The idea behind the networks is to provide a wireless alternative to broadband for city residents and give tourists and business travelers a place to log on for the day. The projects are expensive: $85,000 a square mile, or $10 million to $15 million to cover all of Philadelphia, for example.

Memory Spot has a 10-megabits-per-second data-transfer rate and can store up to 4Mb of data, although the demonstration chip stores only 256Kb. The chip also has an integrated antenna, making it much smaller than RFID chips, which get their size from separately attached antennae.

USA Today reports on the launch here, Om Malik has the scoop here. Below is the welcome screen you get when connecting to GoogleWiFi for the first time. Gmail username/password are required, user is redirected to google.com/ig after login.

Wired News does a road test of the Google WiFi.

Battery life is worth mentioning as well. I haven’t re-charged it since I received my test phone nearly three days ago and I still have lots of juice left in the battery. That’s a very good sign.

One of eBay’s challengers, Overstock.com, which sells travel services and products for fixed prices and at auction, also recently forayed deeper into the wireless realm. In November it started Mobile O, where cellphone users can use their phones to browse and buy anything on Overstock’s Web site. The service was initially intended for customers of Verizon Wireless, who pay $5 to activate it.

All of a sudden using mobile app for eBay or OverStock cannot just happen casually, it has to be a motivated act that justifies spending $5. Which suddenly shrinks the market of potential users significantly, as even with such a little barrier for entry as $5, the user is likely to avoid the hassle of attaching yet another fee to his/her wireless bill.

NewsFactor elaborates on WiMAX projects around the world:

Intel is providing its PRO/Wireless 5116 broadband interface chipset, previously known by its codename Rosedale, for the WiMax equipment being used by operators in France, Mexico, South America, the Philppines, and Eastern Europe. Infrastructure for the new networks is being built by Airspan, Alcatel, Alvarion, and Redline Communications.

AlterNet will serve two largest Ukrainian cities for now, but will grow to expand every regional capital. Ukraine currently consists of 25 regions with the capital being the largest city in the region. Overall they are planning to spend $40-60 mln on getting the largest cities connected to WiMAX. No word on pricing just yet.

The request is pretty simple – just go to Microsoft Knowledge Base, search for the article 871122, get this results page with nothing but a single result on it, click through the first and the very last result, and read the instructions Microsoft put up for fixing the Zero Wireless Configuration error in Windows XP with Service Pack 2. Of course, you have to know the URL for the Microsoft Knowledge Base, but that supposedly gets presented to you at early age together with potty training.

So they know that the solution exists in Knowledge Base, they even know the 6-digit code for the problem. Which begs the question: why don’t they just provide the URL in the first place?