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Advertising on a Free Wireless Network?
Mischievous0ne asks: "I had an idea yesterday, and I wanted to run it past the Slashdotcommunity. Would you use a honeypot (free wireless access point) that covered a large downtown area (3-4 blocks of restaurants, coffee bars, an iceskating rink, a small park, and general hangout) if you had to have a framed banner ad at the top of every page you visited while on the network? Do advertisers still pay for banner ads? Are banner ads, effective? I live in a college town in Indiana, and I know there are wireless users here, but the campus wireless network is severly limited. I'm also not sure how people would react to the banner ad space in exchange for free access."
Who cares what they think about banners.. They will use it regardless..
Sure I would. I still read slashdot....
-Tolerate my intolerance
what kind of advertisements you put up. For instance, if you were to advertise goatse, I'm sure the neighborhood would object to it. However, advertisements for rummage sales or town meetings might be greeted with arms wide open.
1. give something valuable out for free.
2. (nevermind technical, legal, and other liability issues)
3. (something involving banner ads.)
4. ???
5. profit!
This means all the wireless networks out there could become a revenue stream of the company hosting them!
I think this is a dangerous idea. I can name several companies that would enable this by default on all wireless connections if it were available. It would be a way to force users to help offset the cost of the wireless networks.
"Live Free or Die." Don't like it? Then keep out of the USA
If I want to avoid a banner, I can. If someone's going to pay to have the banner there, then that's their business. I can ignore them a lot easier than any of the other mentioned ad types.
Mordor...a magical, mythical land where women are more rare than dragons--but where every man would rather find a dragon
Netzero and other similar companies failed after many strong and repeated attempts to offer the same service, except through dial up. The idea sounds nice except for a couple of problems: no one ever clicks on banner ads (except the great slashdot ads, of course), and people will just find a way to keep the banner ad from displaying on the screen. I would love for your idea to work, but I just don't see that happening, given the past history of free internet access. Today, I don't think there is a single free ISP left (could be mistaken), and this is mostly due to a poor revenue model.
Do you typically "make the love" or just "get it on?" Sorry. Had to. :)
Watch the Teaser Trailer for "The Lightning Thief" Her
A honeypot is a machine that looks suspectible to break-in but is monitored. It's used by sys admins and security "experts" to find out what techniques people use to break into machines.
>I'm also not sure how people would react to the >banner ad space in exchange for free access.
I know how I'd react: block those ads! Are you with me, everybody?
On a side note, I think the reason advertising on the internet gets such a negative response is that they are designed badly. Why do banners animate? Banners should not animate. Nor should things pop up/under what you are working on. People are just fine with the ads in magazines and such because they aren't constantly dancing around and flashing things at you. It's distracting, and detracts greatly from the reading experience. I'm sure static banners would raise a minimum of fuss in the average user.
I mean, we're predators, and our eyes are automatically attracted to movement. That's why good UI design calls for animation only when you want the users attention for something important.
Aww crap, I just answered my own question. I hate people.
If Jesus wants me it knows where to find me.
Wait, isn't a "honeypot" a dummy system used to trap malicious crackers? Whatis.com seems to think so too.
Does the word "honeypot" now also mean a "free wireless access point?" Nobody tells me these things...
:wq
If the banner said things "Would you like another coffee?" and the waitress would bring it within a couple of minutes I might even like it.
Otherwise I'd probably just ignore the banner.
If the adverts were too intrusive to ignore I'd stop using the service.
Locally relevant advertising, that's the thing.
"I have opinions of my own, strong opinions, but I don't always agree with them." -- George H. W. Bush
It worked for slashdot.
Karma: Good (despite my invention of the Karma: sig)
- Have a parent company which is willing to fund them at a loss to maintain web presence (like NFL.com)
- Have multiple sources of income (a la Yahoo!)
- Have such specialized services/content, people are willing to pay for it(like an ISP)
I can't think of a single site/service which is based on advertising alone and is actually *making* money. Banner ads just don't cut it anymore.My two cents.
As long as the banner size is the same, so I can use Bannerblind... ;-)
There would be a lot of work involved-such as proving the ads actually worked, but it would be fun to start such a small enterprise up. Try something like arranging to offer a coupon from a local store on the banner ad itself, and see how many people come in with your coupon to determine the retention and usefulness of the service. Then you could turn it around and use that information to sell more ads to local shopowners.
Calum
Advertizing could be done and it might be effective -- but size does matter. I don't think "banner" ads would work well because, think about it, if it's a wireless network, I'm probably on my PDA or small portable laptop, so I don't have much screen to deal with here. And if you fill up the screens with ads, well, then that's just a waste.
Then again, some advertizing could work because people will put up with some of it, even if they complain. I mean, how many people have actually stopped going to a website due to some small limited advertizing. Done in measures, the users will tolerate it. They may not like it, but they'll keep using the service because it's free, and you'll start having at least a small revenue source.
Who said Freedom was Fair?
1. Prepare for a constant arms race. They will block your ads.
2. You might get some love on local ads, from businesses that normally wouldn't use internet ads. Like a local sub shop or bookstore. Your one advantage will be genuine geotargeting. (Sorry, OSDN.)
3. Figure out some reasonable way to do traffic shaping first or some yahoo will put you out of business by sucking up all your bandwidth. I'm not an expert on this sort of thing but maybe withholding TCP ACKs from abusers as a throttle would help.
4. Let us know how it works out!
-Peter
Imagine if 802.11b manufacturers put $1 per device sold into a fund for building wireless infrastructure. Hmmm, how many 802.11b devices have been sold? 10 million/year? If you generated $10 million per year, you could probably at least support 1000 wireless access points with T1'ish bandwidth, possibly seeding the purchase of more devices. Or twiddle the
numbers and make it work out better.
To answer the question, run-of-the-mill banners do 10 cents per thousand impressions these days. Even factoring in a select audience (like Slashdot) or pop-under/overs (unlike Slashdot), a couple of dollars per thousand impressions is all you can make.
Yes, but
"If I could live to be several hundred
I could take a walk and really wander, really wonder."
Rather than take up valuable real estate (especially on the laptops everyone will be using to access the network), display a full page ad every half-hour of connecting.
I'm assuming you'd do your banner method via a proxy server that inserts your add, why not do a commercial-like ad for each time interval. I'm thinking of something like what Salon.com does for non-subscribers. Intrusive for just a few seconds, and then its like nothing ever happened.
What happened here is that the submitter read or heard something about a wireless honeypot being used to trap wardriving/walking etc. activity, and thought that the term just meant a free access point. He's confused.
No. honeypot != free wireless access point
Nah, this'd be great. Setup a honeypot server that offers free wireless web access. Then when someone tries to hack you and you go after them, you're guaranteed to find them within a 3 block radius.
-a
How to rationalize theft.
"In the early days of online advertising in the mid-1990s, click through for banner ads might have been any where from 5 percent to 6 percent. But Denise Garcia, a media analyst for GarnterG2, a market research firm in Stamford, Conn., says that click through for banners have fallen to roughly two-tenths of a percent. "It's amazing that it's fallen so dramatically," says Garcia."
Slow news day?
-B
Ash and Hickory, straight-grained and true, make excellent bludgeons, dandy for the cudgeling of vegetarians.
Step 1) In a major metropolitan area, set up a huge wifi network. Name it "GCN $50/mo 555-1212" where 555-1212 is your phone number and GCN is the name of your ISP.
...
Step 2)
Step 3) Profit!
That's what some folks are doing in Mendocino, and it seems like it'd be a great service. I opened up my laptop in a friends house, and saw I was getting wifi access. I'd have paid them $10 for the weekend, easily.
There are no trails. There are no trees out here.
BAM! BONG! BOOM! click. Twirp. 98.5FM! The Worm!
A song begins, then I turn the dial because the song typically sucks. Repeat until I can take no more and switch the radio off.
The RIAA has been moaning about P2P and Internet radio killing their profits. I postulate that advertising has had a lot to do with this. The time most folks listen to the radio is during the drive to and from work, and you're fucking lucky to get one or two songs an hour between ads. Why bother?
Advertising is so ubiquitous that I don't even notice it, especially when its up in my grill.
Actually, I'd consider it a service on the order of the ads in the local City Paper if the banner ads were entirely limited to businesses within the access area for your ISP.
Put restrictions on their design (no flashing, no animation) and size, and I don't see why they couldn't be left on for all subscribers period.
What we call folk wisdom is often no more than a kind of expedient stupidity.-Edward Abbey
I am confused, this doesn't seem much differnt then what Juno and NetZero tried but could never make profitable, didn't they start charging? It is a novel idea, but I think the overhead with wireless would be more then dialup, so I wonder if it would be profitable.
Careful how you do this. Don't want to piss off the big boys.
"Each page," might make the advert look like its loaded from the web site etc., time based would be safer.
For the linkage adverse, it's about NYTimes and Wash Post etc. suing Gator over pop ups
So close and yet so far from the world's perfect ID number
I really think the people that would use it would be 50/50. For example, I know that I would not. Advertising just bothers me that much, and I would not want to be limited in any way from my browing experience. I am willing to pay to have a decent connection. However, my brother would love to use it. If it's free, then that's $20 a month he can spend on food or a date.
To conquer death, you only have to die
Offer paid subscribers the option of turning off the ads. That way, the cheapskate users can't complain too much.
Neat GPS tie-in: click on an ad for a nearby coffee shop, send them your GPS coordinates with your order (paid by credit card or PayPal), and they'll deliver for a fee based on your distance from the shop.
OK, maybe that's a bit too geeky...
As some poster mentioned, it doesnt seem he is trying to figure out if this would make him rich or support a /corporation/. It sounded as if he was currious as the feasability of funding the bandwidth through adds for at least local places and maybe some larger vendors. Nothing major. Seems to me the biggest problem would be creating a piece of software...cross platform, of course....that would allow for this with no easy run arrounds.....of course since its for a small area...with a relatively close community....you might be able to rely on the honor system....i.e "just dont get arround the banner adds in the software because this is a free not for profit operation for yours and everyone elses benefit kind of thing..so be cool and let the banners be". Which I dont think is an entirely unheard of thing. that said, it might not be too hard to get local shops restaurants to participate now that so many are becoming web/net savy. give them a way to offer up to date specials on the spur of the momment("Till 9pm tonight, one free beer with purchase of Chicken Dinner. At Joe's Chicken Shack!" or "$.50 Kamikazee shots for the next hour @ The Lounge !"). If you get time donated from some of the college geeks for maintenence, and get really lucky some how on a couple of AP's and antenna's....then it seems a few hundred dollars a month is all you would have to generate to cover the bandwidth. Seems like a pretty neat project for a couple of CS students to tackle.
.02
Dunno, just my
Dimes
Banner Ads will not cover the cost of equipment and bandwidth. And even if they do NOW, they won't SOON... this Alertbox article by respected Internet Usability guy Jacob Neilson talks about why web advertising does not work. The article was writtin in 1997, but it has comments at the bottom keeping it up to date.
Banner ads are slowly dying. Basing a long term business model on them is a bad idea.
"I will trust Google to 'do no evil' until the founders no longer run it." Hello Alphabet.
A total back of the napkin calculation, the answer is probably yes (based on the size of the ad & the detrimental affects to the wireless connection).
it's not going to stop until you wise up, no it's not going to stop. so just give up.
I would never, ever, use a service like that. I would simply wait until I get to work or get home. I am sick and tired of all the banners on the web already, and I never use adware or similar. And the more you piss me off, the more I will refuse to pay you.
This is not being unnice or disregarding your idea, it is simply me being tired beyond belief of commercials as a way to do business. If you could come up with a better way to finance it I think that there can be a merit to general wireless access, but not with commercials.
I'd use this (supposing that my laptop battery worked and my school didn't already have wireless), but:
- I would probably be spending most of my time over ssh, not the web
- I would filter out the banners
- Getting banner sponsors, is really, really hard
Someone's never been wardriving ;)
We now have confirmed reports from an informed Orange County minister that Ethel is still an active communist.
I'd say if the advertising will cover the costs, go for it. I don't think complainers would have much ground to stand on. No one would be forcing them to use the service, and they get it for free. Besides, it seems like more than 1/2 of the sites I go to have banner ads of their own anyway.
JET Program: see Japan, meet intere
Above all, you need to maximize synergies to develop a strategic go-forward plan to be first to market in the opportunity space. Focus on synthesizing a world-class, robust, scalable solution using best-of-breed technologies. You need to capture eyeballs if you're going to drive revenue generation; you need to get the public to drink the Kool-Aid.
Develop a leveraged business model and have a fully-realized exit strategy.
There are free community wireless projects all going up, and they can't fail because they don't rely on revenue. Talking with these people setting it up, they won't accept contracts with businesses to do advertising of any kind. It's a pure network like your home LAN, all based on charity and whoever has the equipement to help out.
Introducing a wireless network with advertising is going to go down the hole. Especially with these community wireless projects popping up in most major cities.
People need to get out of the "click - through" bullshit!!!
That upsets me more then anything. When I'm watching T.V., and I see a commercial... I don't drop what I'm doing and head out to the store!! Same goes for the internet. I'm here to read a story... I go there to do some research. If I see something that interests me, I'll then go to it.
Example: Thinkgeek. I know the web addy now... I've even bought a couple of things off of it. But have I EVER clicked through... NO.
Once advertizers and web providers remember that it's the idea seed that gets planted and not the click-through, maybe the internet business will return.
People should really be quantifying, "if I put up and ad, do my # of visits increase as a whole?"
Now that would be better data.
Hey.. how did this box get under me?
www.slightlycrewed.com - Because aren't we all?
honeypot is not a free wireless access point.
I would think here, of all places, people would know that.
Look it up.
If people on slashdot can't keep terms straight, how can we expect people in congress to?
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Sure, I'd use it, but that's presuming that somebody would pay you enough for the ad banners to keep you in business. The other thing is that I could easily put some ad blocking software on my laptop to quickly bypass your ad banners. Of course advertisers knows this.
This sig has been temporarily disconnected or is no longer in service
Would you use a free wireless access point [...] if you had to have a framed banner ad at the top of every page you visited while on the network?
Sure, as long as you don't mind that I use the access for checking my email, logging in to machines at work or home, apt-get updating my system, chatting/IM'ing with friends and colleagues, playing online games, and other activities that don't involve "visiting" any "pages". (And that's if I'm a nice guy, and don't use junkbuster or mozilla's image-blocking features.)
A honeypot is certainly not a free wireless access point. Well, a free wireless access point could in *theory* be a honeypot.
Normally, a honeypot is an apparently vunerable system or network that you deliberately leave around to catch the eye of hackers, usually to monitor them or to grab lists of IPs to block.
May we never see th
What yor missing is that Netzero & juno were large contintal ISPs with hundreds of dial in numbers, therefore ads on it were very expensive,,, this, is only a simple 3-4 block Wireless network, most liksey only one simple access point, after the inital cost, he would only need to pay for bandwidth, no employees, no phonelines, etc. Therefore, the ads would be much cheaper, and i'd think, if marketed correctly, many companies, possibly even personal ads. I think it could be quite sucessful if enough people in the area would use the internet wirelessly...
Reece,
PS. If you do,, you might try having a weather forecast, etc. for your town show up every say 10 minutes, so people would realize that your add bar is usefull to them also,, just a thought,
Do you mean banners like in the Opera?
Here in Norway, we don't have an opera yet. They are about to build one. But there are no plans for banner advertisment in it. They will probably put up some banners outside it, though. I don't think operas around the world has banners..
Sorry, I too had to (-8
How do you propose to get this to work? You'd have to force port 80 connections to a proxy server, wouldn't you? Oy... some Internet access you got there.
As detailed by this article, the web is not like Network TV, never will be, and trying to emulate the business model of the TV Networks will fail.
"I will trust Google to 'do no evil' until the founders no longer run it." Hello Alphabet.
I think a distinction needs to be made between the good banner ads and the bad ones.
Slashdot ads are good. I frequently click on them. They're not deceptive, not intrusive, and they are targeted for the audience.
The ads everywhere else are "IF THIS IS FLASHING, YOU WIN!" or "HIT THE LAPTOP AND WIN" or "YOU HAVE 1 NEW MESSAGE". Please...don't insult my intelligence.
All though this is very similar to a very naughty tactic by a current company (Would they cry and sue if you used their idea?), what if you did something just redirect ad.doubleclick.net and other prominent ad sites to your own local banner ad server, with, Local banner ads. People couldn't complain about you screwing up the formatting of a page or anything, because the spaces for the ads will already be there. It would involve no proxy, just a little dns twist.
Does this sound to wrong or or illegal or anything like that?
(Score:0, Interesting)
But the real issue I see here is that Internet access is more than just webpages with banners. Do you intend to intercept people's e-mail to insert ads (something that's less likely to be well received)? Would you block usenet access? What about instant messaging and other application? You need to consider all aspects of network acceess, not just WWW access, in putting togeter a business plan in this area. And you walk a fine line, limit users too much and the system will not be well received, tamper too much with things like e-mail and again I think you'll have problems. Stick to just inserting WW banners and let all users on your netork and it might be overused by applicaions that never generate hits.
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
How about for a cetain metro area, designate the 192.168.*.* IP addresses, as a Local internet (or would that be intranet....I dunno!). Now 192.168.0.1 (or maybe DNSed as www.index.local (note the nonstandard TLD)), would point to a web page that is for the particular area you are in, and link to various shops and businesses in that area, that you might be interested in..... These shops and businesses would pay for the connection, and also the internet that could be accessed from the same location.
This system would meen I could drive somewhere I had never been before, and instantly look up where the local , for example , Pizza shop is.... Why would that Pizza shop want to advertise to the world, when only people in the local vacinity would be interested in ordering....
What if you instead sold demographic information to stores in the area? (This will get all the privacy people in an uproar, but remember, your giving away a free service, perhaps allow people to pay and you won't save their data) Basically you are going to get alot of people coming down to your part of town to surf the web. You'll know what sites they are going to, so then you can establish some information about their demographics. You could then tell the coffee shop that geeks like their shop, but housewives don't.
You could also probably make money charging the businesses a small fee. If you make your network small enough people are going to come to that area to use the network. And while they're there they might as well buy a hot dog right! So it is worth it for the hot dog vendor to pay you a little bit of that. You would have to do some advertising then, and find a way to block the network at locations that don't pay.
Good luck.
Ok, the "great unwashed" probably won't miss ftp, telnet or ssh. But what about SMTP/POP/IMAP? What about IM? Those are "killer apps" as far as Joe Public is concerned. Block those, and people just won't bother with you. Don't block those, and many people will just use those services, and won't ever be forced to see your ads.
The point was valid even if the example (of ssh) wasn't perfect.
The real use of banner and popup ads on most sites is as a grating annoyance to encourage people to buy subscriptions so they can turn off the fscking ads.
It worked on me for Weather Underground, but they're cool and only $5/year, so I don't mind.
...on my ssh session?
I'd use your service, but I'd never see your banner ad.
The next Cmdr Taco duplicate will be ready soon, but subscribers can beat the rush and see it early!
> Will you really click a banner ad?
The ad says "Eat at Joe's, right across Main from the park". What the hell is there to "click" on?
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
This is sort of like a system NetZero moved to before they eventually went to paid service.
Have some sort of custom login client (Older cablemodem systems had such a client). Unless you're logged in and authed, you don't route.
Supporting multiple OSes will be a bitch tho.
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
Yeah, you're probably right. If you include the number of songs DJs talk over, we're probably talking somewhere between zero and zero tunes.
Along with selling the ads make the users pay to see the ads. Make them useful to the users. Say if they are on the corner of 5th and Main have the system feed them ads from surrounding businesses and let them easily browse for the types of places they want. Make it an instant yellow pages and list specials, have walk-in coupons, etc.
At what price learning? At what cost wisdom? The price is a man's peace of mind, and the cost is his life.
You can also expect another type of backlash. Back when Microsoft was floating the "SmartTags" idea, people (even EFF!?!) were bitching about it even though it ultimately just involved a user agent displaying web pages differently than how most w3b d3$ignerz expect. If you're going to be a middleman who changes how other people's web pages look to other people who view them, there will be a firestorm of flames and copyright-related lawsuits.
Yep, you'll have MPAA and EFF fighting each other just for a place in line to kick you in the nuts, as a reward for your good intentions.
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
On a laptop, a banner would not be too bad. On a PDA...FORGEDDABOUTIT! There's minimal space on a PDA. That screen would then reduced in size to a cell phone wap browser and would be totally unusable as a regular browser. Also, I don't think it would work. On the other hand if it was free and had links for putting in your order like for a coffee or whatever, I would like that. They could give you a slip with the URL on it every time you get a coffee or they could put up a banner or sign telling you what to do.
Gorkman
This is actually an intreaguing possibility. You could simply have a small add at the top of each page and append content to it by editing the HTTP stream going to each user.
The really interesting bit is that if used properly it could provide useful information to users while generating business for local retailers. For example, if I'm surfing in a town square and I happen to notice an add for a band playing at the bar across the street tomorrow, I really might be likely to click on the add and even go to the show. I'd certainly be a lot more likely to clik on that than I am to click on the SourceForge add I'm looking at right now. (We use a different team development tool.)
Adds work (and can even be usefull) when they're targeted at people who care. This provides an excellent opportunity to offer extremely local, grass-roots information. Doing something like this might even be useful for small towns...put up a few WAPs and have the adds point to community events...
credo quia absurdum
2 questions
1) do you remember alladvantage?
2) where are they now?
people don't give a shit about web banners... however there was one critical factor they forgot-
local ads.
people are way more receptive to hungry howies pizza down the street than than lowermybills.com
if you advertise local stuff, local companies would be willing to pay.
go outside the area tho and you'll shoot yourself in the foot.
don't force advertisements either. show people what they're willing to see.
Looking for Book Reviews? Check out Literary Escapism.
Do advertisers still pay for banner ads? Are banner ads, effective?
WELCOME TO FIVE YEARS AGO.
I'd certainly be willing to try out such a service, however I'd want to use it on my PocketPC with my WiFi card.
I'd be curious to see how much valuable real estate is taken up with something like this. True mobile access is still very expensive, and I'd be happy to look at a few banners for free access, if it didn't take too much space away from what I was trying to look at...
No man is an island, but Gary is a city in Indiana.
That is, friends, the main problem with self-styled "Smart People": They can always think of a dozen good reasons why something won't work. This reflex is poison to the particular kind of intelligence that characterizes successful entrepreneurs.
So please strongly consider looking elsewhere for advice on this issue.
Amazing magic tricks
"they get on my nerves and I pay them no attention."
That is a contradiction of term.
If you pay them no attention, how can they get on your nerves?
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
It's called a transcoding proxy. It works by using a combination of a transparent proxy, and a content rewrite mechanism, to keep the frame contents happy by re-rooting them relative to the embedded frame.
For bonus points, it can ensure that the download of the banner download succeeds before it permits the rest of the content to transit the proxy.
I can license code to you, if you want to do something like this, but it will cost you some $ for the license, unless you are willing to do a "fee plus royalty" arrangement, and I'm convinced that there's royalties to be made from your business model.
Of course, that leaves the broswer people to implement a "frame focus", where the browser "focuses in" on a single frame for display purposes, but downloads content like it's displaying all of it...
That's not really an issue for the business model, though, since 99.9% of the machines that will be using the service will be using it from Windows.
-- Terry
I'd be strongly tempted to mod this +1, Funny except that:
-- MarkusQ
Th primary reason to dislike ads, particularly on a service which is almost guaranteed to operate with a user base of laptop users, is the amount of screen realestate the advertisements end up taking up.
There's a finite amount of usable space on a laptop screen relative to a desktop, anyway, and further reducing this puts it below the real estate point where a laptop was something that was able top push the person past their buy-point in the first place.
-- Terry
terminology shift?
when did "honeypot" cease to refer to an insecure machine left open in order to attract and hunt crackers? now people use it to mean any WNAP left open?? hrm. dubious.
La via sola al paradiso incommincia nel inferno
To make money, as everybody is telling you. And I think you could be. Some people would whine, but frankly, let them whine. It's free ISP. If you don't want it, don't connect.
For example, all for-pay wireless hubs are set up so unknown cards have all web traffic diverted to a signup page where people can pay. They agree to pay and they are put in the pool of people who can get out.
You could use this technique not to collect money (though you could collect money) but to do a very direct, quid-pro-quo advertising campaign. One they can't ignore, such as read a page about an advertiser, then answer a question about the advertiser, and you're on for an hour.
And yes, you have to limit the time because do it one-time and people with offices in the area might use you as a permanent ISP and use up all the bandwidth and spectrum.
Again, if people don't want it, they don't use it and that doesn't tie up any resources or cost anything.
An even better plan with more direct cash, and much easier to sell to merchants would be to have the page say, "Here is a list of local merchants that support this access. Go buy something from any of these merchants. When you buy, ask for a wireless access card."
You give the merchants the cards, which are like prepaid phone cards with an ID# good for an amount of access to your network. People buy a small item like a coffee and they get a card good for a few hours or an afternoon. Buy a big item and get a card good for a month or whatever.
You could sell these cards to merchants, or better to give them free and bill them for the ones that get used.
Or customers could just buy the cards from you directly, of course.
Has it been over a year since you last donated to the Electronic Frontier Foundation
Lets see.
:-)
A Linksys wireless gateway runs for about $120, on a one time expense. Lets amortize it to a year, since in a year we'll probably have some more popular wireless tech anyway. So that's $10/mo.
Speakeasy provides DSL to business locations at around $125/mo.
We're up to $135/mo.
Assume a 30 day month. That's $4.50 a day.
Will your business make an extra $4.50 a day from either new customers or old customers that stay longer? If so, put up a hub and a sign outside, and start beating the crap out of Starbucks.
Starbucks itself is an interesting case: They demanded this gigantic infrastructure to charge patrons, and now have to charge $30 a month to break even. If they hadn't built the infrastructure *to* charge $30/mo, they wouldn't *need* the infrastructure to charge $30/mo. Amusing.
Complex roaming systems aren't really so logical with data networks. It really is cheaper to provide internet access -- it's not just tariffs; fault tolerance and random latency saves engineering work and increases flexibility. The biggest gotcha for cafe wireless is people that turn the cafe into their office; even at a dollar an hour for coffee, I can't imagine a particularly social environment forming. But this is already a potential problem, and hasn't really hit too badly. If it does in some limited contexts, just kill the power plugs. Built in time limit
Incidentally, it is *not* economical to use telephone service in the US for "cheap modem access", since business phone lines are metered by the minute.
--Dan
Ummmm...
How are you going to get a banner ad in when I check my e-mail via a wireless handheld?
How about using the wireless link to stream a video/audio clip? What about P2P access?
You are making two big assumptions:
1. People are going to browse the web.
2. People are using a screen big enough to see an ad.
It would really piss me off if your banner ads wiped out 60% of my PDA real estate.
Local ads is a good idea that may work, but you're missing a lot of details.
Learning HOW to think is more important than learning WHAT to think.
The simple answer is a resounding no. You are asking me if I would accept the internet as a push media simply because you make it available by air. I expect, and will do what I can, to keep the air free. If we go down the advert path, it won't be long before the FCC revamps it's obsolete mandate with licenses and all that for "internet broadcasts" and the media becomes the same push shit we see on TV and hear on the radio where you and I are not welcome. I'd rather go down the free co-operative path that the internet was designed for.
DMCA, Hollings, Palladium. What might have sounded like paranoia is now common sense.
Since most of the locations in that area seems to be hang-out type places, you should present them with a real business opportunity, and opportunity lays in rewording your proposals:
... but most people, especially small business owners, are really keen on communities and opportunities, especially if they're cheap and come with "value added" features (the free image thing I mentioned earlier).
Instead of selling advertising space, get businesses to sponsor the site. Tell them the benefits of having a local wireless node (ie: people stay longer, and buy more things), the growth of the wireless market, the building of the community in the area, etc.
After you're done telling them what great stuff it will do for them, tell them how much work they have to do: zero. You take care of all the administration. They don't have to install, touch, or worry about anything -- they just have to pay a very low monthly fee.
Then tell them that they get a free promotional image that gets sent to users who are using the network. People love free stuff.
Some people will figure out that they don't actually have to pay for it to have access to it in their shops
Regardless of how you decide to approach it, remember that you're offering opportunities, not selling advertising space. It may be the same thing in the end, but the mind set and language is different, and that difference is usually what makes and breaks businesses.
Technology is the foundation. Presentation is the business.
How's this idea....
Simply require the user to start browsing at a web page, which of course lists "special deals" at local businesses. Make them click on at least one for more info. Then just let them surf for a while with no more interruptions.
Every time a new DHCP lease is assigned, make them go to this page and click an ad. Make the leases last maybe 2-4 hours.
I don't think that would annoy anyone too badly. The question is could you get enough interest from local businesses to fund the thing and feed yourself. Heck, if that would be profitable I might try to set something like that up here in Salem!
I think he was talking along the lines of the thing that alladvantage had a couple years ago where it was a program that ran at the bottom of the screen with banner ads. This would communicate with the server to block or allow web access.
However, to answer your question, it is possible to add code to web pages (ie for banner ads). The WWW requests are going through his gateway/proxy. It is possible to detect an HTTP stream and ad the banner ad code.
_______________________________
"I'm not Conceited...I'm just a realist..."
Would you use a honeypot (...) if you had to have a framed banner ad at the top of every page you visited while on the network?
By "framed banner", are you referring to frames in HTML? Because if so, it would take me about three minutes to whip up a JavaScript bookmarklet that I could stick in my toolbar to override/close those frames. And Mozilla provides an easy way to block ads (by refusing graphics files from sites other than the requested domain).
(Yes, I know that JS cannot be used to actually close an individual frame, but just grab the contents of the "good" frame and open a new window with just those contents, etc... pretty limitless what you can do.)
"First you gotta do the truffle shuffle."
Most every metropolitan business that included employees that carry laptops or have desktop computers which I have ever been - provided internet access to their employees already.
Now I'm not saying I'd expect you to be spanking to porn using your work connection, but personally, I don't want to see you spanking to porn wirelessly in the park or the local coffee shop either.
http://windows.scares.us
$5 / month hosted VPS on linux = awesome!
They tower over the genitals of lesser men.
Also they have wireless ethernet broadcasting devices built in.
I'm the yahoo, as in "You Always Have Other Options." Don't bother trying to make money as a toll taking troll. Someone like me will be happy to provide access at no cost and I'll fight for my right to do so. What you propose can only be accomplished by perverting the structure of the internet, which was designed to prevent people from doing what you would.
Clear?
DMCA, Hollings, Palladium. What might have sounded like paranoia is now common sense.