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If it's free, it's for me. That's the way we in the CRN Test Center feel about WiFi hotspots, which let us send and receive calls and texts without using minutes and surf the Web free of data-plan restrictions. So today's app should be a no-brainer download for most people.
WiFi Finder from JiWire is available in the Play Android (Market) and Apple's App Store for iPhone and iPad. And like all good things, WiFi Finder is free.
This tool displays a map of the surrounding area with colored arrows indicating known WiFi hotspots which are free. Drilling into an arrow displays the venue address and phone number, WiFi signal strength, SSID name and so on. Users of the tool can submit additional site information; the company boasts more than 145,000 free locations across the globe.
WiFi Finder uses the device's GPS and cell network locations to triangulate the locations of access points in the immediate area. It supports filtering to narrow searches by geography or type, such as limiting to cafes and libraries. Favorite locations can be bookmarked. An update to the Android version in January added support for tablets and Honeycomb, and it now supports more than 550,000 free and paid locations in 144 countries. An offline mode allows hotspots to be downloaded in advance.
