Archive for: May 2005
§ ¶Seattle Coffeehouses, Revisited
Funny how one Seattle coffeehouse’s decision to disable wifi on the weekend strikes nerves all over the place.
I don’t go to the Vic much, but I do get a lot of work done in cafes around Seattle, and I often choose cafes like Grateful Bread and Insomniax precisely because they have free wifi. (Not to mention the Delicious Monster story.) But, ultimately, this is a business decision for each coffeehouse to make. It sounds like the Vic has a completely open net, and part of their problem is people coming in to use wireless without buying anything. (Talk about rude!)
Personally, I think that Grateful Bread has a nice solution. You have to ask at the counter for a login, which is time-limited, although the staff usually gives you as much time as you want. This weeds out the freeloaders. Another effective strategy is free wifi, but no outlets — which pretty much guarantees a two-hour turnover. But both of these solutions require time and money to implement.
In Seattle, at least, I think wifi has been a great boon for independent coffeehouses. Since the major chains charge an arm and a leg for wifi service, offering free wifi has been a great way to attract a loyal clientele. The Vic’s wifi clearly got abused, and they’re cutting back, but what they’re offering is still better than the chains five days a week. Good for them.
§ ¶Podcasting Museum Guides
What a great use for podcasting: alternative museum audio guides! The Times has a story about a professor and students at Marymount Manhatten College creating a “remixed” MoMa (and check out the conveniently apropos ads).
Whether it’s subversive or not, it’s a wonderful idea to leverage the technology folks carry with them already. Why should you have to rent and carry an official museum audio player when you could download a podcast from the museum’s web site and listen to it on your own mp3 player and keep the audio to review later?
There’s an interesting project here for someone to create a web directory that collects place-based podcasts and uses GIS to help people find things related to specific cities or institutions.
§ ¶New Life For Old Computers?
Microsoft is apparantly working on a new version of Windows — not Longhorn — intended to replace Windows 95/98 and run on older machines. This is quite different from most OS advances, which usually demand faster hardware.
This makes a lot of sense for customers like schools that can’t afford to turn over hardware as quickly as Fortune 500 companies. But I’ve never been sure that it makes economic sense for software makers to target “trailing edge” technology. This could change things. If Microsoft introduces what amounts to a new platform, things could get interesting.
§ ¶Technology Counts 2005
EdWeek’s annual report on technology in education, Technology Counts 2005, was posted last week. The theme is “Electronic Transfer: Moving Technology Dollars in New Directions.” From the executive summary:
Like it or not, the financial landscape of educational technology is changing. Technology Counts 2005—the eighth edition of Education Week’s annual report on educational technology—tracks the economic and policy forces that are converging to push those changes, which are happening at the federal, state, and local levels.
(You may need to register with EdWeek to read the report. Registration is free.)
§ ¶Downloadable Graph Paper
Need a few sheets of graph paper in a hurry? Here’s a site with a variety of kinds of graph paper in PDF form.