Having a user base in excess of one million enthusiastic members gives us a great opportunity to query the habits, desires, and problems facing Wi-Fi users today.  With that in mind, we’ve decided to conduct regular surveys of our membership, where we can ask insightful questions of this leading-edge community.  We plan to conduct the survey quarterly, and publish the results in a piece of original research that we call “The Devicescape Wi-Fi Report”.  Catchy huh?

We conducted our first survey in January and have now published the first Devicescape Wi-Fi report for Q1, 2009.  Some of the things we learned were quite surprising, while others simply confirmed what we already knew.  Here’s a sample of what we learned:

• Most users want Muni Wi-Fi and (surprise!) they’d be willing to pay for it like a utility
• Most users prefer Wi-Fi to 3G and want it built into all phones and bundled with cellular plans
• People like iPhone Wi-Fi best while on the road (no surprise!)

Now that the first one is done, we’re working hard on the Q2 report.  We plan on probing more deeply and hope to invite our friends in the industry to participate through crafting good questions and help promote Wi-Fi issues exposed in the report.  Anyone can make use of the Report, provided that they refer back to Devicescape and don’t sell the data.

If you’re interested in reading more, check out the Devicescape Wi-Fi report at devicescape.com/wifi_report …and do get in touch if you’re interested in participating in future reports.

For those who hadn’t already found it, Serengeti is a free app from Devicescape that includes the Easy Wi-Fi functionality and streamlines access to the web while in a hotspot that needs a web based login.

How does it work?

Serengeti is a very simple front end to Safari. On the cellular network, or your home Wi-Fi, it runs a quick check that you can connect to the internet, and then launches Safari with your selected home page (a side benefit is that you can now define a home page too).

The magic comes if you are on a hotspot network, like the AT&T one in Starbucks. When Serengeti encounters a hotspot network like that, it will use Devicescape’s Easy Wi-Fi technology to log you in before it launches Safari.

What do I need to use it?

You need two things to use Serengeti:

1. A free Devicescape Easy Wi-Fi account, which you can sign up for on the web, or directly from the app’s setup screen;
2. Access to the hotspots you plan to use. Devicescape can handle logging you at lots of commercial networks if you have an account that works for them (e.g. your AT&T iPhone number, which can get you free access at AT&T Wi-Fi locations from your iPhone); it can also get you connected at lots of free networks around the world, such as coffee shops where you normally have to click a button to enable access, and at university networks where there is a web-based log in form. And we’re growing that list all the time!

Can it start other apps?

Some other apps can be started instead of Safari, but not all. Applications that register themselves as a URL handler can be started. That list includes many popular apps like IM clients and Twitter clients, so you can start those by simply changing the Serengeti home page (in the main iPhone Settings app) to the appropriate URL. I use Serengeti to start my favorite Twitter client app, TwitterFon, which can be started using twitterfon:/// as the Serengeti home page.

Why Serengeti?

Serengeti is named after the large grassy plain in Africa that includes the Serengeti National Park, the Ngorongoro Conservation Area, Maswa Game Reserve, the Maasai Mara Reserve and more. The Serengeti region of Africa is perhaps the world’s most popular destination for safari vacations. So, the Serengeti is where your Safari begins.

We just released a brand new product called Serengeti for iPhones and iPod touches.  Shockingly, Apple moved it through the approval process in just a few days, catching us quite by surprise!  We’re pleased about the app because we think it’s a neat workaround to the “Black Hole” problem that John mentioned a couple of posts back.  But, more significantly, it represents a new capability for us:

Easy Wi-Fi for Application Developers!

Serengeti is the first application that’s Easy Wi-Fi enabled. It embeds a small Easy Wi-Fi library which is used to ensure you have a network connection and log you into your Wi-Fi provider if it’s necessary.  Serengeti does this to streamline your web surfing, but it’s easy to think about the applicability of this approach for many other iPhone apps that benefit from Wi-Fi.

Integration of the library is very easy.  The binary itself is small and simple to use.  Each user of an enabled application needs to have an Easy Wi-Fi online account so there is an initial process to link the application to the users account.  That can be done by showing a simple form for signup/signin or - more likely - by throwing the user to our signup/signin web forms directly from the device.  Pretty simple.

At this point in time we plan to approve any app developers who are interested on a case by case basis, before rolling this out more broadly.  Licensing is free.  If you’re interested, please get in touch with us at dsbizdev@devicescape.com.