Word: fon
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...Deposit Insurance Corporation has ever had a public face, it was probably that of Lydia Lobsiger, the happy and relieved East Peoria, Ill., widow who in 1934 was the first American to get her little pile of savings back from the feds after a terrifying run on her local Fon du Lac State Bank. Now, almost 75 years later, the FDIC has been busy projecting a newer face, and it belongs to Sheila Bair, a 54-year-old lawyer from Kansas...
...Kidjo's ideas have never been better expressed than on her latest album, Djin Djin, released last month. The 15 tracks, which address fundamental themes like birth, love, alienation and hope, are sung in a variety of languages - from West European (English and French) to West African (Ewe and Fon). Styles range from Beninese to Brazilian to Bowie - a touch added courtesy of legendary producer Tony Visconti. And the album features a dazzlingly diverse set of collaborators - among them Alicia Keys, Branford Marsalis, Peter Gabriel, Mali's Amadou and Mariam, Ziggy Marley, German singer Joy Denalane and Italian Carmen Consoli...
...range only extends a few dozen meters, so once you leave home-or when it's closing time at your neighborhood Starbucks-you're back in the Stone Age. Logging on through commercial wi-fi hotspots can also be cumbersome and expensive. But a Spanish company, FON, wants to change all this. Founded 15 months ago, FON touts itself as the world's largest wi-fi community, claiming 230,000 worldwide users-or Foneros-who can log on to each others' wireless networks for free. They do so by using FON's La Fonera wireless routers, available at fon.com...
...service isn't perfect: some ISPs have balked at subscribers sharing their Internet access, and while fon.com's searchable maps help you pinpoint every FON-friendly hotspot in the world, there are many areas where service is thin on the ground. Still, for the cost of an ordinary wi-fi router, it's like getting a wireless couch to crash on in dozens of major cities...
...Some of that instant cash may find its way to FON, an ambitious new global wi-fi network. Skype, along with Google and others, will invest $22 million in the Spanish start-up, which plans to have more than 1 million hot spots by 2010. Subscribers will pay less than $2 a day to have guaranteed wireless access wherever they roam. More than 3,000 people have signed up since the beta version launched in November. "It's a dream come true," FON founder Martin Varsavsky says of his new partners, although he demurs on the specific roles Google...