THE WIRELESS WORLD

Police Sgt. john bal-dock had spent many evenings staking out the doorway of the family-run Italian eatery Rosticceria Rusticana, where drug dealers plied their trade away from the surveillance cameras that dot London's trendy-cum-seedy Soho neighborhood. His big break came when the Westminister City Council's nerdy information-network manager, Andrew Snellgrove, stuck a tiny wireless camera in a lamppost across the street. A week later Baldock had enough evidence to arrest several crack and heroin dealers.

Police are about to turn Soho into the first wireless law-enforcement district in London. Over the next six months, Snellgrove will install 50 wireless cameras and sensors around the neighborhood. They'll take videos good enough to be admissible in court, and sensors will monitor noise and send out alarms when levels exceed normal. Because the cameras won't be fixed, police will be able to move them constantly, creating the impression that every inch is under surveillance. Crooks, beware.

The Untethered Apple
NEW YORK, N.Y.
Population: 8.2 million
Why: Lots of industry, lots of techno whizzes
Fact: Lower Manhattan has one of the heaviest-used Wi-Fi networks in the world

The Big Apple has something new in the air, mixing with taxi exhaust, the smell of honeyed peanuts and the blare of honking horns: Internet connectivity. Traffic police in the borough of Queens ticket cars with handheld scanners from Symbol Technologies. Carried by the cops, the devices link via Wi-Fi to portable printers and also transmit the tickets back to central computers. The city says it's saving millions a year with the $2,100 gadgets by reducing errors, and it will order 500 more this year.

There are 112 coffee shops, 60 McDonald's and hundreds of hotels all offering subscription access to Wi-Fi networks. But New York is also one of the best places in the world to log on to free wireless hotspots. Networks cover the Columbia University campus, Bryant Park, Union Square and the Chelsea Piers Sports Complex on the West Side of Manhattan. Grass-roots groups are also trying to cover their own neighborhoods with free connectivity. One group, Evill Net, stitched together a network that operates from rooftops in the East Village.