We're taking a bit of a break to be with our loved ones over the holiday, and we hope you are too. A very Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays to you, and we'd like to pass along a heartfelt "Thank You" for your readership. We'll be back posting again tomorrow once we can burn off some of the egg nog!

The city of Springfield, Illinois has made a three-year deal with AT&T Inc. to develop and deploy a free citywide wireless network. Work is expected to begin this fall dependent upon the city council's approval.

According to city officials, the network will be accessible from the city center to a range of about 25 square miles. The network will be supported by advertisements and sponsorships with fee-based services with higher speeds available as well.

Springfield and AT&T seem to be going the right way with this network, and it's good to see a telco getting involved in the citywide wireless sector instead of fighting against it.

According to Long Beach, California city officials, there are five companies that have submitted proposals, including VeriLAN, in order to win the bid to develop and deploy a wireless network to cover the entire city. The plan is to choose a vendor within the next few months and launch the network sometime next year.

The city expects the vendor to foot the entire bill to build the network and charge monthly access fees to pay for it. As with most networks of this type, the hope is that the network will encourage more businesses to come to the city.

It seems there are a number of dead spots in and around Palm Beach, Florida, playground of the rich and famous. As a result, government officials have sent a letter to the major wireless providers informing them of available antenna sites in order to improve coverage.

One suggestion is to place antennas on some of the high-rise buildings whereby it can cover a fairly large area and provide service to more users. There are some zoning laws in place to prvent antennas from being placed on private properties, but some residents with large parcels of land are negotiating with major service providers, so it wouldn't be surprising to see antennas on private property in the near future.

We've talked here many times about how folks should take every step necessary to protect their own home wireless networks from predators and freeloaders who will steal your personal information outright or use your network to do some unsavory things. Consider the story of two Florida woman whose wireless network was hacked into by someone at a local community college and was using their access to subscribe to porn sites. Pretty embarassing and unnerving, don't you think?

The linked story has a few more tips to help you keep your wireless network secure from intrusion. Obviously, there's no way you can be totally protected 100% of the time, but the point is that if you take just a few steps, the chances of being hacked will diminsh greatly.

Well, you know the new year is here with the big anti-virus software vendors, including McAfee, Symantec, and F-Secure, warning us that mobile viruses are lurking about and anyone with a mobile device should upgrade with the latest software. Of course, it's all very self-serving, but the fact remains that as more people leverage wireless devices as their primary means of communication, both for work and personal use, it is imperative that you take steps to protect your information and the device itself from attack. It sounds so obvious, but unfortunately it's something so easily overlooked.