It looks like a slew of folks responded to San Francisco mayor Gavin Newsom’s request for proposals on ways to provide city residents with inexpensive (or free) WiFi, the most prominent being everyone’s favorite search engine. As far as I’ve learned, they’ve released a VPN (virtual private network) client, though my attempts to download the damn thing haven’t met with much success…I’m betting they’ve taken the appropriate servers down due to load or somesuch concern, as these things tend to get large pretty fast.
If you’re curious, search for “google vpn client“, or visit http://wifi.google.com. At the time of this post, the second link merely redirects to google.com.
But back to the details of the WiFi: the G-boys hope to blanket SF with a FREE 300Kbps network. I’ve read a lot of complaints about the speed, but keep in mind that this comes from hyper-progressive tech geeks who all complain about the lack of expansion ports in things like Mac Minis and the 100-song capacity of the iTunes phone. For the millions of people out there with little to no ‘net access – the targets of a low cost, municipality-wide internet availability solution – 300Kbps will be sweet.
Man, I wish I was in SF now. Hopefully soon, self…hopefully soon.