Earlier notions of a walled garden were associated with providers like AOL who offered content in a space distinct from the Internet. It wasnt appealing to me then, and it has certain dangers.

However, the notion being applied here is that if the connectivity is being treated as a service and there will be a fee-for-service model (user pays for connectivity) - the dominant model, then provision for making “some” content freely available to anyone that can receive the signal has merit. This was the idea brought forth in Minneapolis as a s “walled garden”.

Civic Garden is intended to conceptually supplant that - with a more explicit reach to all content that promotes the commonweal. I have suggested that all .gov. all .edu and other community and civic institutions be granted free carriage on the network.

These networks depend upon a use of the Public Right of Way, and as such there should be a return to the Public Good, and that should be direct: in defining the character of our networks.

Please ask more questions.

When a wireless device connects to available wireless networks, those are listed. There are also devices that utilize multiple networks to maximize connectivity. With all that in mind, your discussion of “walled gardens” is somewhat confusing to me.

Suppose I lived in a part of Chicago that did not presently have wireless capability, or the last mile as a wireless option. Suppose I wanted to connect my neighborhood network consisting of homes that were connected using Meraki units. Would the “walled gardens” restrict access, and would pricing vary, depending on which neighborhood network was attempting to access them? Please alert me with response: tompoe@fngi.net

http://www.pfhyper.com/weblog/2007/05/minneapolis-wireless-city-plans-for.html

I’ve been cajoling him to do a graphic representation of who is involved. Paying attention to what is happening in other cities can be challenging. When it’s your field and your own town, you know who the players are and you can usually keep them straight.

The plan in Minneapolis if to provide location-based portals, up to 90 but starting with five or six. The five or six represent communities, the 90 represents neighborhoods.

Our city and our state use .us as the TLD preceded by .mn so we got .mn.us. That should cover city and state very well.

The email issue: Email is a critical application on the Web and often various info sites or sites that require a registration require an email address. The current walled/civic garden plans don’t address this.

So I think we should consider a basic email account for text communications only. No attachments. Maybe a low limit on number of messages although this bridges into the area of email literacy in deleting messages.