“Travelers passing through or delayed in over 50 airports across the country,” Skype’s Shadi Mahassel says, “will be able to access third-party hotspots using Skype WiFi and connect with loved ones via a Skype video or voice call for free.”

Here’s a look at the locations:

Included are airports in: Spokane, Portland, San Francisco, Sacramento, Monterey, Burbank, Scottsdale, Juneau, Billings, Jackson Hole, Denver, Aspen, Durango, El Paso, Austin, Houston, Oklahoma City, Omaha, Minneapolis-St. Paul, Des Moines, St. Louis, Memphis, Birmingham, Atlanta, Miami, Louisville, Indianapolis, Chicago, South Bend, Kalamazoo, Mosinee (Central Wisconsin Airport), Detroit, Milwaukee, Buffalo, Albany, New York, Boston, Washington D.C., Norfolk, Newport News, and more.

Mouseover the Skype logos to see all cities.

“The holidays are all about connecting with those you love,” says Mahassel. “Skype is excited to help you maintain these meaningful connections wherever you may be this holiday season. A voice or video call via Skype when you can’t be together for the holidays is the next best thing to being there.”

While you’re using your free Skype WiFi, Skype is asking users to tweet about their experience using the #freeskypewifi hashtag.

The free Wi-Fi is available in 47 airports, including Las Vegas, San Jose, Boston, Baltimore, Burbank, Houston Indianapolis, Seattle, Miami, Ft. Lauderdale, Orlando, St. Louis and Charlotte. As a result of this project, Burbank and Seattle airports will begin offering airport-wide free Wi-Fi indefinitely.

"We’re very happy to extend our Holiday Wi-Fi gift to the millions of people who will spend time in airports over the next few months," said Marissa Mayer, Vice President of Search Products and User Experience at Google.

"We know that this is a very hectic travel season for people, and we hope that free Wi-Fi will make both traveling and connecting with friends and family a little bit easier."

According to the Federal Aviation Administration, over 100 million people will pass through the participating airports between now and January 15, 2010. Travelers often have extra time on their hands after they pass through security for a variety of reasons, including bad weather.

A recent study by the Wi-Fi Alliance found 50 percent of business travelers take red-eye flights in order to be "reachable" during business hours, and the majority (82%) said that being connected via Wi-Fi would help solve that problem.

"Google gets this year’s Wi-Fi Santa award for sponsoring complimentary access in dozens of airports, both to the traveler’s and airport’s benefit," said Dave Hagan, president and CEO of Boingo Wireless.

"In addition to the obvious bonus holiday travelers will enjoy, sponsored access will increase overall Wi-Fi usage in the participating airports and help supplement the airport’s increasingly important non-airline incremental revenue."

In keeping with the spirit of the season, travelers who log on to networks of the participating airports will have the option to make a donation to Engineers Without Borders, the One Economy Corporation or the Climate Savers Computing Initiative. Google said it will match the donations made across all the networks up to $250,000, and the airport network that generates the highest amount per passenger by January 1 will receive $15,000 to donate to a local nonprofit of their choice.

In October, Google partnered with Virgin America to offer free in-flight WiFi to all passengers flying with the airline. Five of the airports participating in the program are also Virgin America destinations: Boston, Seattle, Las Vegas, San Diego and Virgin America’s newest destination launching November 18, Fort Lauderdale.

Related Articles:

>Google And Virgin America To Offer Free WiFi During The Holidays

>American Expands In-Flight Internet Service

>The American In-Flight Internet Revolution

The UW website states:

“Adeona is the first Open Source system for tracking the location of your lost or stolen laptop that does not rely on a proprietary, central service. This means that you can install Adeona on your laptop and go — there’s no need to rely on a single third party. What’s more, Adeona addresses a critical privacy goal different from existing commercial offerings. It is privacy-preserving. This means that no one besides the owner (or an agent of the owner’s choosing) can use Adeona to track a laptop. Unlike other systems, users of Adeona can rest assured that no one can abuse the system in order to track where they use their laptop. “

A very cool feature is using the iSight camera to take pics of the “user” after your laptop has been lost/stolen.  This feature is for Mac OS X, but Adeona is useful for laptops of all kinds.  The team is looking at Adeona for mobile devices.

Linux, OS X and XP/Vista are supported.

Btw kudos to: Ph.D. students Gabriel Maganis and Thomas Ristenpart, working with UW faculty members Tadayoshi Kohno and Arvind Krishnamurthy.

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