A Tool to Wake Up Wi-Fi Zombies
Sean Savage wants to hook you up by tearing you away from the internet.
The one-time promoter of flash mobs is once again waging battle against digital alienation with a new tool aimed at getting Wi-Fi cafe "zombies" to look up and smell the coffee. The problem: Computers are fabulous at connecting people over a long distance, but they can become a wall between people who are sitting right next to each other. At the O'Reilly Where 2.0 conference in San Francisco last week, Savage announced his latest project, PlaceSite, which combines online social networking with real-life networking in Wi-Fi cafes by providing computer users with a website unique to a particular Wi-Fi cafe.
"We thought about what if you could use technology to reduce the zombie effect or to promote (people) to be more conscious and less alienated from their neighbors," Savage said.
Wi-Fi users in a certain cafe would encounter a login window when they first sign on, which would prompt them to enter a Friendster-like profile that would let other cafe dwellers know when they were in that cafe.
