualified users come through for a few pages each, and you’ve got a lot of unsold inventory. (You could have low-rate salvage ads displaying for “unqualified” users; this is why some sites seem littered with T-shirt ads, for instance. Although let me not mock the billions spent each year on message T-shirts.)

Hypewifi looks for locations where users would want free Wi-Fi and where professionals that meet the demographic that they want to offer to advertisers would congregate. The company says that they have 1,000 registered users so far with a soft launch.

Posted by Glennf at August 10, 2006 10:57 AM

http://wifinetnews.com/archives/006854.html

The Stag's Head - A Surprising Success

Tue, 06 Jun 2006 16:43:00 -0500

It has been quite a while since we have installed our WiFi equipment at The Stag's Head, and I wanted to bring up some very interesting stats. Tim and I have frequented Stag's Head for some time now and have seen Michael's bar grow into quite a hotspot mecca for a wide variety of WiFi devices. Here are a few of the interesting stats:

Last Page Viewed 06/05/2006
07:51:11 PM
Days Active 152
Total Portal Page Views 3239
Total Questions Answered 1558
Total WIFI Users 369
Average New Users Per Day 2.43
Average New Users Per Month 12.30
Total WIFI Logins 1856
Average Login Per User 5.03
Average Logins Per Day 12.21
Avg Page Views Per User 269.22

Even though the total user count has been only 369, you have to remember that 369 different computers and devices have used our hotspot. What's more impressive are the number of logins per user (over 5 per user). That's return users and repeat business. The Stag's Head even hosts an Apple user group and a number of other hobbyists who use the free Internet connection.

I thought it might also be interesting to include the browser and platform stats to look at:

PLATFORM UNIQUE PLATFORMS AT THIS HOTSPOT
MAC 34
OCP 4
PALM 6
PC 261
Play Station Portable 3
Pocket PC 18
SMARTPHONE 2
TABLET PC 6
UNIX 1
OPERATING SYSTEMS: STAG'S HEAD PUB
OS UNIQUE OPERATING SYSTEMS AT THIS HOTSPOT
Linux 1
OSX 32
OSX Mach-O 2
PowerPC 4
PSP 2.0 3
Windows 2000 17
Windows 95 1
Windows 98 6
Windows CE 20
Windows XP 250

Pretty interesting stuff. Predictable, but interesting. I do think the number of PDA usage is impressive. The only problem I have been having is finding out exactly what the OCP platform is. I have scoured the Internet to find out, but it seems that it is an image bot of some kind. If anyone has an answer, please post a reply. I would really appreicate a better explanation.

Interesting Article from The Houston Chronicle

Sat, 03 Jun 2006 14:05:00 -0500

I friend of mine, Kevin Lacobie, whom I have recently been in contact with sent me a very interesting article that seems to prove quite a few of the theories I have about offering WiFi in locations such as bars, restaurants, coffee houses and cafes. Here is the article with commentary after. Thanks, Kevin, for the heads up.

____________________________________________

May 31, 2006, 8:33PM
Wine and a laptop, please
Free WiFi lets patrons wrap up the day's work in a social setting

By MARY VUONG
Copyright 2006

Houston Chronicle In the early days of public wireless Internet access, food and drink choices were limited to coffee, scones and other typical cafe fare. Now you can get WiFi (wireless fidelity) with curry or a $100 glass of wine.Coffee shops with WiFi used to be considered a novelty; they dangled the service to lure customers. Now it's more unusual if cafes and equally hip bubble-tea joints don't have wireless Internet service.What's emerging are the less conventional places that offer WiFi. They include the Corkscrew, a laid-back wine bar that brothers Andrew and Doyle Adams opened nearly three months ago.When Andrew Adams was a wine broker and needed a spot to place orders online, it was a "big hassle" to find wireless access, he says. He usually ended up at a coffee shop.The Corkscrew is equipped with an inviting mix of tables, chairs and sofas, but there are no electrical outlets for public use, so bring a fully charged battery.
Adams makes WiFi available "to give something back to the guys," meaning other wine salespeople who stop by Mondays and Thursdays to have a drink and submit online the wine orders for their hotel and restaurant clients. He also serves a group of architects who occasionally leave the office early and finish business in the bar's private conference room, which can be reserved.Inci Akpinar, 26, is a
Houston architect who escapes the office for inspiration, as well. She visits DNR European Fast Food, which dishes up a flavorful beef-lamb mixture similar to the marinated meat in a gyro but sliced, not minced before it's layered and cooked.Many tables and booths at this spacious and bright eatery are equipped with outlets. WiFi also is accessible from the patio.Co-owner and manager Unal Cevak says it's "no problem" if customers linger. "They can stay for hours;" Have some free coffee, tea or ice cream, he says."Sometimes when you go to Starbucks, you don't find the space to sit," says Veli Baysal, 30, director of a
Houston nonprofit organization. He dines at DNR almost daily.Masala Wok, a small Texas chain of fast-casual restaurants with Indian and Indochinese dishes, opened in
Houston in October. It attracts a mix of students, business-people and families, says manager Hitesh Sanghvi.Sanghvi is also prepared for customers who wish to stay a long time. Like DNR, Masala Wok has wall-side tables with outlets.WiFi is popular at bars and pubs, too. Stephen Marsh, owner of the Dugout Sports Bar & Grill, says he sees "laptops in here all the time now." It's not unusual for 15 to 20 people to use their computers during a football game, Marsh says.Fantasy-sports fans like to check on their teams, while others prefer to wrap up work with a happy-hour beer in hand. "We want them here," Marsh says. The longer they stay, the more they drink.Outlets are behind the bar, so ask the bartender to hook you up.For a serene setting, visit Té House of Tea. Loose-leaf tea lovers can thank Connie Lacobie and Alyson Bell for converting a laundromat into a charming shop that sells mostly fair-trade and organic teas. Food choices include crepes, salads, sandwiches, quiches, homemade ice cream and irresistible sweets from André's Pastry Shop and Café.Though the teahouse, frequented by artists, opened in March, it didn't begin providing free WiFi until a month later. Lacobie was concerned that laptop users, who are encouraged to sit on one side of the shop near four outlets, would linger too long, taking space from other customers and hurting business.That hasn't happened, she says. "Whoever comes here to use the computer, they really love tea first."Many customers "will open a tab,"
Bell adds. They may start their visit with a cup of tea and move on to a meal."It's exactly what I've always wanted," says regular Angela Pisecco, 39, a software and hardware saleswoman who would otherwise work from her home office. An enthusiastic tea drinker, Pisecco was sipping an iced ying yang, a sweetened concoction of coffee, tea and milk, one morning last week while on her computer."This allows me to get out and have some freedom (but still) stay connected," she adds.The Internet is "a necessity these days,"
Bell says. "It's everybody's lifeline."

mary.vuong@chron.com

___________________________________________________________________

Kevin's wife runs the tea house mentioned in the article, and they are both on the cutting edge with regard to technology. A day after this article appeared, it was also mentioned in one of the trade news sites that I religiously read. WiFi Networking News, written by Glenn Fleishman, is an invaluable resource for those in the WiFi business or who want to keep up with the goings on of WiFi-related events. I will post his comments below as well, but it seems that Glenn also seems to agree with the following realities (or debunking of a few Myths) of offering WiFi in local eating and drinking establishments.

First, the people who go to local dining, drinking or sports venues spend money. HypeWifi has installed WiFi in a number of bars and restaurants in Houston, Texas, and we have found that WiFi traffic contributes greatly to the venues bottom line. And in some instances has created a revenue source that was not previously there. People who root out WiFI access spend money and order more than non-wired guest over the history of their visits.

Second, patron who use WiFi in these places do not take up space that other customers might want. Typcially, WiFi users come to hotspots at times when the lcoation is least busy and when they might find at more easy to concentrate on their work. In some instances, the new traffic has actually quadrupled the lunch crowd, increasing sales as well as letting others know that WiFi usage there is welcome.

Third, offering WiFi is seen by WiFi users (a huge growth crowd, by the way) as a great benefit of being able to not only enjoy a particular place but as a way to bring their tethered lives with them--while being able to escape the office. Patrons who are offered a place in which to have a beer or enjoy a coffee while checking their email before the end of the day offers a level of freedom that has not been present before. For myself, it offers me a huge benefit to be able to meet with other but still have a way to perform tasks that I may need to perform if life in the tech world is not perfect--which is always the case.

In summary, I am really glad to see articles being published that tell the real side of the WiFi story that most owners of local shops tend to miss.

Here is Glenn's writeup:

Restaurants, Social Venues Make Accommodations for Wi-Fi--------------------------------------------------------By Glenn Fleishman

Special to Wi-Fi Networking News

Permanently archived item <http://wifinetnews.com/archives/006626.html>[1] The Houston Chronicle documents the move to make room for Wi-Fi and laptops everywhere one eats or drinks: Cafes started offering Wi-Fi way back in 2000, with hundreds offering the service by 2001, and thousands by 2002. While some early Internet access was found in restaurants, it was still strange to have people carrying Wi-Fi equipped laptops; no handhelds offered the service. Now, with Wi-Fi in every device, venues are making more and more accommodation for lengthy users.An interesting story early in the article details a wine bar adding Wi-Fi primarily to help its network of wine vendors and buyers have convenient access for placing orders as a thank-you for their business. Because coffeeshops are now crowded with users, Wi-Fi elsewhere seems to have gained in popularity because there's still places to sit.A tea shop found the mythical Wi-Fi-to-dollars conversion, too: "Many customers 'will open a tab,' Bell adds. They may start their visit with a cup of tea and move on to a meal."

This article is a neat contrast to the [2] minor trend I was alerted to last year, with locations that were limiting Wi-Fi or engaged in some battles with Wi-Fi users who lingered (or didn't make a purchase). [link via [3] Steve Titch]

URLs referenced:

[1] <http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/tech/news/3916054.html>[2] <http://wifinetnews.com/archives/005325.html>[3] <http://www.reason.org/titch.shtml>