devdev2060

Just an idea I'm sort of throwing out there, but I've had some experience with automated phone systems.One of the problems with the plethora of good wifi maps is that, well, you need wifi to get to the site. I'm sure there is some sort of useful WAP version of one of those sites that I could access via browser on my phone, but let's pretend for a moment that I am not wielding a massively awesome phone like the one in my pocket.Imagine calling a phone number, 1-800-GET-WIFI or something suitably ludicrous, and being asked to enter a zip code. Once it has your zip code, the computer on the other end searches its plentiful banks of data gleaned from T-Mobile's "Find a Hotspot", Verizon's version thereof, WifiMaps and every other site that provides clean or not-so-clean access to their data and says something like:"Found 17 matches for 95123, these are the first 9, to go to the next page, press pound, previous page press star, 0 will bring you to more options, pressing any other number will bring you to more information on the item."So it rattles off, "1, Barnes and Noble Cafe, Almaden Expressway. 2, Starbucks Coffee, Santa Teresa, 3..."I think, gee, I know where Barnes and Noble is, what are the details for that one? So I press 1."Barnes and Noble Cafe, 3123 Almaden Expressway. Access Type: Pay. Provider: SBC. Store Hours: 10 to 10 Monday through Saturday, 10 to 7 Sunday. Power Availability: Low."Provide it at a local number at first, then maybe an 800 if it takes off. Use caller ID to keep track of users, stop listing all the options if they've already called in a few times, let them select whether they would like to get results from a certain mile radius, or filter to only free wifi or only certain providers.Data would be edited more or less wiki-style on the associated website, with data pulled in from whatever services allow it to be taken. Allow number-based user settings on the site, accessible via a PIN entered on the phone, letting them select their filters or any other setting accessible via the phone. Yeah, caller ID based stuff isn't secure, but this isn't any kind of useful data to steal, just user settings.Taken to a further level, you could use SMS à la Google SMS to retrieve similar sets of results. Run with it guys, who wants to scrape the data? Anybody got some spare phone equipment?