Find out where TV's 'white spaces' are, online

A new Web site at ShowMyWhiteSpace.com is aimed at giving consumers, businesses, and government agencies comprehensive information and interactive tools for using the wireless "white space" TV channels opened up to the public by the FCC last fall.

Launched today, the Web site already includes a tool for finding these open TV channels anywhere in the US. In a visit to the site, Betanews noted that you can search for the white spaces by either street address or x-y coordinates.

Running a couple of searches on ShowMyWhiteSpace.com this afternoon based on street addresses previously identified through Google, we discovered seven open TV channels at a major hotel in Las Vegas and two open TV channels at a large department store in New York City, for example.

The new site also explains how you can use these channels for applications such as home and enterprise networking and wireless multimedia distribution via Wi-Fi, 3G broadband, and municipal wireless networks, for instance.

The unused white spaces are slated to become publicly available on June 12, under rules set by the FCC.

Products that can take advantage of the new TV channels -- such as cordless phone/video systems and whole-house media distribution, remote control & monitoring products -- are expected to start shipping toward the end of this year.

The new Web site is sponsored by Spectrum Bridge, Inc., creator of SpecEx, an online marketplace for spectrum.