The Auckland City Council has today launched a wireless broadband service, beginning with seven coverage areas where users can prepay for access by the hour, day, or week.  The service was launched mid day today.

Areas covered by today’s launch include:

• Aotea Square
• Karangahape Road
• Ponsonby
• Remuera
• Parnell
• Viaduct Basin
• Westhaven

Broadband speeds of up to 2 megabits per second are achievable across the service.

The service is currently charged at $3.00 per hour, $6.50 per day, or $30 per week.  Access to the Auckland City website is free.

The network has been developed from a partnership between Kordia, Tomizone, and the Auckland City Council.

YouTube appears to be experimenting with a new video download facility, for the first time letting viewers download and take a piece of YouTube with them.  This new capability is their latest move in the highly competitive world of online video.

It’s a limited release at this stage, with the first YouTube channel to receive this attention being the official channel of president-elect Barack Obama.

YouTube Download Facility

Video downloads are available in MPEG4 video format, allowing for some interesting options for transferring video to portable devices such as iPods, iPhones, and other video capable units.

In late December we reported on a new content delivery system by company SimpleCDN, promising to provide capabilities comparable to competitors such as Amazon and Akamai for a fraction of the cost.

My analysis of the service in December was positive overall.  I can now report that SimpleCDN has further expanded it’s offering with new services and a pricing initiative sure to demand attention.  Since December, SimpleCDN has introduced a series of new services and a pricing structure for it’s just-released StormFront delivery offering.

The new features

Users of SimpleCDN are now able to password protect content carried on the network.   By using this facility you can restrict access to bucket contents and limit content to downloaders you choose to provide password credentials to.

Content within buckets can be automatically refreshed on demand.  The synchronisation between buckets and your origin server is an automated process, but it can now be sped up by using this option.  This option is only applicable to Auto and Mirror buckets.

SimpleCDN now includes a facility to delete your buckets from the system.  Before the introduction of this facility you would need to contact support to have this task performed.

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Telecom New Zealand is to close down what it describes as New Zealand’s largest shopping mall after running it at a loss since November 2005.

The online shopping mall called ‘Ferrit’ is to stop taking orders from 5pm on 14th January 2009.

At present, all pages on the Ferrit site have a large image banner near the top explaining the situation.

From 5pm 14 Jan you will no longer be able to place orders on Ferrit.co.nz.  You can still purchase from Ferrit retailers by going directly to the retailers website.  Retailers will continue to process any orders in the system and Ferrit guarantess you will either receive your goods or your money back.

Telecom retail CEO Alan Gourdie said in a statement that the company was directing its focus and resources to “core business areas” such as next generation broadband and mobile technology.

Ferrit has 24 full time employees and another 13 contractors.

Source:  The New Zealand Herald, Ferrit