Well, as pointed out previously it may not be necessary to authenticate. If you believe you'll be passing through a high WiFi density area, and that chances are decent at least one or two of the hotspots do not require authentication, then have the app toss off a bunch of the emails and try again at the next spot. The emails should make it through somewhere (particularly in places like NYC, were there must be a dozen or more public hotspots within a block or two of where I work). Of course, if authentication happens to be achieved, then I guess have the app delete those emails it got through. Which leads to the possibility of perhaps attempting both strategies simultaneously, but on different frequency bands. -TD

From: Bill Stewart <bill.stewart@pobox.com> To: cypherpunks@al-qaeda.net Subject: Re: WiFi Launcher? Date: Fri, 25 Mar 2005 14:21:09 -0800

...

Thus spake Tyler Durden (camera_lumina@hotmail.com) [25/03/05 10:30]: : Has anyone heard of a utility that can search for a WiFi hotspot while : driving and then launch an email?

It's a harder problem than you'd expect - Wifi doesn't have a long range, so you have to detect the hotspot, decide if you can handle or evade its authentication, do that, and then send your message before you've driven out of range.

If you're in range for 100 meters at a 18kph city crawl (or bike) that's about 5 meters/sec so you've got 20 seconds, and it can work. If you're driving 90kph and catch 10 meters of the edge of a range, you've got 0.4 seconds to do the job, which is pretty dodgy - lots of mail servers take a few seconds to really sync up, especially if you've got to do a DNS lookup or two.

Directional Antennas are unlikely to be useful - if you've got them aimed right, you might win, but you're much more likely to miss entirely or have only a few meters that you're in range.