Starbucks HotSpot experiment...day 3. As I understand it, they want to fill the void in the day, a void I was unaware of as I was the classic "peak" user who went in before work, at a break, and weekends and evenings. The store I'm in now was packed the other day, and now...that's my brambleberry tea and english toffee bar on the table there. This place is empty. There are a few people (all women, some with kids) coming and going, but not the typical crowd. Is there a market for any of these people, or, are there people who would come here only because there was broadband access...then buy coffee...the cybercafe model? hmmmm Howard Schultz said this was supposed to be the antithesis of the cyber cafe...they make money selling coffee.

From time to time when I go to stores and take digital pictures somebody says something. In Hong Kong I was yelled at (releasing that secret pricing information available to everybody walking down the street...people are funny about photos...off topic, sorry). today the manager came and sat down and asked me what I was doing. While we were talking she told me that there are some people that come in and work on their laptops. One guy came in and worked for 4 months from 8 am to 8 pm on his doctoral thesis. I don't suppose they made money on him. Anyway, she did say that she gets questions "once in a while" about the service, but had noticed many people using it. She did not know what it costs either. I suppose the concept is that anybody who will be doing wireless data in starbucks will have a cell phone to call customer service like I did.

At any rate, as you can see in the photo, this place is MT. On the plus side, there are plenty of tables, on the negative side, this place is Bright! seeing the laptop screen is non ideal. I know...it's worse outside. So is the data speed. Well, the laptop sure works easily enough. The PDA was totally painless today too.