Results tagged “wifi”

Over at TechFlash, John Cook reports that Alaska Airlines misspoke when representatives gave what many interpreted as an announcement that they'd be offering free wi-fi to Alaska travelers at SeaTac gates. The airline will be extending the offer to travelers in Oakland for the three-month promotion, but not here. Seriously? Seattle would be the perfect place to run that deal. This reminds us to ask why we don't already have free wi-fi available at our airport. Anyone have a compelling explanation for this pitiable situation?

We can vouch for this because we've been IMing with a friend of ours who is on the Amtrak Cascades train to Portland, and other than getting false disconnection notices, it's working like a charm. We filled him on the Seattle Metblogs story about Seattle atheists buying ads on Metro. That seemed like a good use of WiFi. Tell Portland! The atheists are coming!

Books new and used, wi-fi, sandwiches, coffee, and a fireplace: Third Place Books (in both locations) had for years held a perch high up on Seattlest's list of cozy, soul-nourishing morning destinations as the bearer of quite a few good things. When we moved south from our studio apartment on the Ave to a somewhat quieter, albeit shared, old house on Capitol Hill, Third Place's Ravenna location fell into that regrettable out-of-sight-out-of-mind zone. Our visits became rare. When we did remember, the Honey Bear Bakery was always there in the same building to greet us with bottomless cups of dark coffee, warm orange-pecan rolls, or a noon-time sandwich packed with sprouts and hummus.

We're looking for the perfect place to get some computer-y work done this weekend. Because Obama was elected president, we have hope that such a perfect place exists. Requirements: must have coffee, must have wifi, and must not have the music turned up to 11. Preferred extra qualities: good food, a fireplace, and an interesting view (maybe even of the water). Seattlest is willing to drive north, south, or even to the Eastside for this perfect place. Suggestions? We'd settle for an almost-perfect four or five of the six listed qualities.

We got an Amtrak phone survey call over the weekend and they wanted to know if having a snack bar in business class would make us more/less likely to travel by rail. How much would that be worth? In-station hotspots? Now how much would we pay? Private lounge with butler?

Over the weekend, we made three trips to the new Stumptown Coffee on 12th Ave (next to Cafe Presse). We're not actually coffee geeks, it just worked out that way. (These people are coffee geeks.) We're more of a cafe geek. If you aren't familiar, Stumptown Coffee is based in Portland, and this is their big move into the Seattle market. (Edmonds' ZuKafe claims to have been their first Puget Sound wholesale account.)

Municipal WiFi was once all the rage in city governments, but the networks currently in place are falling down where it matters most (poorer neighborhoods, of course) and those cities with time to back out are doing so. Chicago just called it quits.

We knew Bremerton residents were the step-chilins of the Washington State Ferry System, but now that wireless access for the 55-minute run has been delayed again we're starting to suspect a conspiracy. Bainbridge has been happily browsing away on their 30-minute jog since like the mid-nineties or something, but can Bremerton catch any of that wifi gold? Hell no. At least not until July at the earliest. Of course, the Rich Passage is the official culprit according to Parsons which has the contract to provide wireless internet to Washington ferries.

It's like we were just saying about Starbucks the other day, only if we were the Washington Post instead of a city blog:

For most Seattleites, what Schultz called "the watering down of the Starbucks experience" is stale news -- akin to reports that the Seattle SuperSonics (which Schultz sold last year) are a losing National Basketball Association team or that Seattle winters are wet.

Continue reading "Victrola & Fuel Winning Battle For Espresso Soul Says Post"

Spring appears to have, er, sprung, at least temporarily, in most of the Ist-A-Verse, so naturally, we're all feeling pretty good. (Yes, we know that spring doesn't start till later this month. Just let us enjoy our weather!) And that makes us that much more eager to share all of the nifty things we're up to...

--Putting random stuff in brackets and voting on it is all the rage. First the blog thing, and now gay clubs go head to head. Stay tuned next week when Seattlest pits our socks against each other in a bracket from hell.

Seattlest rode the southbound Sounder last week. We broke out the sexy laptop to work on a lame, new post that we had rolling around in our heads and that just wouldn't go away (lucky you!). Naturally, the promiscuous little minx that is our sleek MacBook asked if we wanted to join some wireless network; its name was “Sounder_302”. We evaluated the name and, figuring that it wasn't one of the millions of mysterious, unsecured “linksys” networks out there, thought, “why the hell not!” Have we as a networked society sunk so low that merely renaming a router/SSID is cause for rejoicing and conferring authority?

This was not a very happy week for the -ist network as one of our own,

Washington State Ferries is cancelling free WiFi and attempting to convince us that they never actually offered free WiFi - That was a beta program..that lasted for a year. Starting next month, WSF will be charging for access to the internet. WiFi Networking News has more:

Seattlest likes a) chocolate b) cafes and c) endorphins. Not necessarily in that order and certainly not exclusively, but those are some things we like, so we find it very difficult to walk past those chocolate cafes. Dilettantes on Broadway - We lick the glass. Something a bit closer to home would be nice, though, and that prayer was answered recently by Chocolati on 45th.

-We haven't heard when they're going to move it down here, but it's reported that a Seattle company is buying heavily into The Pearl.

If you thought Southcenter was a massive blight of consumption run wild (chill out, commie) at 1,326,218 square feet you ain't seen nothing yet. From Abercrombie and Fitch (regular and kids) to Zales Jewelry, there are 193 flavors all told so if it's mass produced and it's for sale, you'll find it there. Heeemongus sometimes isn't big enough, though. Southcenter (actually Westfield Southcenter, now) is adding $200 million worth of new stores and restaurants.

Hate the library's new one-week checkout period for DVDs?

Torontoist throws down the gauntlet and challenges all comers: pillow fight, bitch. They also stand up for a fellow blogger taking heat from the TTC and welcome city-wide WiFi.

“The sun never sets at Sunset Bowl.”

Last year, while Seattlest was enjoying the "free" part of "freelancing," we packed up our PowerBook and set off to visit our local library -- the Seattle Public Library's North East Branch. We figured we'd relax among the stacks and search the Web.

When some websites have a real life get-together they do it at someone's home, a bar, or at Ralphs Grocery in Belltown. Not Engadget. The gadgetry blog has a readership to match its prodigious posting pace and when they have an event the ability to drag three table together and free WiFi are not enough to secure a location. Tomorrow's Engadget meet-up, for example, is at Neumos. Maybe next year they'll be rounding up their gadgeteers and stuffing them into Key Arena or Quest Field. Actually, we shouldn't even be suggesting that to them because it will happen and then they'll unleash an army on the streets of Seattle provisioned with GPS-enabled implants and camera phones with half the mass of a quark.

Tonight’s nationally televised bird-on-bird action gives us much to ponder: Shaun Alexander’s kickass season, Terrell Owens’s jackass behavior, and that dumbass who dumped his dead mother’s ashes on the Eagles’ home turf. Most of all, however, we’re preoccupied with Seattle’s finest cheesesteakery, Philadelphia Fevre.

Not too long ago, we brought to your attention the fact that select metro buses had started purportedly offering wireless connections. We were fairly pleased to discover that the first leg of our commute, Route 48, was supposedly already online, with the piece-de-resistance of our daily slog, Route 545, slated for next in line. ( We'd still be torn between reading our book, a time-honored bus activity that we actually look forward to, and getting a crapload of email out of the way before we even hit our desk--but at least we'd have that choice to make.)

Seattlest's bus ride to work lasts about twelve minutes. That's just long enough for us to find a seat, sit in it, open our bag, take out our laptop and boot it up, Start, Shutdown, Yes we would like the computer to shut down, put it away and get off the bus. Ah, another productive commute! You didn't notice it, but during the minute our computer was on it attempted and failed to find any available wireless networks. Our email rants to the editor were unable to fly out into the either.

A professional journalist was dispatched to last week's Seattle bloggers meet-up. Write ups have been online since five minutes after the event, but the Post Intelligencer's appears in today's paper as well as online, and we'd like to offer a very special congratulations to the paper today for finally doing the links right.

Victrola is a cool coffee house on Capitol Hill where tech-savy baristas serve up beautiful espresso. They offer free wi-fi, but in an effort to reclaim their atmosphere, they have turned off the wireless router on weekends. The result? "The place was noisy and jumpin' - people actually conversed," according to a Victrola barista.

Seattle is a great progenitor of technology, but only now, in the year 2005, is municipal Wi-Fi finally coming to town. To put this in context, Spokane has had a wireless downtown corridor for over a year. Is Seattle behind the times?

No, sorry, we won't be broadcasting messages to Mars with the Space Needle. Earthbound denizens of Queen Anne, Downtown and Vulcanville (South Lake Union, of course) will be able to take advantage of a new wireless service from Speakeasy, though, with one of the planned antennas sitting on top of the Space Needle. This is not your father's WiFi, of course. Speakeasy's planning a WIMAX-like service that's faster than the T-1 connection you likely use at work, or up to 60 times faster than your old dialup connection.

Whether you are from New York and moved to Seattle, or live in Seattle and have dispelled thoughts of moving to New York, we at Seattlest want to assure you: you made the Right Decision. As evidence, here is another installment of: Great Things You Can Get in Seattle but Not in New York vs. Great Things in New York You Can Also Get in Seattle.