Are simple wireless uses common anywhere?

Playing around with a spare wireless router (WRT54GS) I have, hooked it up
to a stand-alone PC to do nothing except spit out MP3's, and started
thinking: why isn't this more common?

What I mean is, using wireless as simple stand-alone information-spitting
"boxes". No internet and no local network except for connecting users.
The boxes would do absolutetly nothing except spit out information on
demand. They would be read-only.

Places where this would make sense:

- Movie theaters: spitting out show times.
- Airports: spitting out flight/gate info BS
- Retail stores: spitting out "flyers" of current sales

Etc, etc. You can think of a million other places where it would also make
sense.

Perhaps there are places in your area that take this very simple approach,
but I've never seen anything around here do this. It would take practically
no overhead at all for them.

It used to be that it wouldn't be too practical since not that many people
carry around PDA's, but many people have Smartphones now...

Eric wrote:
> Playing around with a spare wireless router (WRT54GS) I have, hooked it up
> to a stand-alone PC to do nothing except spit out MP3's, and started
> thinking: why isn't this more common?
>
> What I mean is, using wireless as simple stand-alone information-spitting
> "boxes". No internet and no local network except for connecting users.
> The boxes would do absolutetly nothing except spit out information on
> demand. They would be read-only.
>
> Places where this would make sense:
>
> - Movie theaters: spitting out show times.
> - Airports: spitting out flight/gate info BS
> - Retail stores: spitting out "flyers" of current sales
>
> Etc, etc. You can think of a million other places where it would also make
> sense.
>
> Perhaps there are places in your area that take this very simple approach,
> but I've never seen anything around here do this. It would take practically
> no overhead at all for them.
>
> It used to be that it wouldn't be too practical since not that many people
> carry around PDA's, but many people have Smartphones now...
>
>
>

Come on man settle down, you got to know that the whole world is not
going to jump on the wireless bandwagon. Wireless is good and
wireless is grate but wireless is not all of that.

Duane

"Eric" <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote:
>- Movie theaters: spitting out show times.
>- Airports: spitting out flight/gate info BS
>- Retail stores: spitting out "flyers" of current sales

Understand that it's not a question of broadcasting a useful piece of
information, it's a question of you client's ability to make use of
what you have available.

In the scenarios above, I'd set up a WiFi access point, a minimal
WWWebserver(*), and provide WWWeb browsing capabilities for the
clients. Everyone who could see your AP would have a browser...

(*) Some of the WWWeb servers I've seen could probably fit inside the
AP.

William P.N. Smith wrote:

> "Eric" <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote:
>>- Movie theaters: spitting out show times.
>>- Airports: spitting out flight/gate info BS
>>- Retail stores: spitting out "flyers" of current sales
>
> Understand that it's not a question of broadcasting a useful piece of
> information, it's a question of you client's ability to make use of
> what you have available.
>
> In the scenarios above, I'd set up a WiFi access point, a minimal
> WWWebserver(*), and provide WWWeb browsing capabilities for the
> clients. Everyone who could see your AP would have a browser...
>
> (*) Some of the WWWeb servers I've seen could probably fit inside the
> AP.

Certainly - your average router runs a web server just for
self-configuration.
--
derek

"Eric" <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote:

>Playing around with a spare wireless router (WRT54GS) I have, hooked it up
>to a stand-alone PC to do nothing except spit out MP3's, and started
>thinking: why isn't this more common?

Are you saying the PC is NOT connected to the Net but
only broadcasting what the PC has on it?

In article <Jg7Nf.183195$(E-Mail Removed)>, "Eric" <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote:
>Playing around with a spare wireless router (WRT54GS) I have, hooked it up
>to a stand-alone PC to do nothing except spit out MP3's, and started
>thinking: why isn't this more common?
>
>What I mean is, using wireless as simple stand-alone information-spitting
>"boxes". No internet and no local network except for connecting users.
>The boxes would do absolutetly nothing except spit out information on
>demand. They would be read-only.
>
>Places where this would make sense:
>
>- Movie theaters: spitting out show times.
>- Airports: spitting out flight/gate info BS
>- Retail stores: spitting out "flyers" of current sales
>
>Etc, etc. You can think of a million other places where it would also make
>sense.
>
>Perhaps there are places in your area that take this very simple approach,
>but I've never seen anything around here do this. It would take practically
>no overhead at all for them.
>
>It used to be that it wouldn't be too practical since not that many people
>carry around PDA's, but many people have Smartphones now...

The reach is too small. By the time I'm close enough to the movie theater
to use one example, I can just jump out of the car walk accross the parking
lot and purchase my tickets (and of course read play times over the box
office <grin>

fundamentalism, fundamentally wrong.

In article <(E-Mail Removed)>, William P.N. Smith <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote:
>"Eric" <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote:
>>- Movie theaters: spitting out show times.
>>- Airports: spitting out flight/gate info BS
>>- Retail stores: spitting out "flyers" of current sales
>
>Understand that it's not a question of broadcasting a useful piece of
>information, it's a question of you client's ability to make use of
>what you have available.
>
>In the scenarios above, I'd set up a WiFi access point, a minimal
>WWWebserver(*), and provide WWWeb browsing capabilities for the
>clients. Everyone who could see your AP would have a browser...
>
>(*) Some of the WWWeb servers I've seen could probably fit inside the
>AP.

They do, how do you think the web interface of a WRT54G works <grin>

fundamentalism, fundamentally wrong.

"William P.N. Smith" wrote in message ...
> "Eric" <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote:
> >- Movie theaters: spitting out show times.
> >- Airports: spitting out flight/gate info BS
> >- Retail stores: spitting out "flyers" of current sales
>
> Understand that it's not a question of broadcasting a useful piece of
> information, it's a question of you client's ability to make use of
> what you have available.
>
> In the scenarios above, I'd set up a WiFi access point, a minimal
> WWWebserver(*), and provide WWWeb browsing capabilities for the
> clients. Everyone who could see your AP would have a browser...

Exactly. Its simply mininum of technology for efficiency. An httpd was
also how I envisioned the above examples. You connect and your first http
request gets redirected to a local page. No magic there.

Yeah, I had "ready-made boxes" in the back of my head that would have an
embedded httpd, but where the information comes from is trivial -- whether
its embedded or a just a local PC. Hell, even an old 486 running Apache
will spit out text and light graphics faithfully.

I can think of many examples where I've would have benefited from being able
to grab local information without having to deal with annoyance of going
through the internet. Read-only is starting point, you could even get a
little more complex. I..e., with the above examples (and these are just
examples):

Retail store: Spits out sales info BS, but you could also look up a specific
product by description or ID, and get a price check, location in the store
(isle), and even available quantity at that store. No need to hunt down a
clerk or one of those U-scan terminals.

Movie theater: Spits out show times, but also closed-captioning. Make some
lightweight glasses with HUD's in them for CC, that the theaters would
provide, and you've now opened the theater for the deaf.