And the winner is?

I ran a "competition" just over a week ago looking for a new name for one of my current ventures. Feedback was innitially slwo but eventually a good number of suggestions were send in.
Most of these came from Ireland with a few from the UK, continental Europe and the US.
Offering a prize certainly increased the hits to my blog.
Getting mentions on a lot of other blogs resulted to a likewise increase in exposure (thanks guys!).
Anyway after much deliberation we have chosen a winner and as much as it gals me (because he seems to win a lot lately) the winner is Conor O'Neil.
Conor submitted a whole list of suggestions out of which "AirApps" was chosen as the best one.
The Ruckus wifi routers will be winging their way to Conor shortly!

What's in a name?

My main venture at the moment is a company called 802.EU.
This venture's main product is a captive portal solution for use with wireless hotspots, hot-zones, municipal wireless networks & wisps. The portal consists of several modules displaying location based advertising, location based information and more. It also has several modules that offer a wide range of web-based applications include online backup, web based word-processing, spreadsheets, image manipulation, shared agendas etc. etc.
We've recently heard several comments that the name "802.EU" basically sucks. As we are early on in our development it is still not a huge undertaking to change the name.
Rather than have a few people in a room brainstorming I would like to hear what you people think. What would be a good name?
To make it interesting we will give a Ruckus Mediaflex WiFi router AND a Ruckus MetroFlex DZ router to the best suggestion.
For those of you that are not familiar with the Ruckus mediaflex products here's a bit of info from their website:

Ruckus MediaFlex NG
The First Fully Managed, In-Home Wireless Services Platform for Multimedia Distribution
The Ruckus MediaFlex NG is the first-of-its-kind wireless multimedia service platform that reliably distributes multimedia content over standard 802.11 Wi-Fi to every corner of the home.

The Ruckus MediaFlex NG combines innovative, patent-pending smart antenna and traffic management technologies to break down the barriers that have prevented a single Wi-Fi network from simultaneously supporting voice, video and data in the home.

Ruckus MetroFlex Dual Zone
High Performance Access Gateway and Wi-Fi Router
The Ruckus MetroFlex Dual Zone (DZ) is two products in one. It acts as a wireless access gateway, providing reliable connectivity to outdoor Wi-Fi networks, as well as an extended range indoor 802.11b/g access point.

The Ruckus MetroFlex DZ is the world’s first customer premise equipment specifically designed and optimized for broadband operators building large-scale metro Wi-Fi networks.

Patent-pending hardware and software let subscribers connect faster and more reliably to outdoor metro Wi-Fi networks – automatically optimizing around changing environmental conditions. Intelligent connection algorithms determine the fastest Wi-Fi mesh node with which to associate based on the highest data rates and best signal strength.


And before I forget; the deadline for your ideas is October 18th!

Let me tell you what the ruckus is all about...

We have been testing the Ruckus Wireless hardware during the past month and I am happy to say that I am very impressed.
I will give a quick overview of our findings below;

• The devices look great, they are far removed from the box like shape that wirelessrouters used to have. In looks they can easily compete with Apple's Airport basestations. And they have flashing lights!
• The range is great. I set one up in my office and went walkabout with my PDA running Airmagnet. The SNR didn't drop below 60 dBm until is was outside, 100 yards from the building and behind a wooden shed. I can honestly say that I have never seen any wireless router with that performance.
• The devices are easy to setup and configure. Just plug an ethernet cable in the Mediaflex router and conenct it to your laptop or PC, enter the IP address into a browser and youcan log straight into the configuration GUI. The options are well laid out and very extensive. I won't list all configurations here but the people behind these devices have clearly done their homework. If you use the router together with Ruckus' wireless adapter and want to run IPTV through it the system almost completely self-configures. For a more graphic explaination of what it can do and how it works just click on this link.
  
• The data throughput is indeed very good, I was able to upload & download large files to a remote server at a respectable rate, conduct a VOIP call, stream a Divx file and play MP3's from my fileserver al at the same time. All without delays, stutering or quality loss. This link will give you an insight on how it does this.

I am probably biased but I really have not seen anything currently available that can meet all those criteria. They might not be the cheapest product on the market with the router retailing around €125 but it sure offers the best value for money.

What I also like is that the developers at Ruckus are not sitting still either. They are presentng a 802.11N "smart wifi" product in at the CES show in January. See here for more details.
They are also releasing an update version of their Metroflex wireless gateway that will propogate the signal into the customers premises via wireless instead of the Ethernet feed it has now.

Now you know what the Ruckus is all about.
'Nuff said...

E.