By Daniel Dessinger

March 8, 2007

Two months ago, I thought I was a genius when I thought of buying the domain name: freethewifi.com. By partnering with T-Mobile HotSpots, Starbucks has become the enemy of all wifi users. As a copywriter and search marketer, I work from my home office. I don’t have to tell you how boring that gets.

So I decide to work from local coffee shops. After all, you can just order a drink and stay as long as you want, right? Right, except that the most popular coffee shop chain doesn’t offer free Internet access to its patrons. Decidedly NOT okay.

Panera Bread offers free wifi. The problem with Panera is that there are only a few stores in the DFW metroplex and the one by my house has a whopping total of three power outlets for patrons to use. Yeah… picture ten people trying to use three outlets. Not a pretty picture.

Today, for example, I have a doctor’s appointment in North Dallas. I’m talking way up, north of 635 on Dallas Parkway near Addison. Every time I have a meeting or appointment in North Dallas, I inevitably get sucked into psychotic traffic. No more. I am determined to find free wifi access somewhere nearby and wait it out if necessary.

So I go online and google “free wifi in dfw”. The stars were aligned, for once, and the very first search result provided the exact information I needed – ilovefreewifi.com.

It’s a site of user-generated content where anyone can share their favorite free wifi spots all around the country. I mean, how rarely does anyone search for information and find exactly what they want on the first try and first click? It’s practically unheard of.

On ilovefreewifi.com, there are currently 276 hotspots listed for Austin, 146 hotspots for Dallas / Fort Worth, 219 for Houston, and 76 for San Antonio. Of course, you can find results here for almost every state in the union (sorry, no wifi tips for the North Central US.

The only downside is that I only took note of one free wifi spot in North Dallas before I left my house. I drove to Dunn Bros. Coffee in Addison only to find that despite a “perfect” signal, I couldn’t even get my homepage to open up. Pooh on Dunn Bros.!

I was in a rush, so I didn’t complain to the management. I was hoping to check email in between doctor’s appointments. Still, I’m glad I found ilovefreewifi.com. This site will save my butt in the future.

Webmaster of ilovefreewifi.com, if you’re reading this, the only thing your site needs to be the total bomb is smart search functionality. I wanted wifi spots in a specific town, street, a zip code, or an intersection, you should be able to provide refined results. Do that, and I will toot your horn all over town.

© 2007 – 2010, Daniel Dessinger. All rights reserved.

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