
Show HN: Wifis.org - making WiFi networks 'social' - Major_Grooves
http://www.wifis.org/
======
Major_Grooves
A friend of mine built this as an evening side-project and launched it about a
year ago.

With pretty much no effort, it got picked up by theNextWeb, RWW, BoingBoin and
others: <http://www.wifis.org/p/press>

He only told me about it today and I haven't seen it on HN before, so I told
him the Hacker News community would be a good place to get some feedback.

He hasn't tried monetising it yet, but I'm trying to convince him there is
something there. In my mind it could be the 'AirBnB of WiFi networks'. What do
you think?

------
cwilson
This has potential but it needs more focus. Instead of making it so open ended
(i.e. Want to grab a beer? -- which is kind of creepy), make it very specific.
This is a service for allowing neighbors to easily share Wifi. It helps
subsidize your wifi costs, etc.

You may already be doing this, but then you need to add/build the following:

\- A way to actually take/manage payments from your neighbors.

\- A way to manage access to the Wifi network (it's kind of like Lockitron for
your wifi network in this way)

Once you have the idea simplified and the tools required to make this work
end-to-end, as a potential user I'd rename my network to "RENT ME: Awesome
Wifi Network" and see what happens.

Food for thought!

~~~
brendanib
I believe that with nearly any ISP you're contractually prohibited from
sharing your home internet connection with neighbors or anyone outside of your
residence, so creating a service explicitly designed to do this is a bit of a
grey area.

~~~
cwilson
Grey areas are great areas to start a business, or at least a cool project!

~~~
masukomi
I'm fairly confident that this is not a "grey area". When something is
specifically prohibited in a legally binding document that you agreed to /
signed it is not "grey" it is, quite literally, "black and white". And, as the
other posters have pointed out it is almost always specifically prohibited.

~~~
bcoates
I don't know about you, but I've never signed a contract for residential
Internet access. I just call them up and give them a credit card number and a
few days later have a box with a live Ethernet port show up in my apartment.

I'm sure they could cut me off if they didn't like what I was doing, but they
could cut me off at-will so it's not worth trying to read their mind.

------
zx2c4
Fairly obvious practical detail --

I'm at someplace new, where I don't have internet. I see if there are any open
networks, no dice, but I see an encrypted network as www.wifis.org/poop. I
think "oh, great, maybe my neighbor is friendly and I'll just go ahead and
emai-- wait, I don't have internet, so I can't even visit the link."

Later I'm at a coffee shop seeing if FiOS is available in my area or double
checking whether or not I live in Kansas City, and I think "oh, right that
URL", but by then it's already disappeared from my SSID list.

Who's gonna have the forethought to write the URL down?

Explicit instructions in the SSID itself might encourage people to jot
something down when they do finally get internet access. SSIDs are limited to
32 chars. The best I could come up with was:

    
    
      ask me for access:hi@domain.com
    

Of course, even better would be to do something clever like -- make an SSID
called "Friends in Building Wifi", that's open access. Upon connecting, you
get pushed a page that says "Want to share my bill? Send me a message with
this form". The message then gets passed on to you, and then you can go walk
downstairs and chit chat, or whatever. This way your neighbor can message you
without requiring internet to do so, as wifis.org does. (And then, naturally,
put your actual internet on a different WPA2-protected SSID.)

------
vishl
This is a good idea. The market is fairly small (people who are both tech
savvy enough to understand what's going on and altruistic enough to want to
participate), but that's ok.

I see very clear benefits over just putting your email address in your SSID.
1)Anonymity 2)Users may learn to trust the wifis.org brand. People can leave
feedback about you on the site. I kind of see it as a couchsurfing for wifi.

That being said, I wouldn't bother trying to monetize. It can't cost him more
than a few bucks a month to run this and unless he changes the product a bit
(either provide higher value or larger market), I don't see monetization being
particularly successful. Right now it is a great resume builder and a way to
promote other projects that may be more lucrative (e.g. "Hey remember the guy
from wifis.org, well now he's working on X"). If he's really worried about the
hosting costs, he can put a donate button on the page.

------
untog
It's a clever idea. I'm not 100% sure I'd use it because I'm not totally sure
what the benefits are vs the potential downside (spam? e-mails saying LET ME
USE UR NETWORK QUICKLY PLS). Maybe I'm too cynical, though.

~~~
laumars
Personally I like the anonymity of funny SSIDs. This just seems slightly
desperate (not helped by the example on the landing page: _"I just moved into
this building and saw your Wi-Fi. Want to grab a beer?"_

I really do want to like this idea, but I just can't see the benefit of it.
Worse still, there's nothing to stop me adding my own e-mail address to my
SSID and short-cutting wifis.org entirely.

That said, the concept has potential, but I think it needs to branch in a
slightly different direction. Maybe the site can be used to search for people
who offer up their wireless as free hotspots. Or have interesting intranet
services (eg clubs could have some of their local bands content available to
download, but only from their Wifi intranet for wifis.org members). At least
then they've created an infrastructure where a community can grow in a way
similar geotagging. As it stands, I suspect people will sign up and then
forget about this service in a couple of weeks time. Which is the opposite of
how social networks grow (where people are encouraged to return frequently).

Actually, I might set up that wifi geotagging idea myself...

------
aw3c2
How does it compare to <http://www.fon.com/> ,
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FON> ?

~~~
nmat
It's completely different. FONERA aims at creating a global network of free
wifi everywhere. To participate you need to buy a FONERA router. Wifis.org is
simply a way to communicate with the wifi network owner. You just need to
rename your SSID and your neighbors can now email you.

~~~
aw3c2
Oh, haha. I wouldn't have guessed something that simple.

People could just name their network after an e-mail address if they wanted to
be contacted..

------
mikeash
What's the advantage over renaming my network to "@mikeash",
"twitter.com/mikeash", "<http://mikeash.com/>, or similar?

~~~
Chico75
privacy and ease of use?

~~~
mikeash
Privacy I could see, although it would be very easy to set up a new account
just for my wifi if I was concerned about that. But ease of use? How is
setting something up on a new web site easier than just using what I have
already?

~~~
Chico75
Ease of use in the sense that you don't need to monitor an additional twitter
account or create a mail redirection to your email to receive messages.

------
dpcx
It seems like an interesting idea. But without wifi access, it's hard to visit
a page to send an email.

~~~
Major_Grooves
I guess the idea is that you note it down and then message them from work. Or
maybe you can do it using 3G on your phone, so that you get get on to WiFi
with your laptop.

~~~
dpcx
While true, it's definitely an inconvenience; especially for one-off uses of
wifi.

------
ing33k
interesting idea, but how can the user contact the owner when he currently
doesn't have an active internet connection ?

I guess the user has to contact the owner from a different device that has
internet access.

and why not just rename my SSID to ContactMeForFreeWifi@somemail.com ?

How about some software which actually lets the other person with no internet
access contact me ( via WiFi ), of course security should be taken care of .

~~~
fudged71
That's an interesting point. Of course it would be more complex, but it does
seem like a good idea to go a step further and provide a WiFi landing page to
have the contact form on.

------
andrewcooke
i have an open wifi that my neighbours can use. the biggest problem is
establishing consensus about how it should be used.

what i _intend_ is that anyone can use it, particularly for emergencies, but
that you don't use it so much you damage my performance (or break the law).

i kind of assumed that was obvious. but in practice i need to ban someone
about every 6 months. i just use the mac address to drop everything except
port 80 tcp, which gets sent to a "you were banned because..." page.

that works fine - people aren't smart enough or motivated enough to work round
the mac block - but it's too late, in that the person has lost all access as
part of learning about the expected use.

so, anyway, for me that's what needs to be solved here - educating users about
what is acceptable use of open wifi. i'm not really sure this solves it (i
doubt people will actually look at the url in the ssid).

~~~
nvr219
What I would do in this case is set up a eula that they need to accept in
order to use the wifi. Even consumer-level routers can do this, if not out of
the box than with Tomato/DD-WRT

~~~
andrewcooke
thanks, that's a good idea. the historical accident of how things ended up
connected as they are means it's non-trivial to do right now. but i guess i
should have it as a long-term goal.

[edit: i do understand what you mean; but currently this is implemented just
as a wifi endpoint (no router - just wifi) on an internal network and some
iptables rules.]

~~~
mahmud
Hotels have that already. Drop all traffic except web, then route that to an
authentication or EULA page, set cookie, etc.

------
savrajsingh
This makes so much sense in high-rise apartment buildings where everyone has
their own cable connection and wireless router. The cable companies don't want
you to share your connection -- they want everyone to pay up. But sharing is
much cheaper for end-users. Good luck with this, smart idea. Incentivizing
broad adoption is the hard part. ;)

------
vaxdigitalnh
Is there any limit to what type of info you could place in the 32 byte SSID
field? It could be an email address. It could be some other plain text. It
could be encrypted text. It could be a public key. It could be a 32 byte
"blog". Or a 32 byte "tweet". Use your imagination.

On your mark, get set, file your bogus software patents!

------
gojomo
Neat idea. Here's another I've been stewing on for a while: give every wifi
point a wall/chatroom that's only writable (and maybe, only readable) by
people using the same public (behind-NAT) IP address.

One problem with SSIDs for messaging is how their display is often truncated.
(iOS's wifi screens are a bad offender here.)

~~~
jaredsohn
Sounds like <http://www.wifichat.net>

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4497623>

------
mutagen
Several years ago I set my AP name to one of my email addresses with the
express purpose of being able to share WiFi if someone needed brief internet
access. No one has ever contacted me about using my WiFi. Perhaps I needed to
name it "Want WiFI? email me ..." to make it clearer.

~~~
sliverstorm
Perhaps people couldn't email you without WiFi...

------
leke
Having the ssid as a url is a nice idea. Instead of charging neighbours to use
your net, perhaps it could be used to collaborate a mesh net or something?

Edit: Hey, the meshnet project is really taking off...
<https://projectmeshnet.org/>

------
obilgic
Someone should start making me social, instead of making my wifi...

------
alexchamberlain
I don't understand why?

~~~
Major_Grooves
what do you not understand?

~~~
alexchamberlain
Why would I want my WiFi to be contactable?

~~~
fudged71
A lot of people don't talk to their neighbours. This has the potential to have
lots of social benefits. You could contact people in your vicinity about lost
pets, garage sales, etc. beyond just sharing a wifi connection. Maybe you
could even help a neighbour have a better connection by letting them know that
they should change their WiFi channel.

~~~
alexchamberlain
There must be a better way to do that.

------
Zash
You could just put some piece of contact info in your ESSID?

~~~
madmaxmatze
Two problems with that: 1) You and your WiFi don't stay as anonym as with
wifis.org 2) The "neighbor" seeing eg an email as a SSID get's no explanation
why you did this

~~~
laumars
I don't think it takes a doctor of human psychology to work out why an e-mail
address has been used as an SSID.

------
martindale
I got a few of my friends to sign up using the invitation link, but have not
received my extra WiFi IDs. I can't find any way to contact WiFis.org, either.

------
goronbjorn
If you built a way for people to pay each other into this (like Stripe
Connect, for example) this could be interesting.

------
killerpopiller
this is a very bad idea! Since the concept of "Störerhaftung" got introduced
(interferer accountability), the account holder will be held liable for
copyright infringement.

This is not hyptothetical. It happened to a friend of mine, she has to pay
around 1500€ I think.

~~~
xur17
I really wish some service (such as Fon) would provide a vpn service that I
could setup and automatically route all guest traffic through. This way Fon
could establish themselves as an ISP, and be protected legally (common
carrier), and I wouldn't have to worry about what people are doing with my
wifi.

I've also though about setting up a guest network that routes over Tor. This
way none of the traffic could be traced back to me.

Basically, I would love to provide free wifi for neighbors to use that is
limited to a few mbps, but I don't want to have to deal with the legal risks
associated with this.

------
ChrisArchitect
need to connect this with Karma <https://yourkarma.com/>

