Myself being a mobile freak and a geo geek (like many of you) I tend to checkin and share my location quite frequently using foursquare – sure they lack in some functionality and have some known location issues, but foursquare has a huge following. Something that has often amazed me is that there really is no simple and effective way to locate places service up free WiFi… typically we simply seek out a coffee shop or maybe a public building. Then it came to me this morning as I was enjoying a cup of coffee and some free WiFi.. why the heck don’t I simply checkin via foursquare and while I’m doing that anyway, why not add a tag like #4sqWifi to announce and store the fact that I’ve identified and am using a Free WiFi hotspot!! This really is a no-brainer.
I’m currently in a city where I’m not familiar with the services and I’m always on the hunt for places with WiFi, particularly since I’m in Canada and am not interested in mobile roaming at about $15 per megabyte+. Yesterday I checked in from this spot via WiFi hotspot… wouldn’t it be nice if I shared that info with others? Google was trying to scoop up details of WiFi locations recently although as we all know, they ran into some serious privacy issues doing so… perhaps crowd-sourcing is the way to go.
And so, I think from now on I’ll be identifying free hotspots with the Twitter hashtag #FreeWiFi and hopefully others will start doing so as well.
