Media Sphere

While San Francisco's plan for municipal wifi may have stalled after Earthlink decided to abandon the project amidst corporate restructuring, the city's desire for free city-wide wifi was affirmed on November 6 when 62% of voters voiced their support for the original proposal. It's unclear whether the city will ever get their free wifi, but the city has voiced their desire to be able to log in anytime, anywhere and there do seem to be a few ways for this to still happen even without Earthlink on board.

It sounds silly, but San Francisco is Apple country. With a combined area of just 7x7 miles, there are three Apple Retail Stores (one of which just opened this past Friday) that are almost always crowded, Macbooks seem to outnumber PCs at every coffee shop, and the iPhones was already ubiquitous the moment it launched. With the iPod Touch being dependent on accessible wifi and the iPhone stiffled by AT&T's slow network speeds, San Francisco seems like the perfect opportunity to demonstrate how powerful these gadgets can be in a city with universal wireless access.

The benefits for Apple would be significant. Those living in San Francisco would have another incentive to upgrade to an iPod Touch or the iPhone, and the PR opportunities would be enormous. Apple's market share in the bay area would continue to climb, and the company would be able to push their airport technology and continue to build their global brand in association with San Francisco.

Of course, Apple would probably be disinclined to jump into this endeavor alone. There are a number of companies that are obvious choices to partner with Apple in connecting the entire city, but none of them have the same caliber of support amongst bay area residents.

Google could easily come on as a partner: they have the ad network that could make the initiative sustainable, but the privacy concerns that plagued the first iteration would obviously continue. AT&T is another possibility, but their track record is far spottier than Google's; many people in San Francisco wouldn't feel comfortable surfing on an AT&T network, but the telco is probably the most natural partner for such a project.

With Comcast and AT&T battling over the high-speed internet consumers, AT&T could offer a full-speed universal wifi connection to all of its DSL and mobile customers while providing a throttled connection to everyone for free. Doing so would provide a competitive advantage over Comcast, and would also help make up for the slower speed of DSL when compared to cable. Although the Google-Earthlink wifi deal generated significant criticism, most of the people who opposed the partnership were still largely in favor of bringing high-speed wireless internet to all San Franciscans. Some were concerned about Google's obsession with tracking users, many vocalized their opposition to the crippled speed that would come with the free service and still others simply felt that the best way to bring high-speed internet to everyone would be through an expansion of the City's existing fiber optic network. Yes, there were a few that opposed the plan because it would increase the amount of radio waves in the air, but these detractors seemed to make up a very small minority.

I still contend that the best solution is for the City to expand its fiber optic cabling and build a wireless network on the fiber network that is owned and maintained by the City. Doing so will cost a significant amount of tax-payer's money up front, but in the long run, the City would likely be able to recoup this investment by selling bandwidth to various companies.

While I don't feel that a network backed by Apple is the ideal solution for universal wifi, it's a deal that I could probably feel good about and one that would likely be quite popular with most people in San Francisco.

Update: After writing this blog post, I spoke to The League of Women Voters, and SFGTV and the City Attorney's office. After making these phone calls, I was assured that the public would in fact be able to videotape the debate and on Thursday night, I did see plenty of cameras in the audience. To the best of my knowledge, everybody was provided full access to the debate.

In the city of San Francisco, a dozen people are running for mayor of San Francisco. I am one of them. Most of us are serious candidates pushing real issues and innovative solutions to the city's problems though you might not think so reading the local newspapers or watching the television.

In fact, many people in San Francisco don't even know there is an election next month. Of those who do, many are unaware that Gavin Newsom, the incumbent, is not running unopposed. By all accounts the mayor is running a very quiet campaign, and has refused to participate in any candidate forums or debates. Except one.

Almost all of the candidates, including Newsom, will be taking part in a candidate forum tonight. It's sponsored by the League of Women Voters and will take place at 6:00PM in the Koret Auditorium at the main branch of the public library. The event will be taped by SFGTV, the local government television station, and according to an e-mail I received from Jolinda Sim, the Candidate Forums chair for the League of Women Voters, "no videotaping or flash photography [will be] allowed due to the fact that SFGOV TV is taping this forum for broadcast."

Given that this is a public event being held on city property and pertaining a to government election, the mere suggestion that the media not be granted full access to the event is deeply troubling. The fact that the government is actually involved in taping the forum means that the city is complicit in denying the media access. This is not only alarming, it may even be illegal.... Read more

Every day on my way to work, I pick up the three free daily newspapers that are distributed in San Francisco, and once a week I grab the two (also free weeklies). Even though I can get the San Francisco Chronicle for a quarter at the BART station, it's the rare occasion when I actually decide to plunk down the twenty-five cents. Instead, I usually surf SF Gate and skim the online version of the publication. As Jon Fine at Business Week points out, I'm not the only one.

Killing printrequires acknowledging not just that the old mode is dead but also that the future means less revenue and shrunken staffs. This is why it makes sense soonest at a money-losing newspaper already grappling with those realities, and one in a major city that generates enough local ad dollars to support a sizable online business.

On paper, San Francisco is perfect: a Web-centric town, a cash-drain daily, and private ownership. Which does not mean this will happen. San Francisco is the ancestral home of the Hearst empire, the birthplace of William Randolph Hearst and the town where he ran his first paper. It could be hard for Hearst to consider the move on those grounds alone. (In Asher's deposition, though, he said Hearst briefly considered selling the Chronicle in 2005.)

He goes on to explain that the Chronicle has 265,000 subscribers, and though that number isn't massive, it's important to keep in mind that there are less than 800,000 people in San Francisco so quite a few people still rely on that daily paper coming to their door. Beyond the old-fashion appeal to the printed word, San Francisco is a city filled with commuters, like me, who rely on public transportation and seize that opportunity to read their daily paper. Perhaps municipal wi-fi and better mobile browsers will lead to commuters surfing instead of thumbing through the paper, but as I look around I see far more papers than Palm's and don't expect things to change anytime soon.

... Read more

I am sitting in the San Francisco-Style Video Innovation panel at the Web Video Summit, listening to Justin Kan, who's been live-casting his life for 100 days now. As some of you may have heard, Justin turned off his video feed a few weeks into the experiment when things got hot and heavy during a date, and he received a decent amount of flack for his decision to stop rolling after pledging to stream his life 24-7. In today's presentation, Justin acknowledged that when promoting his site he, "tell[s] them it's 24-7, but I am lying." Not that I can blame the man; there are just times when you gotta have your privacy.

Next up is Schlomo Rabinowitz, who describes himself as "just another Jew in the media," and came into videoblogging after developing a career as a filmmaker. Schlomo's vlog has a very raw slice-of-life approach. He explained how this approach doesn't work for everything and demonstrated how the video work he does for CNET utilizes a more polished and professional approach.

... Read more