Does London even need free Wi-Fi?

Wednesday, September 24th, 2008

Boris Johnson made headlines today after appearing on BBC London radio saying that he hopes to roll-out WiFi coverage to the entire city. What a noble aim, considering the importance of the internet today and the fact that not everyone can afford the cost of home connections. It’s precisely the sort of thing that can win support in the short term, but it’s never going to happen.

“They’ve done it in other parts of the world; why on earth can’t we do it?” he asked.

Because it will cost a fortune, Boris, that’s why. An investment in infrastructure that big would cost millions, hundreds of millions. There’s little point in it, either, as 3G mobile broadband continues to fall in price. Londoners won’t be happy paying for a costly organised network in extra taxes when £10 per month per person could solve the problem instantly. Just look at the animosity towards the ever-increasing Olympic budget if you need proof.

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3G iPhone launch day news, 2 of ?: Panic over, there’s enough

Friday, July 11th, 2008

The UK launch of Apple’s iPhone is here at last. With 3G speeds and a price cut, it’s no wonder that queues built up at 5AM today outside the Regent Street store. However, it seems that there are plenty to go around.

We popped down this morning to check out the availability of the new phone and were told by Apple employees outside the store that “if you wanted to come back in two days you’d still get one…”

Try telling that to the man who started queuing on Regent Steet Wednesday evening, though.

Apple seems to have kept the lion’s share of the handsets for itself. Just around the corner at Carphone Warehouse the 16GB iPhone had already sold out, and there were similar rumours about O2 stores.

By Andy McAlpin

Online crime maps are a criminal’s adventure playground

Wednesday, June 18th, 2008

So the PM has agreed to the idea of online crime maps to keep the public informed of goings on in their area. It sounds great, doesn’t it: just log on, type in your post code and see a breakdown of all the crimes committed near you this month, compared to neighbouring areas.

It isn’t totally new – Londoners can check their borough already at the Met Police website. And a quick look at the figures shows that – despite the media giving the impression we’re entering a new Wild West of guns and knives – crime in London has been on the decline for several years now.

At the time of writing, gun-enabled crime is down 11.5% on last year; violence against the person has dropped 4.8%; murders fell by 1.9% in the last 12 months and robberies are down a massive 19%.

But according to the papers it’s crime “hot-spots” that are the problem, so a plan like these online crime maps is the ideal way to highlight it, right? Wrong, and to illustrate why, I give you an example of an existing online crime mapping scheme:

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