A potential new solution to our highspeed access woes? In my morning emails, an sbp membership request from richg, and with it, a very interesting url to a very interesting pledge:

GBT provides and services high speed Internet using unlicensed frequencies. We provide internet and data connections ranging from 1mbps to 90mbps (depending on your area).

Our internet solutions are primarily based on wireless connections, making for a more affordable and reliable connection that that of cable or telephone (DSL).
[ via Grey Bruce Telecom Inc ]

Whoa ... say that again? A whole meg of bandwidth that's deliverable to the bandwidth-starved outback out behind D-Line? A top-end product boasting ninety megabits streaming broadband? For real? Today?

For cottage managers and motel, campground or cafe operators planning to offer local area wireless Internet (WiFi), getting in the game just got a lot easier. All you need now is an old Pentium, a low-cost wireless router, and the ZoneCD:

ZoneCD is a bootable CD with software pre-configured to create a WiFi gateway. The CD is a mini operating system with automatic hardware detection, and includes support for WiFi end-user authentication and web content filtering.
[ via PUBLICip ]

If anyone is interested, I have a supply of ZoneCD available; just leave me a note through the SBP. ZoneCD is Linux, but you don't have to know anything about Linux to use the ZoneCD. You just place the CD in your CD-ROM, and turn it on -- couldn't be simpler.

And best of all, each ZoneCD station is set to co-operate with other nearby ZoneCD sites, so there's no confusion, and offers us a technology to provide wide-scale wireless coverage, one location at a time. Now how cool is that!?

There's little doubt that Internet is changing the face of cottage country tourism, and I applaud all these brave new and totally welcoming public Internet services like the free desktop at Two Chicks and Owen Sound's new GingerPress Café WiFi, I'm also realist enough to know that these things cost money to run -- to do this right, to make it work, there has to be a solid and workable business plan, but could it work?

Some time ago I wrote here alluding to a plug-and-play subscription solution that only needed a few hours with a screwdriver to be up and running as a full-fledged hotspot. The good news is that it's here, now, today, shrinkwrapped, ready to roll and on the air for only a few C-notes ...

The bad news is I've done the math for you and bottom-line, in many cases, running our own WiFi hotspot may still be just marginally a little rich for our village blood.

Ok, now the family can spend the entire day joyously fashion hunting and window shopping in Owen Sound and they can just drop me off downtown because now I have a place to set up camp where I'll be as happy as a pig in a poke for a few hours --- just posted today as a comment on an old article of mine about War-driving Owen Sound, we get word from The Ginger Press

I recently added a wireless router to my mom's cafe, The Ginger Press bookstore in Owen Sound! It's open and ready visitors. The cafe serves lunch during the week and brunch on Saturday. The Internet connection is only available during store hours.

Good to see someone doing their share to make the Owen Sound core into a relevent space again. It's also proof that you don't need to be in Accommodations to become a viable hotspot ... and, if I'm not mistaken, Ginger Press serves up a pretty decent lunch too, with a well primed espresso machine to boot.

oh, they sell books too ... really good books, relevent books, even a few by our local authors.

One of the questions I get asked over and over every summer is "Where can I get Internet access?" -- the good news is that there are answers, the better news is that there may soon be lots of answers.

Back in '95, my friend Gene would drive out from his cottage to our house several times a week; he'd become enthralled with some internet contest and to participate, he had to check his email regularly. Hard as it is to believe, in 1995, 'regularly' meant only a few times a week; back in those innocent days, our house was about the only place in Sauble where you could get Internet.

Today, your primary answer is the Sauble Beach branch of the Bruce County Libraries ... when it is open access is only 56k dial-up on quaint old machines, but it's there, it's affordable; it's access and nothing to sneeze at. Whatever works. Similar access can also be found at the new digs of the Wiarton Branch. Readers of my personal blog will know of a few unofficial hotspots in the village and I'll bet there may be a few added since then; I have also mapped a few more over in Owen Sound, although, if you've come here expecting toll WiFi I'm afraid you're still out of luck.

But maybe soon, and maybe sooner than you think.

Just in case you thought that free software was something only useful to big business and computer hacks, FreshMeat announces an upgrade to a full restaurant system distributed under the GNU General Public License ..

Waiters can choose a restaurant table, assign orders to it and have them automatically printed on printers. "Normal" dishes can also be modified, by adding or removing ingredients. Bills can be printed automatically, even for separated bills. The accounting section allows a restaurant manager to easily administrate the whole accounting (bank accounts, employees, suppliers, income) in an easy way. Stock management is also available, and items quantity is automatically updated.

And it runs on handhelds? Sweet -- given a $80 WiFi card in the kitchen basestation hub and a fleet of little wireless Linux handhelds, the wait staff might trim several kilometers on their daily treks back and forth leaving more time for chalking up orders, and that's got to be worth something on a typical Sauble Beach long weekend.

[ Source: freshmeat.net: Project details for My Handy Restaurant ]