Having said that, some cafes, at least in the US/New York, are feeling the GFC pinch, as the WSJ writes “Coffee Shops Pull the Plug on Laptop Users“:

Amid the economic downturn, there are fewer places in New York to plug in computers. As idle workers fill coffee-shop tables — nursing a single cup and surfing the Web for hours — and as shop owners struggle to stay in business, a decade-old love affair between coffee shops and laptop-wielding customers is fading…

As Norm Elrod experienced first hand, blogging on Jobless and Less:

…but waiting for me at my home office away from home office was quite a shock – little plastic covers on the electrical outlets, secured with little padlocks. The cafe was unemployed Norm-proofed, and I was devastated. They might just as well have kicked me in the crotch and pushed my hunched-over body into traffic.

Might not be a bad thing, as people might start to talk to each other again…

EDIT: As Cr@iG notes, LaptopFriendlyCafes.com now also has an iPhone app!

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If you have a broadband Internet connection, you can share (part of) your bandwidth, by having your Meraki set up as a internet gateway. If you don’t have a broadband Internet connection, you can still help out by extending the network if you can see the SydneyFreeNet wireless network signal, by setting up your Meraki as a repeater.

If you already provide free wireless Internet (that’s great!), you are welcome to join SydneyFreeNet by adding Meraki Minis to your existing access point(s). By combining our efforts, you’ll become part of a larger wireless network, improve the quality of service for your visitors and be helping to build a unified and robust wireless network.

If you are a business or property owner (cafe, bakery, restaurant, bar, laundromat, hotel, apartment complex, conference center, etc.), you can attract new customers that stay longer by providing them free internet access.

You can get one or more Merakis from the Meraki website. We don’t sell them.

Again, we are not affiliated with Meraki, and we don’t make any money selling them. We just like their technology, which is cheap and easy to set up and manage.

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In a secured, closed wireless network, the data exchange between your device and the access point would be encrypted, so people wouldn’t be able to snoop in. That makes it a lot safer to read your emails, log into your Facebook account, or whatever.

Because of openness of the network, you should avoid connecting to any Web site or service that requires password authentication that is not specifically secured using SSL (the little lock that appears in your browser). This includes email that does not requires an SSL connection, and FTP. You should therefor limit your wireless usage to general Internet surfing.

So how can you make accessing an open network more secure?

• Enable your email client to use SSL, both for incoming and outgoing messages.
• Use SFTP (Secure-FTP) if you need to transfer files. Or encrypt the files before you transfer them.
• If you need to check in on a web-based email account, make sure you connect over SSL/HTTP, not only for the login but for all message exchanges. For example, GMail’s login is over SSL, but the rest of GMail is by default unsecured. Make sure you connect to GMail (or whatever email service) over SSL/HTTPS.
• Don’t do your internet banking on free, open access points, and don’t do your online shopping where you need to provide your credit card details. Although these services should be over a SSL connection, you could be connected to a rogue access points, operated by some unscrupulous people. The access point could act like a man-in-the-middle, intercepting your communication with your banking service.
• But in the end it is strongly advised you can connect to a VPN (Virtual Private Network) connection at a free Wifi hotspot. Using a VPN connection will greatly improve your privacy, as all data is encrypted between you and the VPN server. Actually this improves security on secured access points as well because the security is only between the device and the access point, but from the access point onward it’s open again…

And as always, you may want to take the necessary precautions to secure your computer as well. Make sure your computer is up to date with the latest security fixes, and use an anti-virus and anti-spyware software as well as a software firewall to protect against intrusions. Make sure you don’t have any shared folders, and password-protect access to your computer.

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