The Wireless City

bigfatlamer writes "This week's NY Times City Section has an article (FRRYYY) on wireless access in New York City's busiest park, Bryant Park. The director of the park has installed a free 802.11b network with complete coverage of the park with help from NYC Wireless. From the article: 'With some clever engineering and hardware from Cisco Systems and Intel, the wireless park was born. Just as park users could sit wherever they liked, so too could they gain access where they liked. The eight-megabytes-per-second connection was as free as the sunshine and the green grass.' NYC Wireless is currently working with the Parks Dept. to put similar networks in Madison Square and Tompkins Square Parks. If they could do Prospect Park (3 blocks from my house) life would be perfect." NYCwireless helps those who help themselves...

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Wireless Park In Portland

[dailywireless]

Portland, Oregon, is planning a re-designed Waterfront Park. Yesterday I sent them A Wireless Park Vision. They liked it!

Interactive, engaging and site-specific applications are a click away. The Dialtone Symphony (.ram) is wholly produced through the choreographed ringing of people's own cell phones. Here are some other ideas:

• Talking maniquins
• Interactive Sculpture
• Triggered light/sound sequencers
• City Clouds
• 360 Live Video at public events
• Wi-Fi in Stadiums
• Traffic Maps
• Visitor Information and Narrated Neighborhood Tours
• Videoconference to linked Kiosks around the state or in nearby hotels.
• Real-time Location Information for event managers with devices like Vocera's communicator badge
• Jogging kiosks with comparitive times, personal history and bio monitor
• E-mail/picture kiosks
• RF-ID wrist bands for kids ($2.99) or "find friends" (free)
• Weather, news and park info
• Recreation Bulletin Board
• Live bird cams
• Events triggered by cell calls
• Jam sessions
• Card tournaments
• Yahoo games

The Public Review Draft of Portland's Waterfront Park Master Plan is available on-line.

The Morrison Bridge, in the center of Waterfront Park, has phone line access. An Orinoco 2500 ($1000) could drive Wi-Fi repeaters on the north end (near Saturday Market) and the south end, (near the Alexis Hotel), providing blanket coverage. The repeaters could be camouflaged as animals or Oregon historic figures. Waterfront Park also has a direct shot to the Council Crest tower where Winfield Wireless has a wireless ISP.

Rent out Segway Scooters with built-in Pocket PCs. Your GPS position would trigger Oregon Historical Society's Narrated Neighborhood Tours, Portland Visitor's Association's Self-Guided Tours, Portland Metro Maps or Lewis and Clark Maps. Wireless cameras could be helpful for the police, too.

Jacksonville Florida's free wireless hot spots provide tourist information as well as internet access. Multi-lingual kiosks, incorporating webtablets with language translation are available now. Text to speech can be output in a variety of languages. And it sounds good. Human voice samples are now incorporated into text to speech. Choose a language, respond by voice.

Parks have not caught up with the wireless society. Let's make it happen!