We’re finding out a little more now, especially the reason why some people are not seeing any problem running the Easy Wi-Fi apps under iPhone OS 3.0. [Check out the MacWorld article about the new login capabilities of iPhone OS 3.0.]

We’ve also found a case where the app can still be useful even without that workaround, so several of the Easy Wi-Fi apps will be returning to the store today as free apps!

We’ll try to keep this blog updated with what we learn, as we learn it (within the limitations of any non-disclosure agreements).

Re-authentication

On the AT&T network we have noticed that depending on what you do once connected, you can be pretty quickly timed-out. In that case, when you try to access the web you’ll get the regular login form, and, of course, other apps like email just fail. You can make the built-in authentication work again by turning Wi-Fi off and back on, but you can also just launch Easy Wi-Fi to handle the re-authentication for you.

We’re assuming that this will also be true on other networks where the access controller times out the client devices when they’re idle without actually forcing them to disconnect from the Wi-Fi layer. Please let us know your experiences.

The Good News

Today’s release of the iPhone OS 3.0 has added what is really two new features that will benefit public Wi-Fi users:

1. Automated login to any carrier provided Wi-Fi networks (e.g. all of AT&T’s Wi-Fi locations here in the US);
2. An integrated mechanism for logging in to other public Wi-Fi networks via a web form.

Obviously, iPod touch users don’t benefit from the carrier network feature (they don’t have a carrier!), but they do get the integrated web form login mechanism.

The Bad News

As with the good news above, there are two bits of bad news here too:

1. The integrated mechanism, at least for me, does not remember what I entered, forcing me to retype the information each time. The new autofill button is always unavailable even though I have the feature turned on in the Safari settings.
2. When this form fails, or when you tap cancel to skip it, rather than leaving you connected the OS disconnects from the Wi-Fi network. That prevents you from using a third party smart-client like Devicescape’s Easy Wi-Fi.

Disappointed

Given that our apps are unable to serve their purpose in this new version of the OS, we took the difficult decision to remove them from sale in the App Store last night. That’s very disappointing for us as we’ve been ardent supporters of the iPhone platform since the beginning. We had a version of our app for jailbroken phones long before the SDK was ever announced. We even demoed that version to the iPhone management team at Apple to illustrate how important we felt public Wi-Fi access would become for the iPhone and iPod touch devices.

While we are obviously disappointed that our apps have been disabled by this new release, we’re also hopeful that the message about the importance of public Wi-Fi has been understood at Apple. Hotspot login clients are not as simple to write as one might think at first glance, especially not ones that must support thousands of different networks. It has taken us several years to get to the point where we can connect to that many networks, and even now there are still some networks that surprise us with a new trick.

The Future

For Devicescape, the fact that we don’t have an opportunity to help our valued users connect to their preferred hotspots effortlessly is frustrating. But, we’re not giving up on the iPhone platform! Far from it in fact. We have been working very hard since we discovered the problem to find out how we can re-enable our apps, and as soon as we can make them valuable again they will come back onto the store. We also have new features in the works, ironically enabled by the 3.0 version of the OS, that will make them even better.

In closing, we’d like to thank our iPhone and iPod touch users for their support to date, and ask you to hang on to your apps while we sort out what we can and cannot do in this new 3.0 world. We have big plans for our applications on all our platforms, and while we’re temporarily out of the App Store, we will be back. We’d also love to hear from you about your experiences with the Wi-Fi in the new OS, either via the comments here on the blog or through our forum.

Here at Devicescape HQ, we’re hard at work preparing our next software release for S60 handsets.  We’re not quite ready to share it with the whole world yet, but we’d like to show it to some of our more technical users to get their feedback and suggestions.  If you’re interested in helping us design new features and make our product better, leave us a comment and we’ll email you back with setup instructions.

Devicescape is proud to announce that we’re now offering technical support contracts for any developers working with the open source wpa_supplicant software. As a developer, you know that there are times in a project when it is too late to switch from open source to a commercial product, but you are facing problems you just cannot resolve. The open source community is a great resource, and there are a lot of people out there who are very willing to help when they can, but sometimes you want a guaranteed response (or you don’t want to let your competitors know you’re working on a Wi-Fi device).

Or maybe you just don’t need any of our advanced features (Wi-Fi Protected Setup, Cisco Compatible Extensions or remote management) in your current project, but would prefer the security of knowing that you had a place to turn for technical support should you hit a problem integrating the open source supplicant with your system.

That’s where our WPA Supplicant Support comes in!

(more…)

Those who visit here regularly (that’s all of you, no?), might notice that we’ve added three big buttons to the sidebar inviting you to connect with Devicescape through three popular social networking tools: Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn. So, if you’re already a member of one or more of those services, why not click the link(s) and connect with us.

Of course, you can still communicate with us through the comments right here in the blog, or for more technical questions through our support forum. We’re just trying to make it as simple as possible for you to keep up with all the exciting things we’re working on, and to be able to get us feedback on our products and service.

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/learn/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.

Devicescape passed a cool milestone this week: 1 million registered users for the Easy Wi-Fi application.  Of course, as I write this, I’m immediately reminded of the scene in Austin Powers where Number Two has to disabuse Dr Evil that his $1M demand is impressive.  In the web world, 1M is “no big deal”.  After all, Facebook just published their user base and it was something insane, like over 130 million!

Still, in the world of Wi-Fi, we think 1M is a good number, and we’re certainly quite proud and even a little surprised.  It wasn’t that long ago that we were monitoring single digit daily registrations and logins.

So, many thanks to all of our membership out there.  Your feedback, enthusiasm and, yes, criticism, has been much appreciated and truly helpful in making more and more out of our service.

Now that we’re at this milestone, we’re thinking “what’s next?” and planning for the future.  We have lots of cool ideas in mind.  Please do try to drop us a line on what you’d like to see: leave a post in our forums, on the blog, or even PM us directly.  Thanks again.

First off, we’d like to say thank you to everybody who has downloaded the Easy Wi-Fi application, in either version, and especially to those who have left reviews at the App Store. Unfortunately, Apple doesn’t provide developers with any way to respond to the reviews that are posted there, so to those asking questions in that forum we’re sorry, we have no way to respond to you. If you’re still looking for an answer, please try our own discussion forum where we try to answer every question in a timely manner.

On to the reviews now though… I wanted to highlight some of my favourite reviews from the App Store, and perhaps answer some of the questions I see in there frequently.

Favourites:

From martino13:

Awesome
Incredible time saver. A must-have app.

From KennMSr:

It’s About Time
It’s a shame AT&T didn’t provide this app themselves when they release[d] the service, considering how many time the[y] released a teaser then retracted the service. …

From CieloBrezza:

Much needed for Wifi users
Awesome app, truely a must-download for AT&T iPhone users. Saves time and trouble.

And finally, from TradeYourselfIn:

Exactly as advertised
People need to read the damn description, before giving a perfectly fine app negative reviews

And now some common questions, starting with the new version for AT&T iPhone users:

Why Does It Not Work On My iPod Touch?
This application was specifically tailored to work with the free access to Wi-Fi hotspots that AT&T is including with their iPhone data plans. The plan is not available to anybody else yet. But, we haven’t left iPod touch users out: our original, multi-network version of Easy Wi-Fi does run well on the iPod touch, and supports AT&T Wi-Fi (including the free Starbucks accounts).

Why Do You Need My Telephone Number?
We need your AT&T iPhone number because that is your user name for connecting to the AT&T Wi-Fi network. We’re not going to share it with anybody, call you or send you text messages. We just give it to AT&T’s authentication system each time you try to log in so that they can confirm your account is enabled for free Wi-Fi and let you on to the internet.

Can We Have A Location Aware Hotspot Finder?
Consider it added to the list of enhancements. Not promising anything, but we’ll certainly look into it. The advantage to linking to the AT&T site is that, in theory at least, it should be the most up to date place to find a location near you.

For the multi-network version:

Why Doesn’t It Work on AT&T?
The short answer is that it does, and very well. The difficulty with AT&T is that they have many different user name formats and you have to get it right otherwise their authentication system will reject you. Perhaps the most common one we’ve seen comments about is the free access via the Starbuck’s loyalty cards. For that, enter your username followed by @attwifi.com (so, for example, mine might be john@attwifi.com had I been lucky enough to get ‘john’ as my Starbuck’s/AT&T user name - I wasn’t!). For everybody else, the domain you need to add is the same as the one you select from the drop down list on the login web page (other common examples are @att.net and @sbcglobal.net).

Does It Work On My Campus Network?
If your campus has a web form for you to log in with, then it is possible. If your campus is using IEEE 802.1X, then no (but your iPhone/iPod touch should be able to connect to those using its built in Wi-Fi software now). If you want to check before buying, drop by our forum and leave us a question, or perhaps download the free Windows or Mac version and try that. If your network is not in the list, we do have a form where you can submit new networks to us for addition (we have around 2000 networks that we support already, and we’re always happy to add more).

It’s Not Working For Me, Where Can I Get Help?
Head on over to our forum to see if anybody else has asked the same thing, and if not post your question there. We try to respond to everything within a business day, though sometimes it might take us a little longer.