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MetroFreeFi, an online database of free wi-fi hotspots in the U.S. and the creators of wiPod, will expand world-wide in the next few weeks. When it started a year and a half ago, it covered only the Bay Area. Its name back then was BayAreaFreeFi.com. It then included the entire state of California, then it went nationwide, hence the name change.

I personally added to their list most of the free hotspots in the Tri-City area (Fremont, Union City and Newark), and a couple in the South Bay. Yeah, that was the time no one could stand in the way of my warchalking path! Hehe.

The latest hotspot I contributed is the Fremont Main Library. This is a long-time coming. Although they’ve had internet stations for a while now, wireless internet only came into effect at the beginning of the year. One only needs a library card to get on the network.

The Fremont library is the near-perfect place to do work and study. It’s huge. It’s quiet. It’s got plenty of tables and study rooms. Oh yeah, and tons of, um, reading material. The downside: no food and drink allowed. Oh well, at least I won’t be racked with guilt anymore and spend at cafes in order to use their free internet.

Whew, four posts in a row. While my wife was out doing some last-minute Christmas shopping, I was home doing some last-minute blogging. I have a few more things to write about but it’ll have to wait until the weekend’s festivities are over.

We’ll be zig-zagging across the Bay Area the next couple of days. Tomorrow Later, we’ll be at my sister’s place in Hayward, then we’ll be back in Fremont to celebrate the rest of Christmas Eve at my wife’s brother’s house. On Christmas Day, we will attend church service in Union City, then stop over at the pastor’s place in San Leandro, then head on out to Vallejo for the “extended family” get-together.

Have a Merry Christmas y’all!

Last January, I posted an entry from a parked bus. Internet access came from a hotspot outside the bus. Well, according to this, buses in our area will soon get wi-fi access from within. The East Bay transit agency wants “professionals, those with laptops, traveling through the Bay to have better use of their time, rather than looking at traffic.” Pretty cool, eh? One other thing they should provide, however, is a good supply of Dramamine in each of the buses’ first-aid kits.

I almost forgot about the photos I took last September of our local mission, Mission San José de Guadalupe, until I read Phisch’s entry on the mission in her area. Like Phisch, I was unwilling to pay the $5 entrance fee to check out the mission so the images here are of its exterior surroundings.

The plaque on the side of the church has this to say:

At the Ohlone Indian village of Oroysom, Padre Fermín Francisco de Lasuén founded this fourteenth of twenty-one Franciscan missions June 11, 1797. Taught by Padre Narcisco Durán, the Ohlone orchestra and choir became famous. By 1830 almost 2,000 Indians were living at the mission. The mission was secularized in 1836 and its lands divided into ranchos. The 1868 earthquake destroyed the adobe church and most other mission buildings. The church was rebuilt in 1985.

Friendster’s a hit in Manila, according to this Wired article. It “first gained traction with the large Filipino community in the San Francisco Bay Area, then spread across the Pacific.” Although part of this community, I have for years not succumbed to signing up at the social-networking site. I share the same sentiment as this quote in the article: “(w)hen you put up a website, your audience is the world.” With my website, I’m a Google search away from anyone who wants to find me (and a few old friends have). I imagine, however, that I’d greatly benefit from Pusit, Friendster’s Filipino answer to Craigslist, if I still lived in Manila.

(via philweavers)