The WT Blog

In just the past few months, two new sites have launched, collecting & mapping info on locations of free wifi locations in Toronto.

“FWIT” offers short writeups on many spots:
http://www.freewifiintoronto.blogspot.com/
http://torontoist.com/2009/12/free_wifi_fo_fum.php

TOwifi.info intends to map a user-gen list of hotspots, the WT hotspots, the TPL hotspots, and paid hotspots:
http://towifi.info/
http://ptoone.com/index/ptoone-launches-towifi-info-a-free-map-of-wifi-spots-in-toronto/

The original (as far as I know) in Toronto was Wireless Bandit, which was active from 2003-2005:
http://www.wirelessbandit.com/

I really liked the Seattle/Vancouver Wifi Mug, but the wiki’s filling up with spam and the Google Map is broken:
http://vancouver.wifimug.org/index.cgi

hotspotr.com is attempting a global wifi map:
http://hotspotr.com/wifi/map/614-toronto-canada

There are a bunch of important challenges to successfully running a site like this:
1) Collecting the information, either through legwork or by encouraging contributions from others.
2) Presenting the information in a helpful way, recognizing that different people will have different needs. (Is the captive portal mobile-friendly? Are there lots of power outlets? etc.)
3) Surely the hardest: keeping it up-to-date.

People often (very often) mistake wirelesstoronto.ca as a website which maps free hotspots in Toronto (while in reality we set up free hotspots) — clearly people are looking for this kind of info. While we’d love to also map out others’ free wifi hotspots, we’ve got our hands full running and expanding our network… I hope that one (or more!) of these sites are successful!

Wireless Toronto’s newest hotspot is at The 3 Brewers, at 275 Yonge St., just south of Yonge-Dundas Square. The place is huge, and besides their brewed-on-site beers, they’re known for their tartes flambée (Hilary will be happy!).

Tip: the wifi is stronger on the lower floors.

Hey everyone!

The next Wireless Toronto Volunteer Meeting will be on Monday November 9th, from 5:45-8pm at the Centre for Social Innovation (Ste 120), 215 Spadina.

We haven’t met in a while, so it’s a great time to come out if you’ve never been to one of our meetings. We’ll catch everyone up on what we’ve been up to, and talk about some opportunities this spring and summer. Lots of ways to get involved, for designers, techies, writers, community folks, etc.

Generally speaking, we’ll be talking about the following:

• Intros
• Overview of Wireless Toronto and Goals
• Updates from WT Board members
• Update on the In-Site Toronto project and brief intros by the artists
• New business and ideas

Hope to see you there!

Probably not; but it could help us go nuclear free (and save a little money).

You see, that cable modem sitting in the corner is living off base-load power, and base-load power in Ontario is largely supplied by the Nuclear Industry. Eliminate the cable modem, and reduce our other base-loads, and we eliminate one of the excuses used to justify Nuclear. Now that has to be a good thing!

All we each need do is get together with some neighbours and build a little community mesh network! Unplugging 6W cable modems more than compensates for the 2W mesh nodes.

—-

One source of mesh nodes is http://www.open-mesh.com, I’m sure there are others.

If eliminating 6 watts by unplugging a cable modem doesn’t sound like much, try multiplying it by the approx 1 million internet cable subscribers on Ontario. It works out to the power output of several wind-turbines.

No not the coffee, the wireless. Second Cup has started making its wif-fi available for free. I guess the’ve realised that charging for wi-fi is a loosing cause.

They do expect you to register (and the form thinks you’re willing to provide all your personal detail just short of your first born but other than that its free.

Last weekend a few Wireless Toronto volunteers has a great time at the BIG on Bloor street festival. Despite a rainy start, we managed to set up a mesh network covering  Bloor Street between Ossington and Dovercourt for the duration of the day, and meet some cool people along the way. Imagine if Wi-Fi on Bloor was a permanent thing! See some images from the day below, or at our Flickr group.

Thanks to everyone that helped out.

Matt Hartley wrote an impressively balanced article on free wifi in today’s Globe and Mail: Free My Wifi.  (I particularly appreciate the teaser on the front page of the Globe: “Is WiFi the future or the past?”)  The first line refers to the WT spot at Harbourfront Centre, the article quotes WT friend Catherine Middleton, and Hartley graciously gives me the last word: “An effort to make Internet access more easily and cheaply available to low-income residents of the city seems like a great initiative.  But the devil is always in the details.”

As the article mentions, Councillor Minnen-Wong is still working out the details of his plan to provide free wifi in the city’s public housing.  We haven’t spoken with him yet, but hope to soon.  His project is ambitious, and — we suspect — would be prohibitively expensive if implemented following a traditional approach to IT management.  A community approach — besides being cheaper — could have a wide range of unexpected benefits, like creating opportunities for inter-generational and -cultural collaboration.

Ivor Tossel wrote a great piece in today’s Globe, on some recent good initiatives in Toronto focusing on openness.  WT friends Mark &  Tonya Surman, Mark Kuznicki and Rob Hyndman are quoted, and WT is mentioned among other CSI tenants, Spacing Magazine and the David Suzuki Foundation.

The folks at Village Telco have an analysis of the research paper written by Wireless Toronto friends Catherine Middleton & Amelia Bryne Potter, Is it Good to Share? A Case Study of FON and Meraki Approaches to Broadband Provision.

The writer’s criticism of Middleton’s conclusion about the (perhaps inherent?) instability of ad-hoc wireless networks seems misplaced given how painfully flaky these networks appear to be.  Especially given the reference just one paragraph earlier to an incident of several Meraki networks experiencing significant outages over the holidays when many people unplugged the units in order to plug in Christmas lights.

Nevertheless, it’s great to see academic research being covered by and feeding back into the community of folks who are building the networks… thanks, Village Telco!

The City of Montreal will make an announcement in January about their investment in wifi.  Either they’ll come through on a proposal they’ve been working on for over a year with Ile Sans Fil (the very well-established local community wireless group), or they’ll try to go forward on their own, perhaps partnering with a commercial WISP.  The former option is more plausible one according to the writer of this piece (and we agree heartily):

Le réseau WiFi prendra e l’ampleur in 2009 – Canoe / Argent

Ile Sans Fil