December 2007 Wireless Nomad News

Hello, everyone!

It's been quiet over the last few weeks, mostly because Damien has been away, and mostly off-line, so unable to bother everyone with blog posts and e-mails.


New Membership Database System
The "behind the scenes" work continues, however, and the Co-op's back-end database continues to get improved. In fact, by the end of January, the old systems are going to be turned off, and we will be using the new database only for all membership and payment information.

Mostly, that's going to mean that members will be able to keep track of their personal info, bandwidth usage, and payment history, and will make the co-op's daily business easier to do. It also means that all members have to make sure that their phone line information, contact information (including a valid e-mail address) and credit card information are complete and up-to-date in their user profile.

This is a big step for us, and is actually kind of exciting, in a geeky kind of way. Anyone with questions or ideas about how to make things better (or actually able to program in MySQL and interested in helping to hammer out some code as the system continues to add new features) should get in touch by e-mail anytime.


New Members Every Day!
Since the great stories about Wireless Nomad on ArsTechinca and SlashDot a few weeks ago, we've been getting e-mails almost every day from people wanting to join. So many people have been asking to sign up, there are actually more people on the waiting list than actual members of the co-op! This is really exciting, and will be a real opportunity and a real challenge. So, if you have any friends that have been waiting to escape the phone company and get Internet the better way, tell them to get on the waiting list before it gets any longer! (The current wait time is about two months, as a quick estimate).


New WN Router Software and User Interface in the Springtime
Finally, after a long and interesting collaboration with Prof. Andrew Clement and grad students Matt Wong and Jorge Torres-Solis, all from the University of Toronto, the complete overhaul of the Wireless Nomad WiFi router software is nearing completion. You'll hear more about this later over the next few months -- because this is really, really exciting, especially for the more technically inclined numbers. With this new software, all members will have even more control over their Internet connections and wireless networks than before.

That's all the news for now- so please make sure your contact and payment information is complete and up-to-date, and have a safe and happy holiday.

Best regards,
-the Wireless Nomad team