During my recent two-week trip to Paris, I needed the Internet to work and communicate with my co-founders, and luckily everybody who I stayed with had Internet connections I could use.

But the idea of being able to travel and work cheaply is central to my emerging concept of employment, so I was interested to explore the wireless options in Paris.

I found something interesting- there is very little carelessly open wifi (pronounced "wee-fee" in French) to be found there. This is because the major Paris Internet players provide built-in wireless and configure it to be most advantageous to their bottom-line.

So in America, you get a Comcast cablebox and buy a $40 wifi router that starts out open, but in Paris, Wanadoo gives you a box and a 128-bit WEP key that whitelists only the first MAC address to connect to it.

The result is that if you sit down in Harvard Square, you can connect to three open connections, but try the same behind the Notre Dame (pictured), and you get a bunch of locked Wanadoo nets.

I did find one cafe where wifi was free for customers right at the Hotel De Ville (more specifically right here, close to this picture). There were also tantalizing "OzoneParis.net - free Internet" SSIDs, but it turns out it's only free if you have a rooftop they can use (but their short-term rates are better than Orange anyway).

Bottom-line, I think American metro areas are anecdotally better than Paris for traveling with a laptop and not paying for Internet. It might be a good place to get a community mesh network started (there's probably one somewhere).

Also, Vin Scully just mentioned "not-so-gay Pareee" in reference to their World Cup loss, with lots of growling "hguh" on the R sound. I love that guy.

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