This scenario is becoming increasingly real. Many people work in jobs that don’t rely on their physical presence since they can complete and submit their work electronically. Thus, they are free to work wherever they want. An essential ingredient for this freedom is wireless LAN or WiFi.

Besides, having access to the internet from anywhere is nice to have, even if you don’t need it for work. This article covers free WiFi sites that allow you to find hotspot locations near you.

Wi-Fi Hotspot Directory

This directory lists over 30,000 hotspots worldwide. The most prominent locations are Europe and North America with over 10,000 hotspots each. Not all of the listed hotspots are free.

To locate free WiFi locations near you, use the search form, where you can select your country and enter your state, city, or ZIP code. You can also specify an operator and the type of place you’re looking for, i.e. park or internet cafe. To find only free wifi hotspot sites and locations, be sure to tick the respective box!

The search form also provides a link through which you can browse all cities.

LaptopFriendlyCafes

Do you crave for a cafe that serves delicious coffee, offers free WiFi, and a power plugin for your laptop? Then you need to have a look at LaptopFriendlyCafes.com. Here you will find a list of places that offer the full service.

So far, their collection contains over 300 cafes, with most being situated in the cities London, New York, and Sydney. If you know another one anywhere in the world, please go ahead and submit it.

Do you have an iPhone? Get their iPhone app to spot cafes close to where you currently are.

WaiFi

This is a very easy to use WiFi hotspot finder that integrates Google Maps to show you exactly where to find a free wireless access point. Simply enter your location and check the Google map for WaiFi flags. A click on the flag will bring up details, i.e. the category, location, and carrier.

The site is powered by users. You can add WiFi hotspots easily by clicking the button at the bottom left of the map, which will bring up a WaiFi flag. Drag the flag to the exact location and fill in the details.

FREE-hotspot

A site similar to WaiFi is FREE-hotspot.com. It’s a little more convenient to use, albeit not as stylish. It also uses Google Maps and provides lots of useful information for WiFi beginners.

One very convenient feature is an indicator of whether or not a listed hotspot is currently active (green or red flag). Additionally, the list of all currently displayed WiFi locations is displayed in a menu on the left-hand side. An interactive filter menu pulls out from the top of the map on mouse-over and can be used to find specific hotspots.

Unfortunately, FREE-hotspot.com appears to cover fewer locations than WaiFi, at least for the places in North America, Europe, and Australia I checked.

Last year, David introduced 5 Wi-Fi Hotspot Finders To Find Free Wi-Fi Spots Near You. In this article he also covered WiFi-friendly chains and airports and linked to the following sites:

• Chain restaurants with free wirless internet access
• Wi-Fi-FreeSpot Directory – locations that offer Free WiFi
• Free wifi airports

Do you own a PSP? Simon explained How To Use Your PSP WiFi Scanner To Find A Wireless Internet Hotspot.

Before you go out hunting for a free WiFi hotspot, however, make sure you’re all prepared. Karl reminds you of Things To Know When Using a WiFi Hotspot Or a Public PC and Ryan showed you 4 Free WiFi Software Downloads to Get Most of Wireless Networks. Both articles contain important security-relevant information.

Finally, if you’re wondering how wireless works in the first place, read Guy’s Technology Explained article on How Does Wireless Internet Work?.

What is your favorite location to make use of free public WiFi?

Image credits: duchessa

Confused yet? Fret not, things are about to get much simpler.

I stumbled onto Bodega a couple of days ago and it got me wondering what the heck it was. Something like AppFresh, perhaps? But the description said, “Your neighborhood store.” What on earth could that mean? It wasn’t until after I downloaded it, only did I realize that it was an App Store for Mac (or call it Mac Apps Store). Something like that anyways.

Bodega takes the iTunes’ App Store and translates that idea for Mac applications. In other words, it’s a centralized Mac application store – a place to be exposed to new and interesting Mac apps.

I can’t help but be impressed by the design of Bodega. It even looks like a store. Hold and move the app around your screen and the signboards swing about! Alright, let’s take a short tour and I’ll show you how to use it.

As soon as Bodega launched, you’ll be presented with its Featured apps of the day as seen in the screenshot above. There will also be sections dedicated to showcasing New Releases, Shopkeeper’s Picks, Top Free/Paid Downloads. The Featured page is a fantastic way to be exposed to and try out new apps.

Click on a category from the list on the left and you’ll be presented with apps, laid out on shelves. Very shop-like. Click on an app and it will be lit by a spotlight.

To find out more about the app, either click on its label to switch between the name, price and rating. Or you could double-click on the app to be brought to its dedicated page where you can read more about it and view some screenshots.

If you see an app you like and if it’s free, click on the Download button and Bodega will retrieve it for you. No additional browser windows need to be opened. You can view the download process in the Applications page. Downloads are automatically saved in your Downloads folder, naturally.

If you happen to like a commercial app and decide to buy it, everything can be done within the app itself. In this example, I chose HoudahSpot and clicked on the Buy Now button. Bodega opened up the Houdah Software Store page and allowed me to complete the transaction without leaving the application.

Besides being an App Store, Bodega also keeps track of the apps you always have on your Mac. It will detect installed applications and then check to see if they’re up to date.

All in all, I consider Bodega to be a work in progress. It doesn’t feature enough apps to challenge the big boys like MacUpdate. It is a fantastic idea and I’d love to see it boom. If you’re a developer, submit your app to be featured in Bodega.

Where do you go to get your Mac apps?

Then you start to realise how silly they are for not password protecting those folders and leaving them wide open for the whole world to walk in and take a look!

This might be really old news for a lot of people but I thought I would just quickly jot down the search parameters for finding files in unprotected website directories.

In case you don’t know, an unprotected website directory is a website that doesn’t have an “index” file created for it – index.htm, index.html, index.php.  So if you try to access a website directory which doesn’t have a password controlling it or which doesn’t have an index page, you will be able to see a list of all the files and folders that are inside that directory. If you can see that, you can then click on the files and both download them and open them.

Here’s what a typical unprotected directory looks like :

Directories like these will have all kinds of files. Things like pictures, music, video files, documents, you name it.

Now you can do a general search and go through literally hundreds of thousands of these directories. But to do that sort of search is both time consuming and a bit mind numbing. But if you want to do it, just put into the search box (be it Google, Yahoo, whatever) the following search string :

-inurl(html|htm|php) intitle:”index of” +”last modified” +”parent directory” +description +size

This will bring up EVERYTHING and you can go hunting for whatever you can find.  Good luck.

But don’t you want to be selective?  Don’t you want to look for something in particular?  Well, if so, you can change the search string to look for ONLY pictures or ONLY music or ONLY video.  So….

-inurl:(htm|html|php) intitle:”index of” +”last modified” +”parent directory” +description +size +(wmv|avi)

This will only look for wmv and avi video files.  You can easily alter it if you don’t want “wmv” or “avi” or if you want “mpg” instead.   You get the idea.

-inurl:(htm|html|php) intitle:”index of” +”last modified” +”parent directory” +description +size +(jpg|gif)

This will only look for jpg and gif files. Again, you can alter the file formats to suit yourself.

-inurl:(htm|html|php) intitle:”index of” +”last modified” +”parent directory” +description +size +(wma|mp3)

This will only look for wma and mp3 music files.  Again you can easily change the file formats to suit yourself.

Just put the search string you need into the search engine box.   Then hit the ‘enter’ button and your results will come up.   I guarantee you’ll be hooked for ages trying to see what you can find!   You can also put a certain search term after your file format so :

[-inurl:(htm|html|php) intitle:"index of" +"last modified" +"parent directory" +description +size +(jpg|gif) "britney spears"]

Obviously you are not going to get perfect results.   You are going to have to wade through a lot of irrelevant and useless stuff some of the time but quite often you do find a lot of good stuff too.   It’s quite fun peeking into people’s unprotected folders seeing what they have stashed away.   Stuff like embarrassing photos, drunken videos, “provocative” material, and much more.

Some people have embedded these search algorithims into software which makes it easier to search for files.  One of them is Clickster which I reviewed last May.   It searches for MP3′s in peoples unprotected directories and it has a very nice simple GUI.

Some of you might say what right do we have to go browsing through people’s website folders?   But look at it this way – these people posted this stuff online – in an unprotected unsecure website folder.   It’s as if they are asking for it to be found.   They are making no effort to keep it hidden or secure and putting it out on the World Wide Web is the most stupidest thing in the world to do if you want to keep something private and hidden.

So go out there, find it and enjoy it.   Oh and let us know in the comments some of the stuff you managed to find in your searches.

Image Credit : dullhunk

1. SimpleSpark – Well maintained and informative lists, also lists competitor options for each app.
2. KillerStartups – Digg like features, thorough analysis, polls, screenshots and more.
3. Go2Web2.0 – Mass logo layout with brief descriptions, Search function and Tag Cloud.
4. All Things Web 2.0 – Sorted by user ratings with short descriptions, well categorized.
5. NeoBinaries – Massive lists with community ratings and reviews.
6. FeedMyApp – Categorized thumbnail screenshots, with only minimal description.
7. Listio’s Everything Web 2.0 – Sort by tags, votes, brief descriptions.
8. ReflexZ’s Applications – Small list, voting, medium descriptions.
9. The Web 2.0 Directory – Categorized, comprehensive, short descriptions.
10. Web 2.0 List – Sort by tags, brief descriptions.

That’s about… Are you aware of any other Web 2.0 website directories that didn’t make the list. Let us know in comments. Thanks in advance.

This article was posted by Adam Hirsch from TheFattyTalks