Posted by: James Wright
on May 27, 2009
In previous blog entries I have talked about my Nokia E71 purchase, and also my love of travel. As it happens I have not been able to get away since last November, so a trip to Riga last weekend was my first chance to see how this technology works when outside the comfort zone of the home 3G network – an unlimited data plan at home means that rich data applications are not an issue, but the absolutely astronomical data roaming charges are something else.
On the E71 I have installed WeFi, an application that helps piggyback onto open wifi networks by doing the searching and checking on behalf of the user. All of the various S60 applications have WeFi selected as their connection and it sorts the rest. The only real downside is having to manually reconfigure each application to use wifi rather than the default 3G – only a couple of minutes but annoying none the less. Have written to WeFi to suggest that their application could be modified to auto switch between wifi and 3G.
The arrival at Riga airport did not bode well as there was not a wifi connection in sight, but upon checking in at our hotel it seems that despite the poverty and high unemployment, Latvians appear to be generous with their internet connectivity as there were a number of open connections available for me to use. This remained the case whilst walking around the old town and I will able to make use of the Qik video streaming service to record what we were up to and stream it real-time(ish) to the internet. Email worked a treat as did the excellent Gravity native S60 Twitter client.
During the trip I needed to make a couple of calls home and the SIP client on the E71 worked well with Draytel allowing me to save on roaming charges.
I was surprised not to stumble upon any FON presence at all. FON have been pushing their service quite heavily in the UK with a BT tie up and I have previously made use of it when travelling in Spain so I guess I expected a wider European presence.
Without the proliferation of services such as FON and the sharing culture that accompanies them we will not reach the wifi utopia, but things definitely seem to be moving in the right direction.
Posted by: James Wright
on May 27, 2009
Having just returned from a spending a few days in the Latvian capital, Riga, I found striking the disparity between the economic have’s and have not’s.
As it happens a couple of days before travelling I caught a piece of the PM Programme where reporter Jonny Dymond had visited the country as part a series of reports about the forthcoming European Elections. What I found interesting was the high level of unemployment and the feeling that the country had been let down by the EU in some way.
Most tourists to Riga will probably stay somewhere in the old town, but we had booked in to a very nice hotel off the beaten track. The walk between the hotel and the old town gave an insight into a microcosm of Latvian life and left me wondering if the path from USSR to independence to EU membership had been worth it for many. Most striking was the level of poverty that appears to manifest dramatically in the elderly, with old ladies rummaging in bins for food and selling a couple of bunches of flowers in the market in order to make ends meet. Presumably no state pension for them. Given the wealth in the EU, and the large sums of money that the MEP gravy has at it’s disposal surely this should be able to be sorted?
Rise of nationalism
I suppose what is of most concern is if this disillusion with the EU ultimately leads to a rise of nationalism across the various member states, as over the last decade we have already witnessed an increase in far right parties and neo-Nazi rallies.
A introverted Europe will be no good thing and as a society we must do all that we can to ensure that there is no repeat of the 1930s as clearly there are already parallels with the global economic situation.
