chrisduran.eu

I’ve just launched a new website, wifi-in-australia.com. It is essentially a collection of (hopefully) useful maps annotated with WiFi hotspots. The maps are created using the google maps interface, and are completely user-driven and user-moderated. As much as I would love to say this is entirely my idea, it isn’t. This site is a direct homage to Neil Cocker’s website, www.wifi-in-uk.co.uk. I first found the UK version when reading Jane’s blog. The idea really rung a chord with me. I really like the concept of having WiFi maps that span a wide-variety of locations, are editable buy everyone and anyone, yet are uniform in their behaviour and representation of information. Unfortunately, I’ve been out of the UK for over 2 years now, so I thought I would bring the idea local.

The general premise is that using google maps, somebody (me, you, that guy over there.. anybody!) creates a publically editable map. This map serves as a WiFi map for a given location. The creator and the general public can then go to town and add landmarks for their favourite wireless hotspots. The Google Maps Interface allows people to choose from a variety of landmark markers. For a wireless map, the convention that has been adopted is that GREEN markers denote free WiFi locations, BLUE denotes paid for WiFi locations and YELLOW denotes WiFi that has access restrictions (i.e. membership of an organisation or group is required for login access). Unfortunately URLs for user-created Google Maps are about as beautiful as Gordon Brown having a good hair day. Because of this unfortunate fact, the final step is to give the map a friendly URL. This can be done a number of ways, including giving each map a unique domain (such as www.wifi-in-oxford.co.uk or www.wifi-in-cardiff.co.uk – this is Neil’s model), or giving each map a subdomain (such as brisbane.wifi-in-australia.com – my model).

I’m really excited about the possibilities of these projects, and am interested to see how they develop!

Filed under: IT by Chris