Wednesday, January 9, 2008
Food & Life Log on and eat up
Posted by Cliff Bostock @cliffbostock on Wed, Jan 9, 2008 at 2:04 PM
In his "Diner's Journal" blog in the New York Times, Frank Bruni recently wrote about restaurants that make free wireless Internet connections, aka Wi-Fi, available to diners. (Read it here.)
While coffee shops have been providing Wi-Fi for some time, restaurants have been slower to do so for obvious reasons. Mainly, there's the simple matter of restaurant etiquette. Diners are more apt to "camp" at a table with their laptops. And then there's the broader social concern of turning restaurants into study halls, reducing personal interaction and distracting others with the eerie glow of screens and that peculiar sight of people alone, behaving like unmedicated schizophrenics while they laugh, frown and weep while "chatting" online.
But it's also true that more and more people are using hand-held devices to check their e-mail and browse the Internet. It's hard to argue that you should ban such devices if you allow diners to spoil one another's meals by yakking on cellphones at their tables. Really, I would like to shoot such people in the head with a high-powered water gun.
I have noted more and more restaurants in our own city offering Wi-Fi. The Globe actually has a library where you can hang with your laptop, segregated from the main dining room. Other restaurants, mainly casual ones, that have free wireless are Einstein's, Carroll Street Cafe, Dark Horse Tavern, Dakota Blue ... the list is long. You know wireless has caught on when it's featured at Krystal, which claims to be the nation's biggest restaurant provider of free wireless now. You can find a comprehensive list of all local wireless spots at WiFi411.com.
Of course, not all Wi-Fi locations are free. But wireless has become so common that you might pick up a neighboring free service even at a location whose own service charges. That's the case at the Ansley Starbucks, where I'm a regular. Hell, I wrote much of my doctoral dissertation there.
There, the official service is relatively pricey T-Mobile, but most people can also pick up the free service across the mall courtyard at Smoothie King. For some reason, though, it clicks off regularly. Frequently, the regulars elect someone to go ask the Smoothie King folks to purty-please reboot.
I also frequently detect signals from Crimpers, far across the street, and a mysterious one called "Homo-Jim." My own laptop can't seem to sort the signals out. I subscribe to T-Mobile, but I lose the signal just as often as I lose the Smoothie King one. Supposedly this relates to my Mac G-4's lousy antenna, but it happens to many people on other brands and models, too — and only since Smoothie King moved in. Is there such a thing as competing signals? Getting any help from T-Mobile about it has been the usual battle with customer disservice.
Oh well, it's not the only way I get my signals crossed.
What I want to see is laptops on the tiny restaurant tables in Paris, where you eat knee-to-knee with strangers. (Nothing like involuntary frottage while you feed your face.) Now that smoking is illegal in restaurants there, the French need a new dining-time addiction. Let them tap keyboards.
(Krystal image from Phil Yanov's very entertaining techno-nerd blog. Starbucks image from denver.metblogs.com. French laptop from mitre.org.)
Comments (3)
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Not sure, but I think the "crossed signals" may partly be that both access points are broadcasting on the same channel, probably a default channel. you could try asking one or the other to go 2 channels up or down.
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Wi-Fi is one of the banes of my existence. There's nothing I hate more than people who camp out at the coffee shop for hours on end on their laptops. Especially when all they did was buy a small cup of coffee, didn't tip the staff, and get their panties in a twist when the wi-fi signal has issues. If you're going to be anti-social and rude, keep it at home.
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