internet Archive

In the old days, there were two main ways to get anywhere from Boston to Washington using public transit. Those two ways were Amtrak trains and Greyhound buses. Over the past few years, new bus services that travel along the northeast corridor have popped up including Bolt Bus and Megabus. Both of these new bus services offer very inexpensive fares and also offer free Wi-Fi service (Bolt Bus is partially owned by Greyhound). When I speak with entrepreneurs that travel anywhere from Boston to Washington, many have started to use the buses over Amtrak because of the Wi-Fi and the lower cost.

Last week Amtrak announced the launch of Wi-Fi service on their fleet of Acela Express trains.  Acela Express is the luxury, “faster” train service that runs from Boston to Washington and costs a bit more than the traditional Amtrak train service. The new Wi-Fi service is free to all travelers.

The free Wi-Fi service is also available inside the stations that Acela services including NY Penn Station and Washington Union Station. So now we have a new place to use free Wi-Fi in Penn Station!

I wonder how the Acela Wi-Fi handles travel inside the tunnels. It’s great news that Amtrak is finally starting to move forward with technology on their trains. While the announcement notes that there are no firm plans to add Wi-Fi to their other trains, the sooner they add the service, the sooner they could look to potentially taking people off the buses and onto the trains. And frankly, if the service quality is good, Amtrak should charge a small fee for it. If the airlines charge, so should Amtrak.

Yakov Sadchikov, President & CEO of visual search engine Quintura, has put together the following list of the top 10 CEOs of Internet companies located in Russia.

1. Arkady Volozh, CEO, Yandex (largest Russian search engine and contextual advertising provider).

2. Dmitri Grishin, CEO, Mail.ru (largest Russian online portal).

3. Alexey Basov, CEO, Begun (second largest contextual advertising provider in Russia).

4. Sergey Ryzhikov, CEO, 1C-Bitrix (leading web-site CMS vendor in Russia).

5. Alexander Lyskovsky, President, Alawar Entertainment (largest casual games developer and publisher in Russia and Eastern Europe).

6. Pierric Duthoit, CEO, WomanJournal (largest Russian women-centric online portal).

7. Nikita Sherman, CEO, Drimmi (social games company); formerly, President, Odnoklassniki.ru (leading social network); and President, Mamba (largest Russian online dating platform).

8. Natalya Kaspersky, co-founder & CEO, InfoWatch (leading data leak protection provider); co-founder & former CEO, Kaspersky Lab (internet security software vendor); angel investor, “А-я-яй.ру” (iii.ru).

9. Sergey Orlovsky, CEO, Nival Group (leading online games developer and publisher).

10. Oskar Hartmann, CEO, KupiVIP.ru (largest Russian online shopping club).

Over the past month or so, New York State has started rolling out a new lottery machine at lottery retailers around the state. The old machines were in service for (as best as I can remember) at least 15 years. I’ve also learned that the lottery in New York is the largest lottery in the U.S.

From a customer perspective, the new machines are faster and use less paper than the old clunkers.

The old lottery machines used a landline to connect to the main center to transmit the lottery ticket information. It appears the new machines use a Sprint wireless card for data transmission. The top retailer in the state was delayed in receiving the new machines because they couldn’t get a signal underground. I was told that they were working on a new solution last weekend but haven’t been back as of yet to see if they found a solution. In my discussions with lottery retailers, all noted that at least once they had issues with the wireless access. Today one top 20 retailer was unable to redeem instant tickets due to an issue with their signal. Overall the retailers I spoke with are happy with the new lottery machines.

The title of this post comes from something I heard when I was at a newsstand last week. The new lottery machines play a very loud jingle and buzzer sound when the lottery retailer scans a winning ticket. It doesn’t matter if the customer won $1 or $1,000,000, the sound is exactly the same. If I remember, machines in South Carolina also play a jingle when a winning ticket is redeemed.

Read the rest of this entry »

As I’ve mentioned a few times before, I am stuck with a satellite Internet connection at home. DSL and FIOS are distant fantasies, cable comes to the end of my driveway and stops (they refuse to run it any further, and won’t let me run it myself) and a T1 line is just way out of my price range. So, I’m stuck dealing with huge latency and bottom-of-the-barrel “high speed” Internet service.

For everyone else that moves out to the boonies and might have to make the switch to a satellite provider, I thought I’d provide this quick list of five things you shouldn’t (or can’t) do when you’re using a satellite connection. Still, I am thankful that I’m at least able to get some sort of “high speed” connection, as going back to dial-up is not something I want to even think about. Read the rest of this entry »

Found via FatWallet, it appears that some McDonalds locations are handing out coupons that allow you to use their WiFi service for free. The WiFi coupons are good for one hour of usage and expire in late 2010. You may need to make a purchase to obtain the coupon and some McDonalds locations offer free WiFi without a purchase. Some locations may allow AT&T customers to use the WiFi for free as well.

My guess is that this deal won’t work in Manhattan as the island is typically void of any McDonalds specials. I would head into McDonalds to test the coupon if they brought back the fried apple pies. The baked ones just don’t cut it.

And here’s the McDonalds rap for a bit of afternoon fun:
Read the rest of this entry »

Back in November 2007, we wrote about a free WiFi service provided by CBS in Times Square. I am not sure if the program is still continuing as I haven’t had a need recently to use WiFi in Times Square. Today I have a couple of new ways to get free WiFi in NYC.

This first option is actually available nationwide. If you have an iPhone and download the new Starbucks mobile application, you can use the WiFI service at Starbucks for free for up to two hours each day. Apparently the mobile app can also be used to pay for coffee as well.

The second option is available in Midtown from the Sheraton NY Hotel and Towers which is located on 49th street and 7th avenue. The hotel has been upgraded as a Link@Sheraton  which includes a Microsoft-equipped lobby. The Link includes free WiFi for guests and locals. Gloria Sin at NY Convergence has more on the Link opening.

The Link includes computers running Windows 7, Silverlight-powered web cams and televisions. There has been a lot of chatter about Windows 7 “parties” for the launch while I like this Link concept better. Sheraton hopes that WiFi users will pay for drinks and food along with the goal of drawing in more hotel guests.

Back in 2006, I stayed in a hotel in Munich that offered daily Internet access for $79. I took a photo of the information card but can’t seem to locate the photo. I declined the service and used the $10/hr Internet cafe down the block.

It seems today hotel Internet is either free or ranges in price from $10-17/day. Over the past month I’ve stayed in four hotels, two offered free Internet and two charged (one at $14.95/day – the other at $12.95/day).

I had to speak with tech support at each location – at one hotel the connection died, at two others the SMTP (mail) server wouldn’t allow me to send email and at the last the WiFi connection didn’t connect. The support was actually the same company for all four locations (in different cities) and the support personnel noted they were either in Manilla  or Montreal. It was pretty shocking to me that the operator had mail service turned off when the only way to get on the network was to pay using your name and room number combination.

It’s always interesting how the “family” hotels offer free access while the “business” hotels charge. I guess that goes to the idea that people staying in the business hotels have an expense account to charge and won’t moan or bitch.

At the brand new hotel I stayed at in SF, the $15/day got me a very fast connection while the free connection at another hotel was also fast enough to be acceptable. The other two connections (free and $13/day) were piss slow and even basic surfing was nearly impossible for the majority of the stay. The new hotel forced a toolbar and no matter what I did, it kept popping up every other minute.

With all of that said, I am curious to hear thoughts on the following questions:
Read the rest of this entry »