Today, the NYT covers the growth in wireless internet access hotspots, pointing out some websites used to collate and track hotspot locales. I missed wi-fihospotlist,com leading up to the DC trip but did find the cited jiwire.com – not that it helped much. Neither of these sites provide much in the way of ad-hoc hotspot listings of the type that I primarily saw on that Alexandria-to-Mt. Vernon wardrive I mentioned the other day.

So here’s the LazyWeb thing: 802.11b and 802.11g are reserved radio frequencies with a very well defined spectrum, right?

Shouldn’t a radio-sensing geographic surveillance satellite be able to develop a frequency-specific map of any given area such that a direct visualization of wi-fi coverage could be developed and presented with relative ease?

Furthermore, isn’t it possible that the data allready exists and just needs to be extracted from somewhere within NASA?

Finally, if the data exists currently, couldn’t a historical map could be developed and maintained such that over time one one could watch the coverage grow?

Inquiring minds want to know!

(As an aside, when did the Times start linking in the body of a story? I mean, about time and all, but I’m still surprised to see it.)