At this moment, I’m in a taxi cab struggling through traffic to make it to an early afternoon meeting. I thought of firing up my laptop to double-check my presentation, which was due today. Every now and then, Windows XP detects WiFi hotspots here and there through the city. Some seemed open and un-protected public hotspots, while some were locked.

Too bad, though, since I couldn’t hold on to a signal long enough to do some decent browsing. So here I am, drafting a blog post I shall publish as soon as I get a few minutes of online time (oops, there goes the last good connection).

This makes me hope that all those plans for city- and municipal-wide WiFi hotspots would materialize. While being able to surf at malls and cafés is cool, I’d like to be able to have a connection from anywhere—this is particularly useful for those with handheld WiFi-enabled gadgets like PDAs and gaming consoles, and especially for those with VoWiFi phones.

It seems to me, however, that such an infrastructure is still too far away in the future. Maybe for now, I can do with existing technologies like Verizon’s EVDO, or maybe even connect through my mobile phone via GPRS. But still, that’s not as seamless as being able to connect through the same wireless network infrastructure at home, at the office, and when outside. And it’s certainly not as inexpensive (free WiFi, anyone?).