To be clear, “free wifi” of a sort had been available at Starbucks previously: you had to have a Starbucks.com account, and by logging in you could get 2 free hours/day. The new free wifi service is two-click: agree to the terms and click connect. (“Free wifi” versus “free free wifi”? “Free+libre wifi”?)

When you do so, it takes you to what is currently an almost blank version of the Sympatico portal: http://starbucks.sympatico.ca/home

I don’t know what the equivalent page looks like in the US, but I’m guessing that it’s more elaborate:

Building on the Wi-Fi update, Schultz also revealed plans for a new online customer experience called the Starbucks Digital Network, in partnership with Yahoo!, which will debut later this fall. This online experience – available only in U.S. company operated Starbucks stores – will be unique in its content offerings, allowing customers free unrestricted access to various paid sites and services such as wsj.com, exclusive content and previews, free downloads, local community news and activities, on their laptops, tablets or smart phones.

Driven by Digital Ventures, a new business unit within Starbucks led by CIO and General Manager, Digital Ventures, Stephen Gillett, the Starbucks Digital Network in partnership with Yahoo! opens up a uniquely valuable customer experience, while at the same time appeals to leading online content providers and provides a new channel for customer engagement. Launch content providers will include, among others, iTunes, The New York Times, Patch, USA TODAY, The Wall Street Journal, Yahoo! and ZAGAT.

http://news.starbucks.com/article_display.cfm?article_id=397

I like imagining how deals come together. I’m guessing this one went something like:

• (Jun 14) Starbucks announces that the free wifi will be even more free at their US stores starting July 1st. Canadian Starbucks fanboys and fangirls are pissed.
• (Jun 15) Starbucks Corporate hates calling Bell as much as anyone else, but they do it anyway, to see if they can work something out.
• (Jun 25) Bell says “yes, we can do that, but it’ll cost you”. Starbucks pays Bell.
• (Jun 30) Starbucks announces that the free-free wifi will be in Canada too — the day before it launches. Bell sets up token Sympatico portal page.

Bell is surely making way more money now than they were under the terms of whatever revshare agreement they had with Starbucks previously.

After spending a lovely afternoon in Dufferin Grove the weekend before last, and seeing the enthusiasm so many people have about the wireless access there, I feel inspired to get together and make something new happen.

i think it might be a good time to get together and start hatching new plans.

Personally, I’d like to explore the idea that if we pick just one of all the great ideas that have been kicking around WT lately, and all get behind making it happen in the next two months, the combined energy and teamwork might help generate enough momentum to roll us into other projects.

So we’re on for Wednesday the 26th.

Let’s meet at the 3 Brewers on Yonge Street, south of Dundas, at 7pm.

Bring ideas!!

“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!

Tip: the wifi is stronger on the lower floors.

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!

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.

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.

Thanks to everyone that helped out.

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.