"http://www.nytimes.com/2003/12/15/technology/15wifi.html?ex=1072495543&ei=1&en=10e286fceaa93348

Using a Bicycle to Uplink on a Downtown Platform
By David F. Gallagher
Published: December 15, 2003

As a saxophone's melancholy music bounced off the tile walls of the subway station at Union Square in Manhattan last Thursday afternoon, Yury Gitman was hunched over a laptop computer, trying a different kind of performance.

A thin stream of wireless Internet bandwidth was trickling down the stairs to the downtown platform of the N,R,Q and W lines, two levels below the street, and Mr. Gitman was trying to get the tenuous link to send what he said would be the first e-mail message from this deep in the New York City subway system.

Mr. Gitman, an artist who is teaching a class at the Parsons School of Design in collaboration with Eyebeam, a media arts organization, intended the stunt to be a demonstration of his Magicbikes - ordinary bicycles rigged with networking gear that transforms them into wireless Internet access points, using the wireless fidelity, or Wi-Fi, technology now built into many laptops.

The bikes can connect to and amplify the signals of Wi-Fi transmitters in the vicinity. Or they can tap into a cellular data network, as was the case with a Magicbike parked at the top of the subway stairs. That bike formed an impromptu network with the Magicbike on the platform with Mr. Gitman.

After some snags, Mr. Gitman and his students cheered as their holiday greetings to Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg went through. Just in time, too: Magicbikes lose their magic when the batteries die, as was starting to happen. (A spokeswoman for Parsons said on Friday night that the mayor had not yet responded.)

Free wireless Internet access has proven popular in Bryant Park and other public spaces in Manhattan. A few subway patrons demonstrated curiosity, but none hauled out a laptop to use the Magicbikes.

Mr. Gitman insists that New Yorkers need free Internet access in the subway and everywhere else. ""It's a quality of life issue,"" he said, and the technology is cheap and easy to set up. Although ads from companies like Intel suggest that the world is blanketed in Wi-Fi signals, Mr. Gitman said, coverage is in fact still limited.

He said he used bicycles because they ""blend into the urban fabric,"" and because cyclists tended to be socially conscious and politically active.

The bikes are not good at allowing the use of their wireless abilities when they are in motion, but Mr. Gitman plans to put his class to work next semester solving that problem.

""When this project is successful,"" he said. ""people will say, 'A bicycle with Internet access - so what?' """