This is a very cool idea that I'd love to see implemented.

I worked as part of a team to create a (hypothetical) municipal wireless system for New York. In any city with a muni wireless (Philadelphia, San Francisco, London, and others), emergency and other government messages (traffic info, school closings, etc.) could be broadcast over such a network. Even real-time driving directions. For example, in the frame, you add information such as target address, and since the AP knows (approximately) where you are, it can direct you to, at the very least, the next AP.

Streaming music would also be very nice to have. The many free streaming radio stations on the internet would applaud you.

I think that wifi is the perfect platform for this because of its high bitrate, lowering price, and open standard. I programmed my router to run an rc car server. It's mounted on a modified RC car so you can drive it around. A platform like this could... umm... i dunno.. do something very interesting, at the least. A network of open wifis would guarantee control over long distances.

I really would like to see this implemented. A start would be to create an ipkg for OpenWrt ( www.openwrt.org ) so that owners of Linksys and many other routers can begin to implement this. Client software for laptops, PDAs, and Wifi-enabled smart phones would be the next step. The hardware already exists; let's get to implementing it!

With OpenWrt and PDA and laptop readers, this can be implementented, well, now!

- Yasha

P.S. For more on my wificar, see: http://yasha.okshtein.net/wrt54g/ . My email is there, too.