21st Century Opportunity, shake hands with 20th Century Thinking.

New York Post:  Wi-Fi-using freelancers persona non grata at growing number of NYC cafes.

At first glance it all makes sense.  Camping at a table in such an establishment without making frequent and continued purchases does cost the proprietor revenue.  No one can rationally argue that.

But is the knee-jerk solution really the best one?  I mean, you throw out one customer and you have to go out and pull in another from somewhere.  And in New York City in today's economy, what are the chances that your new customer will just be one more freelancer?  See how you could just be starting a vicious cycle-chasing your tail in a race to the bottom?

Why not, therefore, look at the problem in a new light?  Wi-Fi has done its job by drawing in the customer; now it's your job to provide the range of services that will make his or her patronage profitable for you.  Obviously, lattes and sandwiches aren't cutting it.  How about turning some of the other things you offer into sources of revenue from these users?  Power, perhaps?  In fact, this might-just might, mind you-be one circumstance where going play-for-pay could possibly be a good idea.  A nominal monthly charge for "business" customers, which would cover your costs for power and bandwidth in return for perhaps a quiet place for them to work and collaborate, in conjunction with an incentive program to encourage more purchases, could go a long way toward turning what you see as liabilities into assets.

Of course, you have to be the forward-looking and forward-thinking sort in order to see people with the drive and energy to work for themselves as potential partners in your success, and want to partner with them in the quest for theirs.

So, just how many NYC cafe operators fall into that category? 

We shall see.

Well, at least they got the category right...

BBC:  British Library's Wi-Fi blocks Shakespeare's Hamlet as "violent."

Which, of course, is not to say that it isn't.  Been a few years since high school (had to read it for senior English Lit) but I'd put its body count on a par with, say, a more contemporary offering like, say, the movie The Wild Bunch.

Come to think of it, the ol' Bard kind of had a thing for not sparing the stage blood, if you ask me.  Seems I now recall having to suffer through Julius Caesar as a sophomore, and the "Speak, hands, for me"/"Et tu, Brute?" sequence jumps out in my memory.

Anyway, that's enough reminiscing.  I'd held off commenting on Brit Prime Minister David Cameron's harebrained scheme to require Internet service providers over there to filter all their customers' connections unless they opt out, but this episode, as more than one commentator has pointed out, shows what some of the problems could be with that.  Let a filter vendor-or a government-decide what's appropriate, even for children, and you get these silly attempts at a one-size-fits-all solution and what inevitably results from them.  

We had our fling with that sort of nonsense Over Here with one of George W. Bush's pet projects, the "kids.us" domain.  Its ultimate failure was due to the arbitrary roadblocks erected by those given control over content decisions within the domain-barriers that eventually drove off even those few entities which ever even expressed an interest in hosting sites there.  Just as time and tide wait for no one, technology swamped Bush 43's cookie-cutter solution.  What content provider today would even seriously consider investing a dime in developing a site that had to be hosted entirely within one domain-and meet the whims of the domain administrators to ensure its continued existence? 

And it's disheartening that British ISPs, British media and most of all the British people seemingly aren't up in arms over what Cameron''s proposing.  Eventually, the Austrailians came to their senses and dumped plans for a similar scheme, so hope springs eternal. 

Funny, though, that when it comes to the question of whether a government-or an entitiy empowered to act on its behalf-has any business deciding what the people living under it should be able to read, hear or watch, it appears more and more that the word "conservative" doesn't mean what it used to.

Four dreaded words...

...seen yesterday afternoon at the Johnson County Library's Central location.

It really wasn't, of course-what was down was their Internet access, both wired and wireless.  The SSID was visible, but connecting to the network didn't take you anywhere.  Yours truly just made do with ye olde Bluetooth-tethered cell phone, which was (barely) sufficient for the search-engine access I mainly need to augment my research.  It was really creepy, however, to see the dozens of desktop workstations sitting idle.  They're usually just about all in use at that time of day on a Friday. 

A staffer I spoke with said no one had much of an idea as to why or how long; it had already been more than 24 hours and the best info she had was something about a "configuration problem."  And now that I think about it, I should have asked if it was a systemwide issue or just a problem there at Central, but didn't.

Interestingly, there's no mention of the problem anywhere I can find on the library's website.  An oversight, perhaps?

Anyone with more info is welcome to weigh in.

Ma Bell kicked to the curb! (?)

Los Angeles Times:  Starbucks to hook up with Google for Wi-Fi ten times as fast as AT&T's.

All 7,000 locations are supposed to be upgraded within the next year and a half, according to the story.

Hmmm...now where have we heard anything that sounded even remotely like that before? 

Well, just as with the Coming of Fiber, I'll believe the above actually happens when I see it.  And when-or if-either does happen, you'll read about it right here.