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Denver Wi-Fi usage surges after switch to free access, report says
“Denver International Airport … offers something every airport should offer: fast, free Wi-Fi.” That’s from Computer World’s “The World is My Office” blog by Mike Elgan. Elgan writes “the airport threw a switch about a month ago, and transformed its for-pay airport-wide Wi-Fi into a free, advertiser-supported service.” After the switch, he says “overnight, without promotion,” Denver’s Wi-Fi usage “increased tenfold.” For those looking for more airport Web options, Elgan writes things are “looking up” as “major airports (succeed) with free, airport-wide Wi-Fi.” And, as for Denver, he notes the airport is installing one of the newest and fastest Wi-Fi networks currently available. “Now if only airports would add more electrical outlets,” Elgan says.
D.C. airports add Wi-Fi, for a fee
“Reagan Washington National and Washington Dulles airports now have Wi-Fi Internet service. The service costs $9 a day. Subscribers of the Wi-Fi service by Sprint Nextel, T-Mobile and AT&T won’t have to pay the fee. Access to the airports’ Web home pages, which provides flight arrival and departure information, is free for all.” Metropolitan Washington Airports press release (PDF file).
First public toilet in NYC to open in Manhattan
The first of 20 planned automatic public toilets across the five boroughs is expected to open this week in Madison Square Park, after construction and testing is completed.
The toilets are part of a 20-year contract with the Spanish advertising firm Cemusa Inc., which won a coordinated street furniture bid in 2005 to install 3,300 new bus shelters, 330 newsstands, and 20 public toilets within the next five years. The project, which utilizes tempered glass and stainless steel structures designed by the New York architecture firm Grimshaw Architects, is expected to gross the city $1.4 billion in funds and advertising space over 20 years.
The wheelchair accessible, single occupancy toilet facilities will cost customers 25 cents and will run through a 60-second automatic cleaning cycle after every use, a spokeswoman for Cemusa, Katherine Schwab, said. The facilities have a 15-minute time limit, and the toilet doors will automatically open when the time expires.
Each borough will have at least one toilet, Ms. Schwab said, but Cemusa has not yet decided on the locations of all the facilities.
Energy source of Northern Lights found
Scientists think they have discovered the energy source of the spectacular color displays seen in the northern lights.
New data from NASA’s Themis mission, a quintet of satellites launched this winter, found the energy comes from a stream of charged particles from the sun flowing like a current through twisted bundles of magnetic fields connecting Earth’s upper atmosphere to the sun.
The energy is then abruptly released in the form of a shimmering display of lights visible in the upper latitudes of the Northern Hemisphere, said principal investigator Vassilis Angelopoulos of the University of California, Los Angeles.
Results were presented Tuesday at the American Geophysical Union meeting.
In March, the satellites detected a burst of northern lights, or auroras borealis, over Alaska and Canada. During the two-hour light show, the satellites measured particle flow and magnetic fields from space.
To scientists’ surprise, the geomagnetic storm powering the auroras raced 400 miles in a minute across the sky. Angelopoulos estimated the storm’s power was equal to the energy released by a magnitude 5.5 earthquake.
“Nature was very kind to us,” Angelopoulos said.
Although researchers have suspected the existence of wound-up bundles of magnetic fields that provide energy for the auroras, the phenomenon was not confirmed until May, when the satellites became the first to map their structure some 40,000 miles above the Earth’s surface.
Scientists hope the satellites will record a geomagnetic storm next year that’s now in the making, and end the debate about when the storms are triggered.
Satellite Shorts from All Over
Henk, PA3GUO reports the ANDE De-Orbit website, created by Mike, DK3WN is on-line at:
http://www.ande-deorbit.com.
Additional information about ANDE can be found at:
http://web.ew.usna.edu/~bruninga/ande-ops.html
http://web.ew.usna.edu/~bruninga/ande/ande-tlm.txt
A view of the work in progress at AMSAT-NA’s new satellite integration lab in Maryland can be seen at: http://n4hy.smugmug.com/gallery/3841264
[AMSAT]
| January, 2008 | |
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