Randomn3ss

All over the internet today and even my the front page of the business section of my local paper are articles about Starbucks ditching long-time internet supplier T-Mobile and joining with AT&T to offer free Wi-Fi.

Non-cardholding customers can pay $3.99 for two hours — which, of course, will incent customers to get the debit card. Monthly membership will cost $19.99 per month, and will enable access to AT&T’s 70,000 hot spots in 89 countries.

That quote came from an article titled, Starbucks announces free Wi-Fi. I’m sorry, maybe I’m missing something here, but $19.99 per month for two hours of internet allowance a day or $3.99 for two hours for those of us not in the cool club is not free. As a consumer, I feel that I was misled.

I really wish writers would stick to the facts. There is not a whole lot of difference to the wallet of those who sit in Starbucks and want access to the internet. The only thing changing is who provides it.

I’ve really started to dislike how most drinks from Starbucks taste, but I do like their atmosphere and on occasion have sat there with my laptop and written articles for Randomn3ss or edited photos. I’m lucky though, the Starbucks a few miles from my house is in small strip mall, two doors down is a Panera Bread that offers free Wi-Fi to all customers, just agree to their TOS and deal with them blocking a few sites.

A note to Starbucks:

I, your customers agree to order coffee in those stupid names you give cups instead of small, medium and large. I also agree to pay three and four times the amount for your brown, burned tasting water that you call espresso. I will not agree to pay your bloated price to gain access to the internet when your competition less than 50 feet from you gives it away. Take notes.

As scheduled, the Macbook I ordered last week showed up today, I’ve officially bought my way into the cool club. With a bit of glee, I opened the box at work and plugged in the shiny white plastic covered notebook that so many swore would make me smile and love mac. After a few minutes, the laptop was configured and on the Wi-Fi at work and the mass downloads started for all the updates. Good thing I could let this run while I was doing other work, there was nearly a gig of data that had to come down.

With all the updates done and my lunch coming up soon, I looked forward to configuring the system and installing software. First thing I did was install Firefox, this proved to be a bit more of a hassle than I was anticipating. One of my first computers was a Mac Classic II back around 1990, about 5 years ago I had a G3 iBook for a while but got rid of it and I use Macs on occasion at work, but I’m not nearly as proficient in using software as I am with Windows. So I go on to download the .dmg file onto my desktop and double click it. I’m shown a funny screen that is the familiar Firefox icon and the Applications folder, a plus symbol between them. I click on the Firefox logo and it launches Firefox, but it’s still not installed. Not after some poking around did I come to figure out that I needed to now drag the mounted image into the Application folder in Finder. Great, first thing I do on a Mac and I feel like an idiot, and I’m a network admin. Now that I feel dumb, I move onto some other quirky things about the Mac that are, well they are quirky for a Windows users.

Now I’m not saying one is better than the other, but there are some really funky things to get used to. For me, I’m very dependent on the CTRL key in Windows for several things, the Command key in Mac does nearly the same things but is in a different physical location on the keyboard. While my touch typing hands are very used to striking the CTRL key with my left pinky, I now must figure out how to efficiently strike the Command key with my left hand, curling my thumb in seems to give me the best results thus far.

There is a lot of shit installed, nearly 18 gigs of data were installed upon first boot. Only two pieces of trial software, those are now ditched, tons of stuff that I’m still trying to figure out what exactly it does and what I’m supposed to do to work it into my daily routine. A co-worker tells me that he can clean a lot of this out, mostly the foreign languages and printer driver crap that I’ll never use

Turn the bloody screen brightness down! Holy shit, this is really bright, I feel like I need suntan lotion on my eyeballs from looking at the screen. I have every intention of doing a color calibration on the screen when I have some free time at work, until then I have some minor tweaking done and the brightness turned down to about 40%.

On a positive note, there is lots I’m very happy with.

• The keyboard, although slightly off-center, is really a joy to type on
• The mag-charger is such a stupidly simple design, works so well
• Although bright, I’m very impressed with the resolution of the monitor
• Software installs are fairly quick, once I figured out how to do it
• I’ve only bogged down the system once, got to love Core-2 duo
• After installing the CS3 suite, I opened it all at once, it all opened!
• 1GB of RAM is actually very impressive
• The hinge. I’ve loved the hinge design since the original iBook, it makes so much sense
• Spell check built into everything by default
• Bluetooth works great with my cell phone, although I haven’t tried to sync with iCal
• Touchpad has right click! Granted it is not the traditional way of doing it, but it works. Two finger scrolling is also pretty dang nice

There are also a few things that I’m still scratching my temple about.

• Dashboard. Yes there are a lot of cool applications, not sure how often I’m likely to use it though
• TextEdit, the program I”m writing this in is nice, but I think I’m going to look into Open Office or another rich text editor
• It’s so white. I’m almost afraid that I’ll have to carry hand wipes with me just to keep it clean
• It’s so soft - the case that is. I’m very afraid that this thing is going to scratch, badly. My G3 did the first day I had it.
• Is a remote really needed? Yes, very cool and seems to work well, but I doubt it will get any use outside of showing non Mac users what it does.
• The Delete key really is a backspace key, there is no dedicated Delete key, which I often do use in the Windows world.

Overall, I have about 2 hours logged in actual time on this. I’m writing this article from my couch, in front of my TV with Bella, my dog, trying her best to snuggle on my lap under my arms between me and the Mac to sleep. Hopefully I can start to utilize some of the other features and functions that are in this laptop, I didn’t buy all this extra power just to surf the web. Until then, it will be sitting comfortably in the Crumpler Considerable Embarrassment messenger bag (full review coming soon) that I bought to transport it in.

Now that I have had my iPhone since it came out at the end of June it is time for my long awaited review.

I’ve had a plethora of cell phones and cell phone providers. Ranging from Verizon to Virgin Mobile to the Sidekick III to an old school LG phone. Hands down the iPhone is the best.

Of course there are cons to having the iPhone. For starters, I had to change my phone number again. If you know me, you will know this is about the 100th time I’ve changed my number. There are no games on the iPhone, no audio recorder (or video recorder) and you must use only the iPhone ringtones. Also, there is not a copy and paste feature on the iPhone’s internet (which my Sidekick had). Lastly, the alarm clock on the phone has failed to wake me up on more than one occasion.

I believe the price and service provider (not for George Hotz who hacked the iPhone to work with any cell phone provider) is a con to most people. In my opinion, it is well worth it. In the long run, I will be saving money month to month compared to being with T-Mobile. I got lucky because I joined a family plan rather than being on my own. Obviously not everyone has this option. These are the only few problems I have found with the phone, which are not that big of a deal to me.

The things I love about the iPhone are the camera, having tons of music without having to carry a separate MP3 player, amazing internet and its graphics. I throughly enjoy the fact that I can scroll through my music with my fingertips (same goes for my photos). The photos actually turn out pretty extraordinary on my laptop. I can also use my wireless internet on my iPhone whenever I am home. The most impressive thing of all is Google Maps on my phone. I am new to Seattle and often find myself in need of directions. I can also search for restaurants, grocery, music and clothing stores on Google Maps. I showed off Google Maps to my cousins by searching for their houses using satellite mode. They thought looking at an aerial view of their house on a phone was the coolest thing since Bratz.

I am stoked that the iPhone has been hacked recently. I will be trying out the hacks in order to load games and my own ringtones onto my phone. (I knew the hacks were going to happen someday so the drawbacks didn’t seem so bad.)

All in all, I don’t see how anybody wouldn’t love the iPhone. It is geared towards all ages for all different lifestyles.

Free city-wide Wi-Fi access points are becoming a reality in some major cities, in the next few years they should be the norm across the country. I’ve already listed places to find free Wi-Fi, but the effect of publicly available Wi-Fi has a second, perhaps more important use, public safety.

The Jordan Downs public housing complex in Los Angeles is now home to seven surveillance cameras connected by a Motorola MotoMesh network. The 700-units-in-103-buildings complex in the Watts residential district is notoriously high-crime, home to its own gang and a central point of both the 1965 and 1992 riots. The mesh/camera deployment was sponsored by the LAPD, the U.S. Department of Justice (DoJ) and the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD). Plans for this deployment were hatched by the LAPD more than a year ago.

The cameras — there will be 10 or more, eventually — have been in place for a while. Motorola says that, in conjunction with community efforts, the cameras have already had a “chilling effect on crime,” leading to a 32% decline.

Motorola donated the equipment and aided in the installation of all of the software training, which is great and it definitely has a positive impact on the community. My concern would be privacy, the though of having big brother watching does not go over well with me.

Source: Datamation

An update to the previous article on Free WiFi Internet Access points is a new site called hotspotr, a beta site utilizing Google Maps. Hotspotr has a few really nice features to it making it very user friendly.

• Easily see on a map where the location is
• Get directions in a flash
• Anyone can add a WiFi hot spot
• Rate the wireless availability
• Rate the ability to use it for work or socializing
• Rate the quality of food or beverages available at the location (a nice touch)
• The availability of outlets (an often overlooked but very needed feature)

I’ve added a few local spots in my area; I think the only thing that could be really helpful would be the ability to download them to my iPod or similar device. Because they are still in beta, it is not as complete as other sites, but it is most defiantly worth checking out.

Hotspotr.com
Previous article: Find a free WiFi internet access point near you

Sharing other peoples’ WiFi internet connections is nothing new. Most people with a laptop will happily logon to any available network they can when they are out and about, some will even utilize a neighbors WiFi connection instead of paying for their own internet service. While there are a good number of free WiFi connections springing up all over the country, they usually have some form of terms of service to use them. This is rarely enforced and even harder to prosecute, until now. A young man in a small Alaskan town may be facing a large fine and possibly jail time for using his library’s free internet connection.

A Palmer man has been waiting to see if he’ll be charged with criminal wrongdoing after a patrolling police officer seized the laptop he was using to play online video games in the parking lot.

If a business is going to put a public WiFi connection online, they should secure it. This is a unique case though, as libraries are usually financed by taxes, therefore making them a place where the general public can use and utilize their serves. Clearly this young man wasn’t trying to get any sort of higher education by using the internet connection to play games, but what if he was? Would that have made it ok?

Source United Press International.

Nearly every laptop these days has built in WiFi, but most people only use them at home, school or the office. Need to get out of the office for lunch or away from everyone for a while, perhaps going going on vacation yet still have a need to surf the web? Check out these directories of free WiFi access points, you’d be amazed how many local coffee bars, restaurants and hotel lobbies have free access.

• http://www.wififreespot.com/
• http://auscillate.com/wireless/austin/ (default is Austin but many other cities are listed in the drop down menu)
• http://anchorfree.com/
• http://www.gwifi.net/
• http://www.jiwire.com/search-hotspot-locations.htm

As always, make sure you do not have anything shared on your computer before accessing a public WiFi. Here is a great article explaining the risks of public WiFi and how you can make your computer more secure and safe.