Earlier this week, coffee house Starbucks announced that beginning July 1, 2010, WiFi will be free for any length of time at all of their U.S. locations. This is actually the second best part of Starbucks…the first being the typically-clean bathrooms. Now if they just sold other drinks and food, we’d be all set.

Chandu Thota put together a neat heat map showing all of the Starbucks locations across the U.S. and the density of free WiFi in the various locations. It looks like many of the major cities have full coverage including NYC, Chicago, Austin, San Francisco. Some areas of the country – North/South Dakota, Nebrasks, Montana, Idaho and Wyoming have only a few stores which means you might have to find free WiFi elsewhere.

Here’s a sample from the map – in case you are wondering, I cut it to only show the northeastern U.S. so you have to visit the content creator to see the rest of the country.

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Akamai is out today with their fourth quarter 2009 “State of the Internet” report. The report is well worth a read as it covers a variety of topics including: security, connection speeds, geography, network access, and Internet penetration. For the second consecutive quarter, the report also includes a section about moible. Some of the interesting stats include:

• Globally, the percentage of connections to Akamai at narrowband (below 256 Kbps) speeds increased an unexpected 41% in the fourth quarter of 2009.
• Average mobile speeds within the United States were analyzed and determined to be in the 600-800 Kbps range, while speeds across a global distribution of mobile network providers ranged from 100 Kbps to 3.2 Mbps.
• The slowest countries using narrowband connections (less than 256Kbps) were Mayotte, Wallis and Futuna, Guyana, Cuba and Ethiopia.

Here are a couple of the charts from the report.

High Broadband Connectivity: Fastest International Countries

South Korea continues to lead the world in the fastest Internet connections. The U.S. didn’t make the top ten – we are ranked 14th in the world for fast Internet speed. Overall Europe owns the most top 10 rankings.

Attack Traffic, Top Originating Countries

The chart below shows the top 10 countries in attack traffic. Russia continues to lead the world with the U.S. close behind. Brazil dropped two slots from last quarter. Port 445 was the most attacked port.

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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.

Find more stories about: Amtrak, InsideTransit, internet, subway, WiFi

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).

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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.

The people in line waiting to play their lottery tickets got into a discussion about the jingle and whether it was necessary. One man shouted, “this lottery machine gonna get someone killed”. The discussion centered around the idea that criminals could easily just wait for the jingle and know that a person is now walking out with more cash than they entered with.

The idea of a jingle to let someone know that they won is not needed and should be removed. There is a customer screen on the new lottery machines which displays the winning dollar amount. Sometimes a cute use of technology could lead to trouble down the road.

Find more stories about: internet, Lottery, NYC, Sprint

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.

1. Torrents – Shortly after I got my satellite connection, I made the mistake of trying to get a DVD image of a Linux build over torrent. After all, I’ve got a slow Internet connection, so torrents seemed like the perfect solution. I could start and stop the download, I could let it go while I was away from the house, etc. What I didn’t realize was that, with the bandwidth limits imposed by my ISP, I’d be without an Internet connection for 30 days after my uploads exceeded the limit. My ISP (Wildblue) enforces a rolling 30-day limit on bandwidth (my package allows about 4 gigs of uploads in any 30-day period). It took about 2 days of being hooked up to a torrent before I had uploaded approximately 7 gigs of data. All of a sudden, my access speeds dropped below those of dial-up connections because I had violated the Fair Access Policy.
2. VOIP Calls – Because of the latency you will experience when using a satellite connection (approximately 1.5 seconds), trying to use a VOIP (voice-over Internet protocol) phone call is completely pointless. You’ll end up talking over-top of the person on the other end, and you won’t hear each other until about 2 to 3 seconds after you’ve spoken.
3. Streaming Video – While you can safely watch short videos from sites like YouTube, trying to watch full-length videos on sites like Hulu and CBS.com is basically out of the question. As I’ve mentioned once or twice before, the protocol used on those types of sites causes the video to stop and buffer for one to five minutes basically every minute or two.
4. Surf While It’s Storming – Unfortunately, the satellite dish is dependent on “line-of-sight.” When there are clouds in the sky, you lose your Internet connection. When it comes back is anyone’s guess. Sometimes, it only goes out for a few minutes. Other times, it’s gone for a hours on end.
5. Virtual Private Networking/Remote Desktop Connections – If you use a VPN, or, even worse, a remote desktop connection to work on office stuff while you’re at home, you can forget about that when you get a satellite connection. VPNs are possible, but they’ll be dreadfully slow. Remote desktop connections are completely out of the question (unless you want to emulate the feeling of trying to run Windows Vista on a 286).

So, there you have it. Those are five things you can leave off or your to-do list once you move out of range from mainstream broadband services. Good luck.

Find more stories about: Curtiss Grymala, internet

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:

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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.

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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:

• Should we expect Internet connections in hotels to be provided for free just like towels and soap?
• If there is a charge, what is a reasonable price to pay?
• What type of connection speed should we expect to receive?
• Is WiFi always ok or do you require wired?
• Are there specific services you would like to see on your hotel Internet connection?
• Other needs?

My answers to the above are…. I’d like to see free connections everywhere and would be willing to run an ad supported toolbar. If paid, $10/day should be the max. I expect a fast connection and no blocked services (except maybe anything pirating related including torrent-downloads.

Leave your thoughts in the comments and include prices you’ve paid for hotel internet access. If we don’t see better connections, maybe we will all need to be like this guy and find an open WiFi hotspot which can force us to surf/work via the toilet.

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I nearly lost my lunch when I saw the chart below. It’s a comparison chart between Internet Explorer 8 (IE8), Firefox and Chrome. I should note that I am an IE user – I run different things in IE and Firefox.

Microsoft took an internal comparison look at the following categories: security, privacy, ease of use, web standards, developer tools, reliability, customizability, compatibility, manageability and performance.

I am using IE7 so I can’t comment on how good or bad IE8 is but it’s a bit odd that a company would show a chart that makes their browser look amazingly better than the competition. IE8 wins or ties in every category and some of the comments seem like an agency was involved. Here are a couple of examples, “Of course Internet Explorer 8 wins this one”  and “Neither Firefox nor Chrome provide guidance or enterprise tools. That’s just not nice.” Is there really not one area that Firefox or Chrome is better than IE8? (I have no idea so someone educate me plz)

My advice to Microsoft is to just sell us on why IE8 is great – don’t worry about comparisons – we will take care of those as users.

It looks like Microsoft is trying to come across as cutsie but it just didn’t work for me. Did it work for you? Leave your thoughts in the comments below.

Find more stories about: browser, IE7, ie8, internet, Microsoft

Back in January, cable television and Internet service provider RCN announced that they were closing their portal website. Last week I was notified by mail about a price increase to my account. Please note that this is at least the 2nd price increase in a year and I actually think it’s the third.

Here’s the email they just sent me to confirm I know about the price change:

To ensure we are providing you with the most up-to-date products and services at a competitive rate, we are implementing changes to your RCN account. We are adjusting your current package and will provide you with a new plan. You will see this change in either your May or June bill depending on your regular billing date. Your new plan will offer the same high level of service, plus a redesigned, easier-to-read bill. By updating our packages, RCN will be able to simplify your services and make sure you receive enhanced customer care. Your current and new monthly charges are listed below for your convenience. Your new monthly charges reflect a 12 month promotional discount.

We’re constantly striving to bring you the best in cable, Internet and phone. We thank you for being an RCN customer and hope that you’ll enjoy our growing array of services. RCN Customer Service is available at (866) 540-1575 between the hours of 8 AM and 5 PM EST.

When I read the postcard I laughed as it appeared that they were trying to justify a 10% increase by saying that we will have a better “easier-to-read” bill. I already pay $18.00 monthly for a dvr which is absolutely pathetic. It’s amazing how the cable providers continue to get away with highway robbery on their prices and I fear it will only get worse as people move more of their viewing needs to the web and also want faster connections.

I wonder what “enhanced customer care” means – once the change goes into effect I will need to call customer care to experience the enhanced opportunity.

BTW, the “new package” actually has less channels and less offerings – so not only are they charging me more, they are taking away some of the channels.

I wonder how many executives had to come up with this spin on why they are raising rates.

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Cable Internet provider RCN has announced that on February 24, 2009, they will close their portal site. After this date the rcn.net site will redirect to their payment and information site. Their email to customers noted, "We’re stepping away from providing a destination for world news and entertainment in order to focus on what you really need to easily manage your RCN account. True, you’ll have to look elsewhere for the latest Britney Spears news, but you’ll be the first to know about new customer offers and promotions and upcoming TV programming events."

It’s interesting that they didn’t offer any options for other portal/start page sites to use. While Internet geeks probably aren’t using the RCN page as their start page, the average RCN customer probably is. They could have worked a deal with one of the new startpage providers or even a larger provider like MyYahoo.

Find more stories about: internet, Quick News

Akamai is out today with their third quarter 2008 "State of the Internet" report. The report is well worth a read as it covers a variety of topics including: security, connection speeds, geography, network access, and Internet penetration. Some of the interesting stats include:

• Akamai observed attack traffic originating from 179 unique countries around the world, up nearly 30% from the second quarter count of 139 countries. China ranked first with the U.S. right behind in second.
• In the third quarter of 2008, nearly 380 million unique IP addresses connected to the Akamai network – almost ten percent more than in the second quarter.
• Delaware has the highest fast Internet connectivity with 97% over 2 Mbps. Washington D.C and Washington State had the highest level of slow Internet connections (less than 256k) at 12% each.

Here are a couple of the charts from the report.

High Broadband Connectivity: Fastest International Countries

South Korea remains in the lead but drops from 64% to 58% of connections to Akamai occurring at over 5 Mbps. South Korea is down 10% in over 5 Mbps connections this year. Japan ranked second and the U.S. drops two slots to eighth.

Slowest International Countries

For those countries on some form of broadband, here are the countries with the slowest (less than 256k) connections. Mayotte moved into first place while former leader Rwanda dropped to sixth. The U.S. comes in just over 5.8% (down from 8% of all connections at this speed – my mother is one of those 5.8% as she is still on a 56k modem.

Find more stories about: Akamai, internet, Quick News

comScore has released new stats for European Internet usage based on their World Metrix audience measurement service today. The report shows that Russia is leading Europe in Internet audience growth followed by France, Spain and Ireland. Russia’s Internet audience grew 27% from June 2007-June 2008.

As for Internet penetration in Europe, The Netherlands leads with 82% of the total population online. The Netherlands is followed by Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Finland and Switzerland. Based on what I am seeing, Switzerland appears to be pushing out the most new startups out of the top 5 European Internet penetration countries.

Find more stories about: analytics, comScore, internet, Quick News, Russia

Tonight I’d like to share with ya’all 9 things I am done with online. Rather than sharing them in text, check out the video below. Please add your suggestions to the list in the comments below.

Find more stories about: cloud computing, internet, Quick News, Video, Web 2.0