Rose Cantine

The city of Paris has begun offering free Wi-Fi access in public parks and gardens, museums, libraries, and other public buildings. To find out which areas have Wi-Fi, go to wifi.paris.fr. Inspired by San Francisco, the mayor of Paris, Bertrand Delanoë, issued a public tender last year, seeking a provider to deploy the hotzones. SFR [...]

Blyk has finally launched in the UK, with service coming to other European countries in 2008. I’ve been waiting for Blyk to begin its service because the model is totally different from that of other operators:

only 16-24 year olds can get the service
they get 43 minutes and 217 text messages free every month
they agree to [...]

I don’t know whether to call Pudding Media the most loathesome business model in the world or the most cynical, or both. Pudding Media is the latest company to take advantage of the “free services in exchange for ads” business model. We’ve seen free Wi-Fi in exchange for viewing ads (MetroFi) and free mobile phone [...]

Ninety-two percent of young people surveyed by Dutch research firm, Qruis, between the ages of 6 and 29 say they don’t want to see ads on their mobile phones. Only 11 and 13 percent of those surveyed gave a positive or neutral reaction to ads on chat and game sites. Ads on websites and [...]

Om Malik, founder of GigaOm (a blog that should be on your news reader), talks about his days at Business 2.0 which is in danger of being shut down by parent company, Time Inc.:
It still doesn’t take away from the fact that I did some of my best work for Business 2.0, working hard, not [...]

I am shocked to read that Business 2.0 is having trouble getting advertising and that its parent, Time Inc. may have to stop the publication. I say shocked because we are in a booming tech market after all. Or are we? Conventional wisdom says that when an industry is booming, companies are spending a lot [...]

Here’s an article in Wired about Michael Arrington’s rise from blogger to mini-media empire. When he started Techcrunch, he had no idea it would turn out to be one of the most influential technology blogs. Unlike boring tech websites run by large media companies, Techcrunch has personality (like its founder) and passion. It’s not written [...]