WiFi technology fits very nicely with social networking. With the boom of Web 2.0 companies like MySpace, Facebook, and LinkedIn the wifi world - the way you connect wirelessly to the Internet - can dramatically open up acess to your friends and family.

Imagine a world where you can share your wifi connections with friends, securely. In return, they share wifi connections with you, trusted networks of wireless access points which allow you to surf the net and network socially anytime, anywhere.

At WiFi.com we are working on bringing together your friends from social networking sites with your wireless Internet connections, perhaps like the one you have at home - or even the coffee shop up the street. Add your friends, allow them to access your recommended access points, and they return the favor. The beauty is no extra hardware is needed!

October 12, 2008.

WiFi is an established wireless Internet technology. It is established because there is a WiFi workgroup which certifies wifi hardware and sets the specifications for every new rendition of the technology. It is important to note WiFi was, and still is, meant for local area netowrking (LAN). To this end, it is not meant to connect you to the Internet at great distances. Most wifi hardware gives you a wireless connection between 100-500 feet (this is an average).

WiFi security, or the lack thereof, is a misnomer. WiFi has a number of security options to help you secure your wireless connection to the Internet. It is true if you do not secure the connection or use the basic security (WEP), the opportunity for nefarious activity may be higher. However, you must consider a wifi connection is a short-range technology and a potential breach by hackers can only be achieved by someone being within range of your wifi hardware. Regardless, if setting up your own wifi network you should consider using WPA or WPA2 for securing the network. In the very least use WEP for basic security and try not to be liberal about who you give the passcode to.

Here at WiFi.com, we are creating an environment in which you can secretly share your WEP passcode with friends on various social networks and your email contact lists. This is one of a number of features we are working on here at WiFi.com - check back often to learn more. Also, check out our support forum.

First off, thank you for visiting our site and please check back often for updates on our progress.

This may sound like a cliché, but we are working feverishly to get our initial offering out the door. For weeks we have had our nose to the grind stone; programmers programming, designers designing, writers writing, collaborators collaborating, and a whole bunch of really smart people acting smart. All of the effort is starting to show.

Very shortly we will be re-launching the WiFi.com website and introducing our private beta testers to our wifi client. The intention of the wifi client is to allow seamless sorting of wifi networks, along with adding your own wifi hotspots to share, the end state being a secure wireless Internet connection for all which is automatically selected based upon quality of signal and cost. “Free” being the optimal price here.

We are also working on some really innovative functionality, which we believe, will revolutionize the way people connect to the Internet. Although we are not willing to share everything we have in store for you, imagine yourself in a world with ubiquitous wifi, never having to worry about how to connect to the Internet wirelessly and knowing when you do connect your information will be secure. Free, secure, and easy…

This is the goal of WiFi.com.

The Wall Street Journal published a write up warning users to be careful when accessing WiFi from a hotel room.

The hotel room scenario is a particularly tempting one which many of us can probably relate to. After the trip you arrive at your hotel room and want to check your email. Open up the laptop and see that there are a few wireless network, first you may try the one that has the hotel name just to realize that they want you to pay 30$ to connect, so you move to the next best alternative that seems to be open and hopefully free. Indeed you got a break and the network is open! Unfortunately the guy running the network is next door and he is now sniffing all your traffic looking for something interesting to steal.

The article suggests a few alternatives to protect yourself, unfortunately some of such solutions are not practical (using your work VPN for personal stuff may not be allowed) or they require extra costs.

These are exactly the type of problems that have motivated us to start wifi.com. We want to make sure that you can get free wifi access. We want to make sure that your experience is secure.