"And I heard him exclaim, ere he drove out of sight..."

"...lose the heavy legal verbiage and you'll have it just right!"

Borders Books
12055 Metcalf, Overland Park

802.11g
SSID:  BORDERS

Well, it didn't take long for Borders to jump in whole hog after Barnes and Noble dipped a toe into the free-and-open waters last summer with their two-hours-at-a-pop offer.  Borders has beaten that hands down, however.  Click through their landing page to acknowledge their "terms and conditions"-conveniently available on another page via a link if you really want to read through them all-and after a brief detour to an "are you sure you don't want to buy something while you're here?" page-you're off, at least for as long as you have battery power for unless you're sitting in the cafe against the south wall.  No time limit here, save for that.  Quite a difference indeed, from what I recalled in a post last year to have been my most recent visit here during 2003's "One Unwired Day" promotion, when this was a T-Mobile play-for-pay location.

I am amused somewhat, however, at why growing numbers of hotspot operators-or perhaps the vendors who power them (Verizon in this case)-feel they need to craft written acceptable use policies that are so jargonized and long-winded that they could serve as fodder for perhaps a couple of "Perry Mason" episodes (and I know I'm showing my age there).  Everyone knows no one bothers reading them, and any business who except in an obvious case of egregious wrongdoing on a customer's part actually attempted to enforce any of their more onerous terms would find such a move about as popular with the public as the Grinch is this time of year.

Here's a New Year's resolution I'd like to propose to all free hotspot operators:  Get out from in between your customers and what they're after.  If you feel you absolutely have to steer them to a clickthrough page, do them a favor and put a simple, short, common sense AUP written in plain English right on that page, and present your pitch for an impulse buy there as well.  You just might be surprised at how far a little goodwill like this could go.

And with that, season's greetings to all, and to all a good night!

Yes, Virginia, there IS a Santa Claus.

And according to the Wall Street Journal, as reported by Glenn Fleishman at Wi-Fi Networking News, he's dropped an early gift from his pack-free Wi-Fi at all unwired McDonald's restaurant locations in the U. S. beginning the middle of next month.

Make no mistake-this is BIG.  Not only will this pretty much force all of McDonald's competitors to quickly reciprocate (dollars to doughnuts says the Burger King at 47th and Troost which apparently wasn't lit up when I visited a couple of days ago will be before spring), but these new free hotspots will in many cases be the only ones in their neighborhoods save for the few nearby public library branches.

One supposes it finally dawned on McDonald's management that having all those silly play-for-pay routers sitting unused in all those restaurants wasn't doing much to drive traffic into the doors.  And I don't think it will be much longer before Ma Bell reluctantly comes to the realization that what remains of their large scale fee-based network is now pretty much of an anachronism, and finally consigns it to the ash heap of history. 

Am I being old-fashioned, or just lazy?

As I mentioned, I was caught with my laptop down yesterday evening upon discovering the unwired Burger King.  I did, however, valiantly try to rise to the occasion by substituting my Wi-Fi-enabled Palm TX, but after reaching Blogger's login page I quickly decided to wait until I was home and had a laptop-sized keyboard to play with rather than the PDA's infinitesimal hunt-and-peck-with-the-stylus onscreen version.

I'm convinced that with the possible exception of some of the bigger smartphones with physical "thumbboards," handheld devices are fine for reading online content once you've managed to navigate to its location (which I do on the TX by hitting bookmarks I've tapped into it in advance; although I do have an external keyboard for it, it's not pocketable enough to carry around).  On the other hand, if you're intending to do real work, you need keys under your fingers big enough to do the job.

And as you might expect, I don't text despite having a phone capable of it (the mere thought of trying makes my fingers ache), preferring to let my voice do the walking.  I'd rather lug a laptop than pocket a PDA if I'm going somewhere online to do something rather than just look at something, which for me is pretty much all the time.  

So, what does everyone think?  Am I simply a sore-shouldered Luddite stubbornly resisting the advance of history, or do any of the rest of you still blog, tweet, and e-mail only on keyboards wide enough for both hands at once?     

Finally found one.

Burger King

9945 East Highway 350, Raytown

802.11g

SSID:  BKHotSpot

Burger Kings all over the country have shown up in free Wi-Fi directories for years, but this is the first local restaurant I can confirm is unwired.  I'd have posted this from there, but I only had a PDA with me (more on that to follow) and I'd ordered to go, so I only had time to do a cursory inspection.  Charge your battery first if you plan to sit a while; the only power outlets I saw in the whole place were a pair under the seats against the front wall that I don't think would be reachable without physically getting onto the floor.  

Someone there also mentioned that it was their understanding that all local BKs were also lit up.  If anyone can verify this, your input would be appreciated.

Someone PLEASE tell me...

...that I'm not seeing what I think I'm seeing on wififreespot's Missouri page.  Tell me that if you go there and search for the phrase "funeral home" you won't find a pair of locations in the St. Louis area.  

I can understand streaming a memorial service online for the benefit of friends and associates who can't attend in person in this day and age, but this goes way beyond that in terms of being appropriate in my view.  Seriously, if you didn't care for the deceased enough to keep your PDA in your pocket or your laptop sheathed for an hour and a half or so in his or her memory, why wouldn't you just stay home?

This is the sort of thing I'd have expected to see emerge a few years back, during Wi-Fi's "irrational exuberance" period, and then fade away upon reconsideration.  Perhaps it still will-as it should.