Wi-fi Meets Lo-fi

7 comments

About a month ago I was toying around with my laptop in my apartment and discovered that a neighbor had installed an open wi-fi access point that enabled me to get free wireless internet access right in my living room. However, only a week later the connection was gone and I figured I had lost my handy free connection for good.

Then, last night I was at Baba's Lounge with some friends, when the manager of the bar asked if I had been trying to access his wifi recently? Weird. He lives across the road from my place and had seen my computer's name 'Daniel' when I had tried to connect to his network. Strange things happen when you live in a small place and the lo-fi world of neighbors meets your online life. Anyhow, he's kindly enabling my MAC address, so I'm back in business. Thanks Ryan.

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nathan -

What the heck does "lo-fi" mean? I understand by the context that you mean "low-tech", but how you get from "technology" to "fidelity" is a mystery.

Daniel Burka -

On second glance Nathan, that title doesn't make any sense at all. Well, now that someone mentioned it there's no changing it. Seems like I've just invented a new term.

Jevon -

His roomate chronicled some of the "intrusion" at Shizamo.com.

Daniel Burka -

Here's a link direct to her post Jevon. Lori Jollimore, please accept my apologies, I had no idea I was causing you trouble. This is strangely like the real world :)

Alan -

"Lo-fi" is a real term. It would be epitomized by a '78 volare am-only car radio - tiny tinny speakers.

lo j -

http://www.shizamo.com

<p>Our first wi-fi meeting. I was the one who filtered you out Daniel, (Ryan knows nothing of computers.) I am the god of the router!! If you play nice, I might give you access again. But for some reason everytime you grabbed an IP, my router went into blitz mode. We kept losing our connection. It was hell. No internet is hell, don't let anyone tell you any different.</p><p>I told jevon that you must have an antenna, but perhaps you need one.</p><p>ps...a hint for anonymity to keep your wi-fi life separate from your lo-fi one...change your computer name.</p>

Jevon -

Put your tinfoil hat back on Lorrie., Daniel is no cracker.

You should have heard her, she felt very violated. ;-)

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Daniel Burka

My name is Daniel Burka. I'm a web designer living in San Francisco. Currently, I'm one of the founders of Milk Inc.. For several years I was the creative director at Digg and previous to Milk, I was the director of design at Tiny Speck. I grew up in PEI, Canada, where I was one of the founders of silverorange. Aside from obsessing about interface design and css selectors, I'm a frequently-falling rock climber, a lazy cyclist, and an often out-of-bounds disc golfer.

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I'm a web designer living in San Francisco, California. I sometimes get the chance to present lectures and workshops at conferences around the world, where I speak about iterative design strategies, designing for large online communities, and more broadly about interface design for web applications. I've posted many of the slides from past presentations I've done on Slideshare.

Currently, I'm the director of design at a small gaming startup called Tiny Speck. Until October 2009, I was the creative director at Digg. I was also one of the co-founders of the social content-sharing site Pownce, which is now a part (heh heh) of Six Apart. Back in 1999, I helped found silverorange, a stellar web development and design firm based in Prince Edward Island, Canada. I continue to work with silverorange, but as an inactive partner.

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