The Wind-up:
For those of you who have a laptop, you know that not every place has a wifi set up for you to use. Many that do are not to generous and will charge you an arm and a leg for it’s use.

I found this really cool site, Plazes, that is sort of an underground attempt to log all the places, you can access the internet from your laptop (wireless and lan based). Given how hinkey my Hubby is about our wireless network security, I was delighted that I did not see my address on there, but I did find a few places that I knew nothing about. In fact, I think the next time I’m out and about I might just drop by a few of the places listed by me and see if it works.

The Pitch:

Plazes is a downloadable program that logs all of the places that a user accesses the internet while rambling about with his or her laptop.

The Plazer looks for the hardware ID of your local network (MAC ID) and checks whether it is already in the database with an address, so we can place you at that location. That is all it does. The Plazer is NOT Spy/Mal/Adware. The Plazer does not make your network or your PC vulnerable to any attacks. Your MAC ID is not publicly accessible and is only used for identifying your network.

Coordinates for these hot spots gets loaded into the Plazes program and you are allowed to add pictures and comments. It also integrates with Flickr.

Plazes users are given Karma Points for finding new Plazes.

Every time you discover a new Plaze, you get karma points. Top discoverers show up in a special list so you can compete with others and map your favorite Plazes. If you are the discoverer of a Plaze you will be presented a button to edit your special description. You get karma points for every Plaze you discover and for every successful invitation you sent out. Your Karma points are reflected in the discoverer list.

The Swing:

Since I haven’t used this, I don’t know if it is a “Home Run,” “Base Hit”, “Pop Fly” or a “Strike-out”. I’d be interested in hearing people’s take on this. At the very least, it sounds like it could be a little fun.

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