Wednesday, October 20, 2004

Wi-Fi Hot-Spot Finders

I've always been very skeptical of wi-fi directories, mainly because I haven't found one that is comprehensive enough. I recently came across eWeek's list of hotspot finders. Unfortunately eWeek doesn't rate the sites featured which makes the listing less user friendly then it could have been.

My two cents on some of the finders:

JiWire is "the most comprehensive hot-spot list you'll find online". This might be true, but it is also way of the mark. It fails to find the three Starbuck hot spots around my house in central London, and it also tells me that the Docklands area, which is about 45 minutes away by public transport, is 0 mile's from my location. It does a better job with US locations.
My rating: 2/5

Total Hotspots has a clean user interface, maps the locations and manages to include wi-fi networks I didn't even know existed in my area. It does a great job of US searches too and lists every hotspot I could think off while testing it. Hands down my favorite.
My rating: 5/5

The Wi-Fi Alliance's Wi-fi Zone forces the user to drill down to get the info. First choose country - click - state - click - choose the city from a long list etc. The results don't include many well known hotspots like Starbucks.
My rating: 3/5

Wi-FiHotSPotList.com is cleand and fast. The only downside is that if a location has several networks, like Royal Grounds Coffe on Fillmore Street in San Francisco, it will list them as seperate entries in the search results.
My rating: 4/5

NMV Global's Wi-Fi-Zones delivers by far the worst search results. Avoid to save time.
My rating: 1/5