Free wifi at all Starbucks stores tomorrow…

…all Starbucks stores in the UK that is.

Isn’t free wifi a no-brainer for the marketing department of a coffee chain? Hell, I’d even go to Coffee Time if I could get online for free there!

Photo by Russell Davies 

Something funny from the Rogers wireless website

I was just checking out the Rogers wireless data plans. On the 10MB mobile internet plan they claim that 10MB should be plenty of data to surf your way through 2,500 web pages. That’s an average of 4KB per page.

Where are they finding these 4KB pages? Even facebook’s mobile site is 8KB. The Google logo is 12KB!!

Apparently, “Canadians pay lowest wireless prices in North America”

This might actually be funny if we wasn’t so likely to succeed.

The Canadian Wireless Telecommunications Association (i.e. Rogers, Telus, Bell and friends) has launched a lobby site for the 2008 wireless spectrum auction headlined “Real competition benefits all of us.”

Their lead story is a July 2007 report from the OECD that says, “…mobile phone customers in Canada enjoy some of the most competitive wireless prices among the 30 countries that comprise the organization’s membership.”

I think I could find a few people willing to argue with that ;).

After all that has been written about the farcical wireless pricing in Canada, it’s hard to believe the CWTA would come out with such a brazen communication plan. But they have. And I’m sure they don’t see the funny side.

Particularly paranoid about wireless rates are all of us Canadians hoping to buy an iPhone before the end of the year. We’re deathly scared it will be priced out of our hands by Rogers. More on that soon…

DesignMyGoogleDoc.com

Today Google finally announced the rounding out of their Docs product range with the launch of an online PowerPoint tool. You can check it out at the docs homepage.

One quick thought: If I’m now creating presentations online, it’s even more tempting to hire a junior designer to design my slides for me. I’d just add the designer as a collaborator and come back the next day to a fully designed presentation. Nice! I wonder if anyone has registered designmygoogledoc.com?

These outsourced presentation services have been around for a long time. It just strikes me that it’s now even easier and more tempting for me to hire someone instead of doing it myself. Ah, laziness.

Ruprecht

Any other classic Steve Martin fans out there?…

Using iPod Touch to play music over AirTunes

Along with everyone else, I’m pretty excited about the new iPod Touch.

I use my phone to listen to music when I’m wondering around town, but I’m excited about the Touch as a kind of mini, ultra portable PC. I figure I could use it for all the little things I do on the web around home without having to open up my laptop. Things like checking the weather, looking up a google map before running out the door, reading a facebook message…

The other big use I can see for the Touch is playing music over my AirTunes network. We have some bookshelf speakers plugged into an AirTunes router in the living room and that is the main way we listen to music at home. I love the flexibility we have to play whatever we like, but I hate having to open up my laptop to do it – I always get unintentionally lost in email for hours. Wouldn’t it be great if I could dial up iTunes on the Touch and play something over AirTunes?

Now, my research thus far has not turned up any conclusive prof this is actually possible, I’m just jumping to conclusions based on the fact the Touch has iTunes and a wifi connection. I’ll do some more digging and update this post as soon as I can get to the bottom of this.

Read this

I’ve been planning to put together a list… Pema’s suggested reading for tech entrepreneurs. 37Signal’s brilliant Getting Real will be in there, as well as Adam Morgan’s fantastic book about branding, Eating the Big Fish. I’m reading another one that will make the list, Founder at Work by Jessica Livingston.

Founders at Work is a collection of interviews with the founders of some of the highest profile and most successful tech startups of the last 10 years. There is Steve Wozniak of Apple, Max Levchin of PayPal, Mike Lazardis of RIM, Blake Ross of Firefox and 28 more.

Not surprisingly, the interviews make for pretty compelling reading. Livingston gets the founders talking honestly about the highs and lows of getting their companies off the ground. In totality, the book offers some great advice and paints a wonderful picture of what life is like inside a startup shooting toward mega success. Great inspiration.