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.

Nonetheless, the problem remains; there are hundreds of thousands of people in the capital without internet access, and it’s vital that this is rectified. It’s just that Wi-Fi is not the answer.

Not to mention the problem that would arise if Boris does splash free Wi-Fi all over London; a handful of livid companies marching to City Hall to ask who’s going to refund their considerable investment in commercial hotspots.

Gordon Brown is tackling the subject in another way with his £300 million voucher scheme, but Johnson has criticised this as being “a bit like a desperate bribe by the Prime Minister.” As opposed to a desperate bribe from the Mayor, eh, Boris?

I see Brown’s plan as an honest gesture and an important step in slowing the halt of the ever-widening gap between the haves and have-nots in this country. Internet access is now so important that it needs to be available to everyone, and the scheme seems like a reasonably sensible way to go about it – by paying for broadband connections and home PCs.

Personally I think that the money would be better spent in extra funding for libraries, where internet access can be had for free by anyone motivated enough to seek it out, but I’d rather see Brown’s plan implemented than Johnson’s.

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

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:

The LCPD crime “Blotter” (click to enlarge).

Before you attack me with the blindingly obvious, I know it’s not real.

The LCPD Blotter details the daily crime stats for Liberty City, Grand Theft Auto IV’s fictional locale. And, as any idiot could confidently predict, its list of “no go areas” acts entirely as a magnet for wannabe digital criminals – whether as a challenge to single-handedly lift the crime level in a listed safe area, or simply be a part of it in a known hot-spot.

Now, I’m not suggesting the real-world maps will be so stupid as to list such glorifying top-twenty charts of “no go areas” (we hope), but is it so far-fetched to imagine the statistics on easily accessible online crime maps becoming status symbols?

Will we see gangs of youths navigating to “no go” streets on their 3G iPhones to take on the current occupants for the turf? Or challenging rivals to be the street with the most knife attacks, robberies, even murders, in a month?

Could we even see flashmob-style events? A whole borough’s gang members co-ordinate online and aim to hit a target number of crimes in a week. A day. An hour. Or even a daily ratcheting of the crime total over a week – every day more crimes than the last.

With a publicly viewable achievements sheet for gangs, it’s almost as though these crimes are legitimised by statistics; a terrible merger of computer game ‘objectives’ and real-life misery. The incentive for some to prove themselves may be too great to resist.

I know, I know, I’m sure the PM knows more about this than the rest of us; I’m sure none of all that will happen and crime will start declining quicker than Internet Explorer and the French national team.

But if it all goes wrong and crime starts rising, you know it won’t be the PM who shoulders the blame. It’ll be poor old Grand Theft Auto as usual.