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.

A new version of Easy Wi-Fi specifically for iPhone users with AT&T plans went live in the app store over the holiday weekend. This version is trivial to set up - you just need to enter your 10 digit AT&T iPhone number into the settings page - and simple to use: connect to the Wi-Fi network, launch the app and it will log you in. Much simpler than typing your phone number in each time, waiting for the SMS from AT&T and then clicking the link in that to get connected.

In addition to all the AT&T Wi-Fi network locations (like Starbucks), it will also connect you to all the networks that have just click through web pages in our list of supported networks. And we’re working on an option to allow you to unlock this version and add more networks, using our web portal.

By the way, if you already have the original, multi-network, version of Easy Wi-Fi, then you don’t need this one: you can simply add the AT&T Wi-Fi (iPhone) plan to your Devicescape account and you will have the same capabilities.

Do you run a Wi-Fi network? Would you like a version like this specifically tailored for your network? If so, contact us and we’ll talk about what we can do for you.

Hello Everyone,

Those of you with mulitple devices using Devicescape may have noted some inconsistency in our naming convention.  When we first started with the Devicescape automated login product we wanted simply to have the product and the company name be completely consistent.  Hence, “welcome to Devicescape” and “Download Devicescape onto your device”, etc.

Unfortunately we faced naming issues, first on the Nokia devices and next on the iPhone, and ended up deciding to use the “Easy Wi-Fi” product name for those platforms.  Now, with the Easy Wi-Fi application the most popular WiFi app on the Apple App Store (!) and just about every Nokia N and E series phone showing “Easy Wi-Fi” we’ve decided to rationalize all of our products under this name.

It’ll take a month or so to make it through all of our clients and web site, but expect to see Easy Wi-Fi being the consistent name.  Hope you like it!

So, while we’re on this topic, we made a few other changes too.  In line with this mission of making Wi-Fi, well, easy, we’ve decided to consolidate all of our various technologies into one product.  We haven’t yet released it, but this 3.0 version of Devicescape is primarily targeted at our OEM customers: the makers of PCs, handsets and new WiFi capable devices (that’s when the bulk of Devicescape’s business comes from).

We feel that mobility is critical for these types of products, and WiFi will be used in the office, at home, and of course at public networks.  Therefore, our OEM version of Easy Wi-Fi, version 3, will include:

* Our enterprise-class security supplicant
* Optional Cisco CCX support
* Our home consumer oriented, “push-button” Wi-FI Protected Setup
* The automated hotspot login and provisioning system
* A framework to allow integration into the device’s connection manager

There are a bunch of other great enhancements we are making in 3.0, but we’ll disclose those later.

I’m excited to announce the availability of Devicescape for iPhone and iPod Touch on Apple’s App Store.  Thanks to all of our users out there who have been so patient: it took us a lot longer than we thought to figure out how to make this release!

As you can see in this screen shot, the new version looks quite a bit different.  Because of Apple’s current limitations on running in the background you need to launch the app to login.  But you can manage your account and check your usage history directly, which I think is quite handy.

If you’d like to check out the application, search for “Easy WiFi” on iTunes  or download it directly from the App Store.

Wanted to keep you all posted that we’re working hard on an official release of Devicescape for Apple’s App Store.  All being well this will make it out there in the very near future.  The exact acceptance process and timeline is a little bit unclear.

I’m very excited about the new application as it’s much improved, with plenty of handy new features which improve usability.  The team here has done a very nice job.  The current limitations of Apple’s SDK don’t allow us to work in the background so you need to start the application and hit “login”.  Still, that’s a lot nicer than wrangling with Safari and tedious login pages.

Many thanks to the hundreds of thousands of you with the current “hacked” version, for your enthusiasm and patience.   Watch this space!

One of the things that always frustrates me when I travel is the high cost of Internet access, especially at hotels. Oddly enough, it seems to be the premium hotels that charge extra for access, while the lower end chains give it away for free. I checked into a hotel near Heathrow Airport in London a few weeks ago and noticed that they had an “Executive Upgrade” which included Wi-Fi access and breakfast for $20. When I asked about the costs for Wi-Fi alone they told me it was $30. I guess the thinking there was that executives would be so dumb they’d need big help figuring out which one to choose!

Anyway, I went with the upgrade, but amazingly they warned me that I likely wouldn’t be able to actually access Wi-Fi from my room but I could certainly use it in the lobby. Now that’s great service. At least breakfast was ok.

It’s long been a bone of contention for many road warriors to pay high access fees when traveling. The all you can eat cellular data and Wi-Fi plans we have enjoyed at home suddenly rack up enormous roaming fees, and we encounter high price “session islands” like these hotels. Most of the time you don’t need access for long periods of time: just a quick sync of email, a VoIP call to the office or home, or wrangling with your flight operator’s website for non existent upgrades. To pay $10, $20, or $30 for that privilege is just plain maddening.

Recently Devicescape started a field trial of a new service we’re calling Devicescape One. It allows you to get access at a wide range of commercial Wi-Fi networks and pay by the minute. Devicescape One isn’t meant to replace your existing subscriptions or change your belief that Wi-Fi should be free. It’s there as a complement and an alternate to buying expensive session passes that are more than you need.

I had the chance to use Devicescape One on my last trip across Europe and a week later in Asia. It gave me access to several large networks which weren’t handled by roaming arrangements with my home Wi-Fi subscriptions. Even better I avoided using cellular data, where you pay by the KB instead of by the minute (one Outlook sync contained a 7MB Powerpoint presentation but it transferred in less than a minute!) For me, the minute by minute approach has broad appeal.

We’re running this Devicescape One field trial to check out the technology and assess the usage patterns and interest. There’s no guarantee that we’ll actually turn this into a real live service that costs our members anything, but it seems clear that this kind of scheme has its place and a partner of ours may like to use the capability.

Right now, we’re offering the trial to a limited set of Devicescape members. When you sign up we give you up to 120 minutes of Wi-Fi time. There is ZERO cost involved and no obligation. If you’re interested in joining the trial, you can sign up here. Note: you need to be an existing Devicescape member first.

The Cloud, Europe’s fastest growing Wi-Fi network provider - and arguably the coolest (they own the access points in all the pubs in London) has partnered with Devicescape to provide their customers the great Devicescape auto-connect service relabeled as “mycloud.”

We’re thrilled to be working with such a mover and shaker in the world of Wi-Fi - and oh yea - they had a great party at the chic SoHo trend-spot “24 Kingly” to kick off the fun.

What this means for our Devicescape members:
Right now it just means that you’ve hitched your wagon to a start-up that is in demand the world around. Pretty cool for you and it shows how technically savvy you are and what impeccable taste you have

What this means for Cloud members:
You’re in luck! The Cloud will automatically create Devicescape accounts for you so you can immediately start enjoying fast and easy Wi-Fi access in every pub you go to! (McDonalds and cafes in the UK too.)

Just another step in our taking the world by storm…