Mobile Learning Reading List Part 2

After a far too long hiatus i’m back (from Bangkok!—more on that very soon.) So for starters, a bunch of new mobile learning material :-)

Mobile Learning on the Cheap

Lots of good ideas here that range from how to use PDAs in the classroom to SMS based activities.

Mobile and Media Literacy

Equitycampaign—out of the UK is an initiative that hopes to decrease the digital divide in the EU. Not specifically mobile focused but some of their rationale can easily be applied to justify mobile learning and i’m sure there will be some mobile components in all of this.

In essence, the digital divide is the difference in access to learning resources that modern technology offers young people, usually a working computer and an Internet connection. While our schools are better equipped than ever before, the variation in the quality of learning that takes place at home is huge. And as children only spend 15% of their lives at school, the learning that takes place at home is extremely important to their future success.

Technology offers us a unique opportunity to extend learning support beyond the classroom, something that has proved impossible to do until now. But the digital divide means that millions of children are currently denied this help.

On a somewhat related note, the European Centre for Media Literacy (ECML) was a 24 month program from 2004-2006 with the following objectives:

With media technology becoming so prevalent in homes, and with multi-media education more possible now with student access to computers and the Internet, “media literacy” expands the basic concept of literacy (i.e. “reading” and “writing”) to all forms of communication – from television to T-shirts, from billboards to multi-media environments. ECML project would like to help stakeholders to understand why teaching media literacy is so important and give students new education tools.

And finally, an ambitious Mobile Content Education campaign from the Australian Interactive Media Association:

…with increased sophistication, comes an increased burden on the consumer to understand, interact with, and consume mobile content. Recent reports such as the Australian Mobile Phone Lifestyle Index, international research and much consumer feedback shows that only a relatively small group of early adopters are engaging with mobile content. Early experiences with mobile content—good or bad, will spread quickly via word of mouth. We need to ensure that consumers overwhelmingly have positive experiences with mobile content—and tell their friends!

…The AIMIA Mobile Content Industry Development Group is inviting mobile content companies to join with operators, content providers, trade associations and handset manufacturers in developing a cross-industry national education campaign focusing on:

  • What is mobile content?
  • Why engage with mobile content?
  • How much does it cost?
  • How do I get it?
  • What do I do if I have a problem?

The campaign is envisaged to include television advertising, in-store brochures, web site and a mobile site and will be ‘owned’ by the industry as a whole.

Lowest Common Denominator

Leonard Low with another great post pondering what it will take to make the mobile web truly useful—not only in education—but to the masses.

In my research into best practices for designing mobile learning, I’ve recently come across a number of sources that advocate, strongly, that a LCD (Least/Lowest Common Denominator) approach to designing mobile experiences is a bad thing….An LCD approach to interface/activity design is one that caters for the widest range of platforms by creating a single, non-adaptive document designed to be viewable on the most basic and least functional of those platforms. The currently prevailing philosophy regarding resource generation for the mobile web is that documents should be designed to exploit the functionality of any platform on which they render, to maximise the user’s viewing experience. This view is strongly advocated by leading mobile web commentators, researchers and academics, and indeed, the W3C itself through its Mobile Web Best Practice standard and MobileOK project:….My feeling is that web content design guidelines used to be centred around avoiding problems; current mobile content design guidelines are centred around maximising user experiences. Both perspectives have pros and cons – what do you think?

This on the heels of a recent announcement by the W3C of a workshop on the Mobile Web in Developing Countries. Mobile learning is such an obvious fit for many emerging nations as larger numbers of the population have mobiles compared to PCs. That said—content creation for mobile is still relatively difficult and for this reason, many mobile learning initiatives still focus on PDAs rather than handsets. With inexpensive or free applications like mobile Word, Excel and Power Point, a good PDA with memory card and wi-fi can easily be incorporated into both lesson planning and student generated mobile activities. As for mobile web on PDA, it seems to be limited to surfing and i’ve yet to hear of any projects willing to take the leap into actual content creation via XHTML and CSS for the browser environment—possibly because it’s still too difficult and/or unpredictable in its results.

Wildlife in the Field

A lovely example of fun, simple practical mobile learning from the UK. WildKey is an interactive identification program that enables pupils to take ICT beyond the normal limits of the classroom and identify and record species in the field.

Using simple prompts and images, pupils of all ages (KS 2-4) can quickly learn to identify species and record their sightings. When collated in a systematic manner, yearly data provide a picture of how climate change may be affecting British wildlife. This enables pupils to understand why classification is important and allows schools to combine data with remote partners. WildKey thus has applications in both the Science and ICT subjects of the Curriculum.

Presentations

Lots of eLearning and educational technology groups are starting to discuss mobile learning as part of their offering. This recording from an American conference (I can’t figure out what this is from as I only bookmarked the mp3 file) discusses examples of pilot programs from nursing colleges and the military. Also “Learning for a New Information Society” by David Metcalfe from the Annual Conference on Distance Teaching and Learning provides examples of recent projects as well as some great commentary on the benefits of mobile learning.

Development

I always enjoy finding practical material for teachers and developers. First, an article outlining guidelines for development of Flash applications for the Pocket PC. The article provides a nice mix of information including a primer on Flash vs Java, vector vs bitmap (always a popular subject for beginners :-) as well as a fairly in depth tutorial.

On a related note, I ran into these Pocket PC User Interface guidelines from Microsoft and of course the recent announcement of new Flash Lite 2.1 support for Windows Mobile 5.

Paper Prototyping in a Design Framework for Professional Mobile Learning” (PDF) describes the advantages of paper prototyping in the development process and offers some basic guidelines useful in the development of learning materials.

“Prototyping mobile device screens with sticky notes is an extension of paper and pencil prototyping methods, so the same core activities apply to design workshops using this technique, namely: (1) identifying needs and establishing requirements, (2) developing alternative designs that meet those requirements, (3) building a conceptual design, (4) path determination, (5) accommodating for user error, and (6) prototype….”

We’ve recently taken to using pads of yellow 3M stickies when prototyping for the small screen. The small size of the paper forces you to think small and the ability to move the papers around yet have them stay put for later is really handy.

And finally, “Developing Courseware for Mobile Devices“—part of a larger series of presentations from the Asian Development Bank Institute—provides usability and content related guidelines useful in the development of mobile learning objects.

Non Literacy and Mobile Communication

Understanding Non-Literacy as a Barrier to Mobile Phone Communication is an excellent article by Jan Chipchase outlining the challenges and techniques devised by illiterate consumers who own or use mobile devices.

Two basic tasks were easy for almost all our participants to complete: turning on the phone and answering an incoming call. Beyond this, there were various degrees of success. Dialing a local phone number is relatively easy, but problems can occur when there are variations such as dialing a national or international number, or using IP telephone prefixes. Dialing an incorrect number may require starting from the beginning of the task since the cancel button is not always understood.

Our hypothesis is that once the non-literate user has learned how to make and receive phone calls to their close circle of contacts, their primary reason for owning a mobile phone has largely been met. There is, therefore, less motivation to spend additional time rote learning other features on the phone, unless someone can proactively demonstrate the worth of the features, and spends the time to teach them the steps required to complete the task.

Phone features that require text editing such as creating a contact, saving a text message, and creating a text message present too great a barrier to use.

Enjoy!

Mobile Learning Reading List

A collection of projects and resources i’ve found over the past few weeks. Most—but not all—are directly related to mobile. A few cover general uses of ICTs in learning. Enjoy!

MLearn

A collection of papers from the 2003, 2004 and 2005 MLearn conferences. Of particular interest are the “Book of Papers from MLearn 2003″ (3.5MB PDF) and “The Use of Computer and Video Games for Learning” (PDF) which outlines health and psycho-social issues surrounding games in schools, provides examples of existing games, discusses how students feel about this type of learning context; and provides recommendations for content creators.

The 2006MLearn conference is being held on October 22-25 in Banff, Alberta (Canada.)

EU M-Learning Project

Mobile Technologies and Learning,” (PDF) provides a general overview of the European Commission’s m-Learning project. The project site also includes a good discussion of technologies and devices currently in use for learning as well as emulator-based examples (look for the links on the right nav) of some of their applications that target literacy skills. A great example of the work they’re doing is their Healthy for Life project:

“The materials were designed to provide accessible information and support to 40 pregnant teenagers, including those from ethnic minorities, to address their learning and support needs in a health education context, developing their self-confidence and motivation to learn. Close attention was paid to meeting the target group’s needs, following thorough user analysis, to ensure that only subjects of interest to them were dealt with (i.e. labour and birth, sexually transmitted diseases, nutrition, housing and benefits) using appropriate language and attractive illustrations (photo stories and cartoon graphics).”

MOBIlearn

MOBIlearn is a worldwide European-led research and development project exploring context-sensitive approaches to informal, problem-based and workplace learning by using key advances in mobile technologies.” Of particular interest on their site is the Public Findings area which includes a variety of resources like “Guideline for Learning/Teaching/Tutoring in a Mobile Environment” and ” Best Practices for Instructional Design and Content Development for Mobile Learning.” The project seems (at first glance) to be a mobile version of the many internet based ‘Open Learning Object Repository’ specification projects.

“On these social and technological premises, the MOBIlearn project aims at improving access to knowledge for selected target users (such as mobile workers and learning citizens), giving them ubiquitous access to appropriate (conceptualized and personalized) learning objects, by linking to the Internet via mobile connections and devices, according to innovative paradigms and interfaces.”

Good luck to them. These projects are always very well meaning but tend to suffer from massive over-engineering of the learning object structure with little thought to the actual content creation or reuse by educators. [Some nice context on the learning object debate here from David Wiley]

Literacy, ICTs and Games

For information about ICT-related literacy and numeracy projects, check out the UK’s CTAD site. There’s also a good overview at “Can ICTs Help Increase Literacy?” with further links to a study by Vancouver based Commonwealth of Learning on ICT use in India and Zambia.

I also recently picked up “What Video Games Have to Teach Us About Learning and Literacy” by James Paul Gee which is so far excellent. Not as gimmicky as it many of these types of books can be. As a matter of fact—not gimmicky at all—and has some great discussion of the various types and contexts of literacy.

“When people learn to play video games, they are learning a new literacy. Of course, this is not the way the word “literacy” is normally used…in the modern world, language is not the only important communication system. Today, images, symbols, gra[hs, diagrams, artifacts, and many other visual symbols are particularily significant. Thus the idea of different types of "visual litercy" would sem to be an important one."

Prensky on Mobile

A nice down to earth discussion of mobile devices for learning from Mark Prensky in "What Can You Learn from a Cell Phone." (PDF)

"Can cell phones really provide their owners with the knowledge, skills, behaviors and attitudes that will help them succeed in their schools, their jobs and their lives? I maintain the only correct answer to the “What can they learn” question is “ANYTHING, if we design it right.” There are many different kinds of learning and many processes that we use to learn, but among the most frequent, time-tested, and effective of these are listening, observing, imitating, questioning, reflecting, trying, estimating, predicting, “what-if”-ing and practicing. All of these learning processes can be done through our cell phones. In addition, the phones compliment the short-burst, casual, multi-tasking style of today’s “Digital Native” (PDF) learners."

A great article for any educator, parent or administrator trying to justify the use of technology in the classroom. There's more on Mark's site including a link to "Mobile Phone Imagination" (look for issues #14) from the Vodaphone Reciever magazine.
For those interested in some of the issues facing teachers who are currently using handhelds in the classroom, check out Learning at Hand, a resource blog for teachers using PDAs and Treos in the classroom. [I always forget that there are lots of teachers doing this. There are also lots of small (sometimes clunky but functional) learning applications for Palm and Pocket PC that help kids simulate scenarios in science, English and maths.]

Blogs

Some of my favourites include Leonard Low’s Mobile Learning blog (“101 Ideas for Mobile Learning“,) the Finnish MobileED initiative (check out their great examples of students scenarios from South Africa) and Ewan McIntosh who spends his days helping students use technology (including iPods) in the classroom. [Note some recent discussions as well on QR-code usage in education.]

More…

I recently ran into a wonderful research group in the UK by the name of Futurelab.

“A not-for-profit organization, Futurelab is committed to sharing the lessons learnt from our research and development in order to inform positive change to educational policy and practice.”

They do all sorts of interesting stuff (well worth a look!) but in the area of mobile learning they recently published a “Literature Review in Mobile Technologies and Learning” which outlines the key findings of a larger study by the MLearning group at the University of Birmingham.

“learning is mobile in terms of space, ie it happens at the workplace, at home, and at places of leisure; it is mobile between different areas of life, ie it may relate to work demands, self-improvement, or leisure; and it is mobile with respect to time, ie it happens at different times during the day, on working days or on weekends”

Also of interest by FutureLab, “A comparison of young people’s home and school ICT use.” (PDF)

I also bumped into “Language E-Learning on the Move” today from Japan Review

“In Japan, where more people own cell phones than PCs and language education is a huge industry, there is potential for a booming market in mobile e-learning. While education sites aren’t currently moneymakers, more sophisticated content may allow providers to charge more for bite-sized learning.”

The Review incidentally has several other mobile articles including an excerpt from Mimi Ito’s Personal, Portable, Pedestrian and and overview of Japanese mobile media services for journalism students.

And finally, a reading list within a reading list :-) From Learning Light in the UK, a large page of mobile learning resources.

Enjoy! And please let me know if i’m missing something of note. I’ll try to update this list periodically.

[Addendum: As it happens, i'm going to be speaking to a group of Australian teachers about mobile learning next month in an online presentation with Leigh Blackhall for the Australian Flexible Learning Framwork group. They have a very good (and active) mobile learning mailing list (via Moodle.) Education Australia also has quite a few resources on their site.

And a few more resources from the UK. BECTA's Emerging Technologies for Learning PDF, and this video and PDF presentation from Geoff Stead of CTAD (mentioned earlier) entitled Benefits and Hazards of Teaching with Mobile Devices.]

Neat Reading List Stuff

Research is fun, you find all sorts of neat stuff…

Our Cell Phones, Ourselves, by Christine Rosen

Great article from the New Atlantis Journal. Draws from an astounding cornucopia of research to examine why we use mobile devices, how we feel about them and how they affect our lives.

With all these accoutrements, it is not surprising that one contributor to a discussion list about wireless technology recently compared cell phones and BlackBerrys to “electronic pets.” Speaking to a group of business people, he reported, “you constantly see people taking their little pets out and stroking the scroll wheel, coddling them, basically ‘petting’ them.” When confined to a basement conference room, he found that participants “were compelled to ‘walk’ their electronic pets on breaks” to check their messages. In parts of Asia, young women carry their phones in decorated pouches, worn like necklaces, or in pants with specially designed pockets that keep the phone within easy reach. We have become thigmophilic with our technology—touch-loving—a trait we share with rats, as it happens. We are constantly taking them out, fiddling with them, putting them away, taking them out again, reprogramming their directories, text messaging.

On the Mobile—The Effects of Mobile Telephones on Social and Individual Life, by Dr. Sadie Plant

A wonderful booklet (PDF) prepared for Motorola. I first read about it in Mark Curtis’ “Distraction: Beign Human in a Digital Age ” and just had to find it when I read about it again today. A must read (as is Mark’s book by the way.)

In French it is called ‘le portable’, or ‘le G’, which stands for GSM. The Finns have adopted the term ‘kanny’, which sprang from a brand name but also refers to an extension of the hand. In German it is the ‘handy’; in Spanish it is ‘el movil’; Americans still call it a cell phone. In Arabic it is sometimes called ‘el mobile’, but often a ‘telephone sayaar’ or ‘makhmul’ (both of which refer to carrying) or a telephone gowal (air telephone). In Thailand it is ‘a moto’. In Japan it is ‘keitai denwa’, a carried telephone, or simply ‘keitai’, or even just ke-tai.

Cell Phones Are the New Peackock Feathers

Hilarious and enlightening article by the San Francisco post detailing a British study of cell phone use amongst the population which culminated in an article entitled “Mobile Phones as Lekking Devices Among Human Males”

In nature, a lek is a communal mating area where males gather to engage in flamboyant courtship displays, and females stroll by to judge the performers and presumably choose the fittest, most resourceful or most amusing of the lot. Hammer-head bats, sage grouse, bowerbirds, walruses, Ugandan kob and fallow deer are among the species that engage in a lekking-style courtship system. And so, too, it seems, do some humans, at least in the pubs of Liverpool.

More on the Digital Divide

Ethan Zuckerman is always such a wealth of information on the realities of life, business and politics in emerging nations. His post “Africa Calling – SND MNY 2 YR MBL” for World Changing offers a great perspective as does this one which discusses the wonderful Grameen Phone intitative.

Grameen had 1138 branches in Bangladesh, 2.3 million borrowers, 94% female, with $33 million lent per month. The core model – a woman borrows money from the bank, buys a cow, sells the milk and repays the loan. So why can’t a cellphone be a cow?

On a similar topic, the Ericsson white paper “Communication For All” offers concrete examples of ubiquitous communication through intelligent infrastructure, taxation and smart ‘total cost of handset ownership’ models.

If mobile communication is to be made available to everybody, operators must find ways to remain profitable while keeping services affordable. Addressing the Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) for operators is imperative. Technical solutions are now available that make it possible for operators to charge low tariffs, while remaining profitable. New business models, such as network sharing between operators, can help reach new users, especially when building network coverage in rural areas.

June’s Best Mobile Industry Podcasts

I’ve run into a bunch of good mobile-related podcasts and web-casts this month. Many are part of a series and have RSS feeds so I thought i’d pass them on.

  • Voice of S60 interview with Charlie Schick of Nokia Lifeblog and Series 60 fame (this is a great interview—lots of arcane information about the making of S60 and the inner workings of Nokia plus Charlie’s always great fun to talk to)
  • Podcast Network’s Mobile Media Show interview with Russell Buckley from AdMob (way more than just a mobile ad network—this is a neat service)
  • Mobile Monday Silicon Valley presentations courtesy of Nodemode.
    • Dave Adams from Mobile Research discusses status and trends of the handset landscape.
    • Dave, architect at Nokia talks about the Nokia browser based on WebCore, the same core in OSX’s Safari browser.
    • Chris Hoffman, an engineering director at the Mozilla Foundation talks about their Minimo mobile browser. Currently available for Windows CE devices.
  • Mobile Monday London presentations in mp3, mov and 3Gp formats
    • June 2006 – Mobile Enterprise (Symbian, Bluetrail, Red Oxygen, 3G Doctor and others)
    • May 2006 – User Experience hosted at Surfkitchen (SurfKitchen, Ikivo, Instrata, Intelli-call)
    • April 2006 – Mobile Web 2.0 (AMF Ventures, AOL, and a panel including Cognima, Vodaphone and others)
    • March 2006 – Demo Night (Cognima, Discovery Networks, E-Bay, IncrediblInc!, iTAGG, m-spatial, Skype, Volantis)
    • February 2006 – Mobile Payments (Google, Luup, Vodafone, Reporo)

Hmmm, if the above list isn’t a sales pitch for Mobile Monday i’m not sure what is :-)

Oh, and I have to include this one even though it’s pretty old…

  • Tom Hume’s entertaining ‘Web Everywhere‘ presentation from Deconstruct 2005 (an alternate view of the mobile web, walled gardens, digital divide etc.)

Enjoy!

Alex, Pig, GSM and the Digital Divide

One of the topics I find the most fascinating in mobile was again in the news yesterday with the imminent arrival of the 2 billion-th GSM subscriber—mostly due to astronomically high subscriber numbers in emerging markets.

“While it took just 12 years for the industry to reach the first billion connections. The second billion has been achieved in just two and a half years boosted by the phenomenal take up of mobile in emerging markets such as China, India, Africa and Latin America, which accounted for 82% of the second billion subscribers” (via Digital Lifestyles)

While in Helsinki last month, I had the opportunity to play with some of Nokia’s ‘ultra-low cost handsets’—specifically designed for emerging markets. Often referred to as the “sub $40 phone”, some recent models retail as high as $100 but all are meant to be ultra-durable (rubberized finish to combat dust, high battery life), practical (alarm clock, FM radio, speakerphone) yet fashion and lifestyle oriented (MP3 player, removable covers etc.)

Marketed with taglines like “Now Everyone Can Phone” and “For the Business of Life”, these are the handsets that enable business, learning and communication for millions of families, students and businesses in emerging markets. Like Alex—a friend of ours from Thailand.

Alex lives on the island of Phuket. The income levels in Phuket are statistically high for Thailand but much of this is disproportionate due to the high number of local and expat professionals running resorts and tourism businesses on the island. By contrast, there is also a high, unofficial population of Burmese labourers as well as a Thai itinerant workers who pour in from the north to work in tourism during the busy season, or construction during the low season.

Alex lives with his brother (nicknamed Pig—I don’t think we ever found out his real name) along with their sister, her baby and occasional assorted relatives in a one room apartment in Phuket town. It was a simple whitewahsed fan-cooled concrete structure. The rent was about 3000 baht per month ($100) and it really was the most basic of accommodation. Alex owned an old two-stroke Suzuki motorbike while his brother drove an old tuk-tuk style truck (not the colourful two stroke tuk-tuks you see in Bangkok but the country version that resembles a tiny utility truck.) With these vehicles, cheap business cards, and two cell-phones they made their living offering day trips or rides to tourists. Alex also had a hotmail address but he mostly used it to keep in touch with the occasional repeat client, emailing them in advance of a yearly trip, or contacting people with specific times and dates.

One could argue that transportation was the main definer of his ability to earn income, but without the ability to keep in contact with customers, call them to schedule a pick-up spot, or call ahead to find out how busy a tourist attraction was, he likely would not have earned nearly as much as he did. And he wasn’t earning much.

By comparison, many of his competitors had to rely on phone rental booths (ie. lady sitting by the side of the road with a notebook, pen and handful of prepaid phones; renting them out by the minute) or pay fixed-line phones (often independent as well but harder to find and more difficult to operate.) One could argue though that it was the availabilty and portability of technology in general—not just the mobile phone—that made the biggest difference to all of them as illustrated in this quote from Dean Bubley a few weeks back on Forum Oxford..

“I heard a great anecdote from an aid-worker in Zambia. She said that the really cool kids don’t want a mobile—they want a USB memory stick on a chain round their necks.”

So this is a fascinating area and there’s lots of great information out there if you’re interested in learning more.

Reading List – Generation M, Cultural Mobility, Convergence etc..

Some neat stuff i’ve been reading…

Wireless Works: Exploring New Brand Connections

A great research paper from the folks at the BBDO Proximity Lab.

“People truly treasure their mobile phones. They are reassured by them. They feel loved and secure when they have them and lonely and anxious when they do not. And they see their mobiles as another way in which to express their unique selves. They do this by changing their ringtones to the latest music, their screen saver to a picture of their partner or best friend and adding details to the outside of the phone.”

Just follow the somewhat hidden link on the right to request a copy. They have a great blog as well.

Introducing Generation M

Recent research from M:Metrics on mobile subscriber demographics.

“Mobile subscribers aged 13-24 are most likely to use mobile applications, but content companies should not ignore older subscribers who account for 70 percent of users.”

Consumers and Convergence: Challenges and opportunities in meeting next generation customer needs

Recent research from KPMG on cultural differences in consumer habits and interests relative to mobile devices and services.

“Daily commutes, for example, can spell opportunity for mobile providers who can offer services that promise entertainment or personal productivity during transport-bound downtimes (not to mention costs, when such usage pushes peak network capacities). Every day nearly half of the Asian consumers surveyed spend over an hour each way shuttling to and from their workplaces, as compared to 36 percent of European respondents and 33 percent of North American respondents (refer to Exhibit 7). To add to this “downtime” phenomenon, Asian respondents tend overwhelmingly (47 percent) to rely upon public transportation for these commutes. This percentage far exceeds those found in Europe (22 percent) or North America (8 percent).”

The location of this PDF keeps changing but you can find it easily enough through Google if it disappears again.

Distraction: Being Human in the Digital Age

I have this book on order so can’t totally vouch for it but it’s published by the folks at Futuretext “a publishing company specialising in mobility, digital convergence and other emerging technologies” (also the people behind Forum Oxford) and looks quite good.

What People Carry and Why by Jan Chipchase (Powerpoint)

Short but thoughtful presentation (2MB) by Jan Chipchase of Nokia Research. If you’re not familiar with Jan, do visit his blog. And if anyone knows Jan—try to convince him to (convince Nokia, to) release his photography under a Creative Commons license!

Personal, Portable, Pedestrian by Mimi Ito

Mimi is a cultural anthropologist who studies new media use in Japan and the United States. I’ve only read excerpts of this book but have it on order. There’s also a good podcast with Mimi on the Australian Mobile Media Show from the Podcast Network.

Insights into Asia: Same Technologies, Different Attitudes and Reasons for Use, Genevieve Bell for Intel

I ran into this neat PDF abstract from Intel a few days ago. It’s part of a larger Cultural Mobilities research project and has several associated PDFs that sadly can be a bit hard to find due to out of date links.

“What if you built a wireless router—like we do—for the home like we have. That wireless router is actually designed to send a signal to the average American home, of a free-standing dwelling with three to six rooms. It’s configured in a particular way for a particular footprint. We don’t think about that, because why would you? It’s built for a home. You take that same wireless router and put it in a flat in Singapore, which is 450 square feet in a multifamily high-rise, highdensity dwelling?. You are suddenly broadcasting to your flat, the next flat, the next flat, the next flat, and the flat across the street. Anyone in Singapore who has a wireless router or a wireless Ethernet card in their computer will tell you that they can open up their computer in their flat and get seven or eight IP addresses, none of which are their own.”

More links coming soon…