Free WiFi Abounds

So here I am, writing my first post away from the office. I am on a short break during a video shoot for a wedding. It will be a long day (started at 6:00am and will go 'til 10:30pm or so). There is a particular place I like to visit when I shoot weddings: Schlotzsky's. Why? FREE WIFI (and excellent food)! It's hard to visit a general region and not find a hot spot. The problem is finding a free connection (such as at Schlotzsky's). McDonalds has not caught on yet, as they have affiliated with AT&T to offer Pay For service at outrageous prices. Haven't they caught on by now that their sales will increase exponentially by offering it, mainly from geeks and business heads that can't go 30 minutes without the internet? All Peter Piper Pizza locations that are owned by corporate offer free wifi, and are adding it to franchises slowly. I've seen them popping up at Subway locations as well. Apple's Retails Stores also have free wifi. While it's not technically offered as an open network to hitch onto, it's there, and works well from the comfy mall chairs just outside the entrance. Heck, they won't even mind if you browse the aisles wirelessly (as long as the device is an Apple).

I guess (in all fairness) we have come a long way. I remember grabbing those AOL CDs for the free minutes (only to cancel days after my trip). It's interesting how easy it is to cancel with AOL when you give the reason, "I was just using you for the free dialup."

I offer a free wifi connection from my office to anyone sniffing. While I am sure my ISP wouldn't like to hear that, I don't have many connectors. From my office I can pick up 7 or 8 connections... 2 or 3 of which have WEP. I am sure glad they are there for those times that my cable goes out (which is not too often).

So. If you have a wifi router... open that thing up. Share your connection (just make sure you have a good firewall). I run all Macs, so that's an easy thing to accomplish. One day we will have a massive web of free wifi that acts very much like the current cell phone network. Until that time comes, give your 300 foot circle of radiating internet goodness to the sniffers. It will pay you back in the long run.

This has been today's clarified butter.