I've considered standing outside on a hot day with a cooler of icecream sandwiches. At $1 each it's even more cost efficient, though people may not be as willing to stop and chat as they are in starbucks.
This is a good idea. The market is fairly small (people who are both tech savvy enough to understand what's going on and altruistic enough to want to participate), but that's ok.
I see very clear benefits over just putting your email address in your SSID. 1)Anonymity 2)Users may learn to trust the wifis.org brand. People can leave feedback about you on the site. I kind of see it as a couchsurfing for wifi.
That being said, I wouldn't bother trying to monetize. It can't cost him more than a few bucks a month to run this and unless he changes the product a bit (either provide higher value or larger market), I don't see monetization being particularly successful. Right now it is a great resume builder and a way to promote other projects that may be more lucrative (e.g. "Hey remember the guy from wifis.org, well now he's working on X"). If he's really worried about the hosting costs, he can put a donate button on the page.
cool. I will give it a shot. I use google video chat regularly. Also, if you can add a way to easily share my screen (or even screenshots), that would be amazing. I have been wanting a way to 'push' my screen to coworkers, even within the same office.
I've been doing HTML5 app development (via phonegap) on iPhone and Android for some time now, and I agree with a lot of what you said. You can make a really smooth, native feeling app using HTML5, but there are lots of things that don't work well. On iphone, there are lots of problems with fixed positioned elements, and on Android there are issues with translate3d. Both platforms have problems with "tap" events. These are all things that are important if you want a "native feel" in your app. However, there are workarounds.
I also agree that needing 3 front-end teams for app development just doesn't make any sense, especially for a small company. Since you can get near native performance with HTML5, it seems well worth the compromises.
FYI, my app doesn't use any mobile js frameworks, just Backbone.js (and phonegap).
What are the client-side performance implications? I am worried about running this on mobile clients (mobile web or within phonegap). Three things in particular:
1. Running complex DB queries on the client
2. The in-memory database cache described in the documentation using a lot of memory
3. Having little control over how often the client hits the server and vice versa.
Sweet video! The best part of the evening was when someone repeatedly text their name until the recent entry times read "4, 20".
I think you could do more with the SMS reply, like have it send a random puzzle and award points for a solution (may have to be careful not to repeatedly unlock the door), send a horoscope based on a user profile, etc.