What is Digg?30 Comments
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -3/+11I understand why cafes need them, but how often do you take your laptop shopping for groceries / shoes / other crap malls sell?
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -1/+7Panera Bread is great. All of their locations have free wifi and pretty comfortable seating. Starsucks charges for their wifi through T-Moble which is retarded. If they would give it away I'd stop by time to time to work.
- surfit, on 10/12/2007, -2/+7I guess you would need some sort of business package from your ISP to do something like this legitimately (as mentioned in the article) without risking being kicked off their network for breaking the AUP. Could also open you up to legal troubles with the copyright police (RIAA, MPAA, BPI, BSA etc...).
- fatdog789, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4No. DCMA exempts ISPs and service providers from liability from such "legal troubles".
- iSEPIC, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4DD-WRT has built in hotspot software for Linksys firmware - Sputnik and Chillspot - worth checking out if interested. Just add your own radius server.
- blakholephysics, on 10/12/2007, -1/+5At least at the food courts though.
- noneloud, on 10/12/2007, -1/+4Good article. I thought the title was inacurate, but it turns out that there are multiple pages :-P
- fatdog789, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3Yes to the first part, no to the second part. The DCMA does not apply to ISPs or (secondary) internet service providers like hotspot services.
However, violating the license agreement for an internet connection could cause legal trouble with the ISP. - vanderaerden, on 10/12/2007, -1/+4laptop, well... no. Pocket PC/Handheld, yes. get it?
- seuaniu, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3Setting up a hotspot is a good idea for lots of businesses. I have an old girlfriend who started up a coffee shop down the street from a library, and wanted to provide internet access for her customers. She and I found a few old recycled computers, and I installed Damn Small Linux on them, and set up her wireless with the power turned down so it doesn't work too far from her shop.
The library up the street often has a line out the door to use the computers, and it didn't take long for the word to spread that there was access available not far away for the price of a cup of coffee. Free wireless access, coupled with some kiosks for folks to use, has kept her business successfull since about day 3.
A few blocks away, there's a Starbuck's that still insists on charging a monthly fee for the privilege of having wi-fi while you consume their goods. I've never seen it have as many customers in line as the ex's place, and I think its the internet that makes all the difference (not to mention her coffee is better, but that's just my opinion). Total cost: $50/month for a decent DSL connection, perhaps $25-30/month to keep some computers running, $0 in software, ~$100 in hardware, and an hour or so every couple of months of my time for maintenance, in exchange for free coffee every time I show up to check on everything.
Naturally, this doesn't apply to all businesses. I think it does apply to any business with a waiting room, dining room, or any other place where folks are going to be sitting for any period of time over 5 minutes or so. - henkk78, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2I'm surprised they didn't mention Fon or Skyrove, both of which have no setup fees, no monthly fees, offer decent revenue share and allow hotspot owners to choose whether they wish to charge or not.
- konspence, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3Oh, page 2. Didn't even notice it.
- oOLiquidNightOo, on 10/12/2007, -2/+4"I understand why cafes need them, but how often do you take your laptop shopping for groceries / shoes / other crap malls sell?"
honestly excellent point. but it is a pleasant surprise, if you do need one and it's there. i have a long story that's relevant but i won't bore you with that .. :) - TinFoil209, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3How hard would it be to make a program or script that can talk to the router to add and remove MAC addreses of their computer by how long they paid for it? Only problem is that a router reset would be needed. Yet find a router with real fast reset times (or maybe a soft reset) and anyone would harley notice the burp on their connection.
Even make a greating gateway page that would handle this. It takes u all the way finding your MAC address and how long you want to be on and the last step would be "Please go up with your temporary number 23423 *a small number generated on a DB of awaiting users to pay to go online* with the amount of $7.50 for 4 hours of connectivity." Person goes up the counter gives the money and the small reference number, look em up on the admin awaiting page and click the line saying he paid, it then adds his MAC address for the 4 hours and soon as it laps it goes back into the modem removes the MAC address and performs a reset.
How hard would something like that be? - idiggeverything, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2Public IP works very well.
- electromagnetic, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2No you wouldn't, businesses just tend to buy bigger bandwidth lines not services. Also the 'business line' is from the telephone era where you would have to buy a specially equipped line to handle high level telephone traffic, now you just buy bandwidth they don't care what it's being used for as long as they're getting paid the right amount.
- simpletim, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2You can do this multiple ways very cheaply. Most ISP's offer some kind of package. I've seen motels just throwing a couple of waps and a linksys router together and calling it good. Just make sure it has NO connection to your private net.
- nstern2, on 10/12/2007, -2/+2Just block all ports except Internet, e-mail, FTP, ETC. It still might happen but you could cut your chances down with a little knowledge.
- wade3478, on 11/23/2008, -0/+0I think an interesting application for the login page is to offer restaurant / cafe guests a way to opt-in to the restaurant or cafe's newsletter. Of course, the newsletter can and should be used to send out promotional offers as a means of driving business. I'm amazed that very few locations are doing this.
Wade
www.freewifihotspotsoftware.com - djdole, on 10/12/2007, -2/+2Not really up to date: 7/20/05
Still, it's got some good information in there. - steve1999, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0When I visit my in-laws (way to often, but that's another story) I go into town to a coffee shop to telecommute from. My in-laws live way outside of town and only have a satellite connection which is mostly unusable other than occasionally checking e-mail.
The coffee shop in town offers free wifi to customers. They don't do any technological checking of paying customers, but I imagine if you tried to sit in their shop without paying they would say something. It's a great connections, lots of tables, lots of power outlets, etc, etc.
If it wasn't for the free wifi I would probably never go in the store. But because of it I usually spend about $5 of a drink and a bagel when I get there in the morning, and another $5 or so when I get back from lunch. So I spend $10 that they never would have seen otherwise. There are about 3-5 people that use the coffee shop on a regular basis to work from. It appears that they pull in at least $200 every weekday just from offering free wifi. It's in the silicon valley so I can't imagine they're paying more than $75 a month for their business class service. Not to mention they would already be paying that for their own business needs.
To me small business offering free wifi is the smartest thing a business can do. - Matadon, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0Don't even need something that complex.
Have a stack of cards at the register with random ten-digit IDs printed on them, and have the cashier give them to the customers whenever they order. Each time a new laptop connects to the WLAN, they are prompted to enter in the access code, which is then deactivated, and they receive a day-long pass to use the service.
Much easier than trying to link service lifetime to how much the person spends, and it's reasonable to assume that a person with a thousand-plus-dollars worth of computer equipment, who has just made a purchase at your store, will likely purchase more if they stay there for an extended period of time. - konspence, on 10/12/2007, -4/+3They didn't mention zonecd, the best hotspot software and it's based on Linux.
www.publicip.com for Zonecd. - Psquared, on 10/12/2007, -2/+1RTFA!
- angler8890, on 10/12/2007, -3/+1Could also open you up to legal troubles with http://www.gghj.info/sitemap.htm the copyright police (RIAA, MPAA, BPI, BSA etc...).
- SystemHasFailed, on 10/12/2007, -3/+1Part of the reason you pay for T-Mobile's service is to have a guaranteed consistency and quality of service and for expansion of that service. For instance, the entire shopping center and office complex where I work is one big two-square-block hotspot. Apparently it's going to be the first of many.
And the reason T-Mobile can do that is because they have a subscriber base big enough to allow them to do so. - valkyries, on 10/12/2007, -8/+4i was thinking about setting one of these up at my house so any were i go on my property i can have access to my network. when i had my nokia 770, access to the routers during LAN parties was freaking sweet also.
- oOLiquidNightOo, on 10/12/2007, -9/+1(ignore)
- ozguralaz, on 10/12/2007, -13/+3Wi-Fi is especially so important for cafes and shopping malls. I always prefer a place with wi-fi. Others are loser, i think.
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