Ideas - Wifi Location Announcer

Where I live there are several cafes and pubs (bars) with wifi connections, both free and charged for, and I have friends who use their computers from them.

Usually, these same people are bloggers, writing on-line diaries / journals / information-heavy websites either in their spare time or as part of their work. Often bloggers will have little scripts on their websites to do things like show what music they're listening to, or a webcam shot from their computer.

My idea is to extend this a little further. When you first use a wifi hotspot it can force you to view it's own web page first, and a server can know where you're accessing the internet from. I'd like to extend this a little, and be able to have a little script find out which wifi node the user is accessing, then it can be displayed on their website / blog area. That way friends can find out where they are and catch up with them there, and local readers can come and meet a person who's site they keep up with.

This is a kind of automated, voluntary stalking. You let your own website know where you are, so your friends or interested readers nearby can come and find you in physical space. It's a bit of fun, and completely voluntary, but I think it will appeal to a certain type of wifi user, the person who uses the internet for social and community uses which cross over in to the real world, rather than keeping everything virtual.

Paul Silver, November 2003