It seems that my last post has stirred the pot a little.

I’m now taking orders for folks who want to get this hardware to Sydney and Melbourne and split the shipping costs. Myles Eftos is doing the same for anybody who wants them sent to Perth. I’ll happily split out the Melbourne orders if we get enough. At the moment Melbournites have ordered around 8 and I have orders for over 20 in Sydney.

This is kind of response is incredibly cool. It’s also been cool to get all the questions. Here’s some answers:

No. You cannot automatically specify a download limit on users on your free public tier.

You can specify a speed limitation on the free public tier and you can ban any user you like. So you can remove the hogs after the fact, but you can’t prevent them.

Let me follow that by saying that we have offered freely available wifi to anybody within range for the last 6 months. In that time we’ve had 32 users. Around 20 are regular users. We never even came close to hitting our old limit of 10Gb, let alone our new one of 20Gb (except when I left Azureus open too long…)

A few further points need to be made. Yes, the Standard Edition has a little toolbar at the top of the free public tier that can’t be turned off. Yes, I also think that sucks, but I use my private tier at home, which has no toolbar. Standard edition offers you both tiers, so while you’re on your own network you won’t have it.

Lastly, I’ve made a big deal out of this. I’ve recommended it to all of you, and you’re buying these little bits of kit on the basis of that recommendation. That’s a little scary and I don’t want to fuck up.

But I might. I don’t work for Meraki. I have no affiliate relationship with them. I’m getting no cash out of placing these orders. I’m doing this because I believe it represents an opportunity for people to claim some space. For us to wrest a little more control from the powers-that-be.

Meraki may not be the answer. They may turn out to be money-grubbing opportunists who try to squeeze us for more cash or make changes we don’t like (no offense to the folks there if they’re reading this, I’m sure you’re lovely - this is hypothetical). If Meraki isn’t it, the network will route around it. We’ll all use FON or Whisher or Terranet or who knows what else is around the corner.

Don’t tell me you’re the only person in your neighbourhood who’ll use this. Unless you are the only person within miles, there is somebody else nearby who will use and appreciate free wifi.

The important part is that we’re all here pushing to make this change. And the more people we convince, the more powerful we will be. Buy the gear. Use it. Tell your friends about it. Post it somewhere. Email your user groups. Flickr them when you set them up. Blog it. Twitter it. Sell it.

We’re talking about cultural change. Culture is big and hard to steer. It takes effort. So if you like these ideas, if you want this to happen, you have to make it happen.

Imagine if every member of the Web Standards Group bought some of these. Or every member of RORO. Or every member of the PHP user groups, the UPA, the Python krewe, the Beer 2.0 posse, the .NET folks, AWIA, WIPA, and all the Webjammers.

I’m stupidly excited about this because I can see so much potential, but that’s only going to be achieved if we all drive it. So let’s do it. Let’s free the net!

Twitter is a strange beast. Adored and loathed in probably equal parts, the debate of Twitter’s usefulness will continue unabated. Just as the debate about MySpace’s attractiveness or the virtue of OSX over Windows, it seems destined to become one of the tech world’s ‘holy wars’.

It is once you make the decision to have a Twitter account, though, that the real issues begin. Public or private? Friend or follower? Site name, real name or a fresh pseudonym? And how much is too much?

For some people, these decisions are easy. But others have circumstances complicated by personality, friendships, exposure, gender, and employment. These issues have been confronted by the users of all new personal publishing platforms. Twitter is no different, but its immediacy brings new scope to concerns about privacy.

What do you use Twitter for and how does your concept of its use conflict with others?

Some people use it for keeping up with real-life friends and some use it for keeping up with interesting ideas. Some people use it for networking. These are all really the one use: a simple low cost-of-entry method for learning about somebody you’re interested in. It’s the end points that differ.

What do others do with all that information I publish everyday? They read it, skim it, skip it. Sometimes they respond in public, via Twitter or a blog post. Sometimes privately, by email, direct tweet or IM. My Twitter ‘friends’ aren’t the only ones with that information - Google and Technorati index it and anybody can find it.

And once it’s on Google…

It becomes permanent. That information is never going away. It will be forever available in various caches and search engines for the lifespan of the internet as we know it. No wonder some people feel uncomfortable. Caught-in-the-moment tweets may be regretted later. Twitter will let you delete them, but Google won’t.

Many of my friends keep their Twitters private, restricted only to those they select as friends. This banishes the spectre of permanence, but creates fresh social dilemmas. Technology offers no solutions for how to let someone know that you don’t want them to see your tweets.

Going back to high school

This is both exclusive and excluding. It leads to bruised feelings and hurt comments, creating pain on both sides. Reminds me of adolescence…

With good reason, because these hurt feelings exist as we, the users, have not evolved to match the technologies. And I don’t mean that our sharks don’t have frickin’ laser beams on their heads. We’ve not yet equipped ourselves to cope with the social implications of using them. Twitter is just the latest in an ongoing line of disruptive technologies that are not only changing the way we view and use this thing we call ‘the Web’, but also changing the way we interact with each other.

We often refer to technologies as ‘immature’ to show that we see further development; that it has not yet reached its fullest potential. It is not a term people use to describe themselves in relationship to a technology very often, but it fits with increasing frequency as what we build progresses further from how we think.

New technologies require consideration

Joining Twitter requires as much careful consideration as starting a blog or publishing photos on Flickr. Sure, you can just throw yourself out there and damn the consequences, but there will be consequences. Or you can carefully consider the possible benefits for you versus the potential downsides, weigh them up, then choose. I figure most of us fall somewhere in between.

There will always be people who embrace everything full throttle. And there will be always be those who turn away and pretend it isn’t happening. I don’t think that web professionals can afford to be either. We need to have a sense of proportion; to balance the thrill of the new against the hard-won experience. So, dive in to Twitter, folks. Get with it. Learn about it. Feel the pain, the joy and the undeniable banality. Teach yourself all the tricks and pitfalls. I guarantee you’ll find that useful, no matter what you ultimately decide about Twitter.