Philadelphia- The Story of a Wireless City

The city of Philadelphia will the the next in a small series of US cities to go wireless i.e. the entire city will be one giant hotspot (I'm salivating just at the thought). An increasing number of websites are creating multimedia content, which really requires faster connection (broadband) speeds. This is typically more costly than dial-up (though competition among ISPs has driven down costs quite a bit in recent years) and so often unaccessible to people in lower income brackets. Philadelphia city officials now see internet access as an essential service, just like electricity and sanitation. I cannot imagine when Lagos will get to that stage, because of-course, we are very much struggling with the provision of the 'real' basic needs (food, shelter and transport- much less good roads, sanitation and electricity).

Another story on the BBC site shows how blogging is changing how journalists view and do their work. Since news blogs are becoming commonplace now, with many 'ordinary citizens' sharing their thoughts via their blog, journalists have to get used to engaging readers in discussion and deal with an increasing level of scrutiny of their ideas and perhaps accuracy of their facts.