"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!