MetroFi Is Dot.Gone

GigaOM icon From GigaOM, popular since 2 months

In what is proving to be yet another high-profile Metro Wi-Fi failure, MetroFi, a San Jose-based startup that raised over $15 million from Sevin Rosen & August Capital, is close to shutting down, according to WiFi NetNews and MuniWireless, two blogs that follow the MuniFi industry closely. MetroFi is trying to sell its citywide Wi-Fi Go to site

» Popular articles from GigaOM

Other popular stories on GigaOM

» F|R: How to Avoid the Curse of Vision Overload
My Chicago-based startup, The Point, helps people start campaigns for collective actions of all kinds, from organizing a poker game to boycotting a multinational corporation. We’ve been fortunate so far, enjoying steady growth, happy users, and money in the bank. (In February, we raised a $4.8 million round of venture funding from New Enterprise
» Inside the Cloud: 9 Sectors to Watch
There’s already a ton of activity taking place in the cloud computing space, so much so that it can be hard to know who to watch. In many cases, it’s too early to pick winners. But there are distinct sectors of the IT industry that are particularly well suited to the on-demand, pay-as-you-go economics of
» F|R Crib Sheet: 15 Sites to Cut Your Startup Operating Costs
Clever founders always eke the most out of every buck. But economic conditions being what they are, even the best bootstrappers could use a little extra help. By now you’ve probably heard of web sites like GasPriceWatch.com, GasBuddy and MSNAutos, which help consumers find the cheapest fuel prices at gas pumps in their geographic
» Venture Capital Loves Virtual
Startups selling virtual goods and offering virtual experiences are raking in the venture capital these days. Perhaps it’s the fact that virtual gifting hit the mainstream in 2007 or because people are worried about the impact of business travel on the environment, but the virtual world is beginning to get its share of real dollars.In
» Why Silicon Valley Should Be Worried
The news coming out of advertising-focused companies is not good. And that means Silicon Valley is in for a long-overdue reality check, one that should worry one and all.
» There Ads Are Just About Everywhere.
Earlier this week, Delta Airlines announced plans that will turn the boarding passes into advertising opportunities, or billboards, hawking destination specific businesses and products. An Omaha-based start-up, Sojern is behind this advertising offer, which is going to be adopted by four airlines in addition to Delta - American, Continental, United, and US Airways. Given
» Five Multicore Startups to Watch
As semiconductor firms get around the limitations of making individual processors faster by putting more cores onto a single chip, the mindset of today’s software developers and engineers mindset needs to adapt. For to really take advantage of multiple cores, a programmer needs to look at ways to make her code parallel, splitting jobs into
» Joss Whedon’s Wacky Web Experiment Kicks Off
Sometimes, a man’s gotta do what a man’s gotta do. In Joss Whedon’s case, what he felt he had to do was make an online musical about a super villain who keeps getting foiled by a hero as he pines after the girl from the laundromat. So he did, funding “Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog” in
» How iPhone Could Resurrect Wireless Chip Makers
The iPhones have been unboxed and torn down, so now it’s the Wall Street watchers’ turn to tally up who won and who lost among the companies that provide chips for the envy-inducing device. The big winner is Infineon with four chips, including GPS and 3G radio. Little-known chip firm TriQuint also won,
» Real World of Warcraft
Dense games are fun games. Massively Multiplayer Online (MMO) game developers give solo players things to do, but for a game to really succeed players need people to play with. If player density isn’t high enough, you have to condense things, as once-great FPS/MMO Planetside did earlier this year. Blizzard’s World of Warcraft is a
» Is Gphone For Real?
For a long time there were quite a few rumors about Google making a Gphone, its own hardware device. In the end it came out with Android, a software platform that it is promoting in partnership with 50 odd companies. The platform is still under development, so to speak, as Mountain View-based search company works
» F|R: The 9 Signs of a One-hit Wonder
Many entrepreneurs fear being a flash-in-the-pan success — achieving an exit once, but never again. (Some might call this being lucky rather than good.) But while the allure of success inspires us to do great things, achieving it can have an ugly aftereffect: complacency. Vigilance, my friends, is the only path to serial-founder bliss. Here,
» Early YouTube Engineer Tells All
When we recently heard about the history of YouTube’s growth strategy from CEO Chad Hurley’s point of view, he described it as “hanging onto a rocket.” But an engineer’s take is always going to be a bit less rose-colored and a bit more about the terrifying situations you brained your way out of. So we
» Is Facebook Down?
Best thing that happened to Facebook - Apple’s MobileMe outage, iPhone launch and iPhone activation problems across the board. Why - because no one seems to be reporting on them being out for most of the morning. I just tried to get in, no luck. There is no update on their blog as well.
» Why Guardian Media Bought paidContent for $30M
Rafat Ali, founder of ContentNext Media, an L.A.-based new media startup and publisher of the blog paidContent, puts the blame for his inability to sleep last night squarely on Kara Swisher’s shoulders for breaking the story of his company being gobbled up -– for a rumored $30 million — by Guardian Media Group (GMG).
» How Do You Catch a Photoshopped Fake?
Iran’s missile project may need more rocket scientists to help gets its projectiles off the ground, but its marketing team desperately needs some talented photo retouchers to better cover up its ballistic shortcomings. The duping of numerous newspapers by a digitally altered picture of Iran’s missile test is just the latest case of a Photoshopped
» iPhone Owners Seem Crazy for Games
Ever since Apple put out its Software Developer Kit in March, game developers have been racing to create titles for the presumed market victor. But how much of a demand for them is there really? Based on the data from Cellufun, AOL’s designated mobile game portal since April, quite a lot. The
» Google’s Lively Is a Different Beast
Second Life is either peaking or busy crossing the chasm, depending on who you believe. IMVU stealthed its way to tons of users. Club Penguin found its windfall by figuring out how to reach children safely. Blizzard had revenues of $1.1 billion last year. Qwaq makes private virtual worlds for the enterprise. And there are
» The Pirate Bay Wants to Encrypt the Entire Internet
The team behind the popular torrent site The Pirate Bay has started to work on a new encryption technology that could potentially protect all Internet traffic from prying eyes. The project, which is still in its initial stages, goes by the name “Transparent end-to-end encryption for the Internets,” or IPETEE for short. It tackles encryption not
» GigaOM Poll: Will You Buy iPhone 3G
Will you buy 3G iPhone? Yes, I am a sucker for Apple products I am going to skip this one I just want a simple, cheap phone.So in a couple of days the iPhone 3G is going to go on sale. Like many of you I am going to get this device as part of