Installing a city-wide WiFi network (aka municipal WiFi) from scratch is commercially not viable. New examples of this evidence pop up everywhere: Earthlink backing out of the San Francisco project, Chicago’s WiFi project canceled, etc. The top-down commercial solution with huge capital expenditures will never fly and the tax-payers are usually paying a high price for these failures.
On the other hand, you can find everywhere you go 4, 5 or more networks available around you. If people would share their network using Whisher, you’d get  “Free Municipal Wifi” without spending extra on infrastructure. Certainly a model worth trying.

A new cool Twitter feature for Whisher will be released in a couple of days. Every time you change your WiFi location and/or status, Whisher will automatically post an update to Twitter with the name and location where you are connected. For example, you get to the office, open your laptop, and Whisher goes online - since Whisher knows where you are, it will post an update to Twitter automatically.

Obviously you will have the option to disable this feature in your preferences. Isn’t this a great way to let everybody know where to find good WiFi connections, while letting them know what you are doing? We’d love to hear about other things you would like to see in these automated updates - this is just the beginning!

Our Beta Testers will be able to use this new feature as of today, and as soon as they give us the OK will pass it on to all of you.

We’ve made it! Whisher 2.0 is now available for download here, in our super cool new site. Right now Windows XP, Mac OS X and Linux versions are available…and hopefully Windows Vista by next Friday - Microsoft makes it very hard for developers on their shiny new OS.

What’s new? Well, a lot, which is the main reason why we haven’t had summer holidays this year…but it was worth it!

First of all the application is much more stable than previous versions. There are still minor issues to fix, and the occasional crash, but we are counting on the precious help of our active beta testers team to solve them. Secondly, we have pretty exciting new features, the most remarkable being:

• Guided process for easy and automatic WiFi sharing, WiFi tagging and connectivity to other hotspot networks.
• Integration of multiple instant messaging platforms: GoogleTalk, MSN Messenger, Yahoo Messenger, ICQ and AIM, all integrated in the same interface.
• Twitter: yes, you can also send and receive tweets directly on Whisher. We’re not completely sure, as there always seems to be some hidden lab somewhere working on pretty much anything, but this is probably the first cross platform Twitter application ever.
• Catch up with your friends: check your online address books and find out if your friends are already on Whisher, and optionally invite them if they are missing out on the fun.
• Better usability on the online coverage maps; have fun seeing how Whisher spreads all over the world. We bet you to find a country without Whisher presence.

On top of all this, geolocation of buddies, notification balloons, sounds, LAN support, faster file transfer…we’ve added so much that we encourage you to download the software and join us in the effort of creating The World’s Largest Free WiFi Network.

Said all this, we wish you a nice WiFi experience and very much look forward to your feedback.

The Whisher Team.