Anything and Everything that is cool, hot, fresh and classic.
AT&T will soon offer free Wi-Fi to all iPhone users at their more than 17,000 Wi-Fi hotspots in the U.S., including all Starbucks stores.
If you’d like to get in on that action, but don’t yet have an iPhone, then check out UNEASYsilence for a guide on how to use Firefox’s User Agent Switcher to trick hotspots into thinking you’re on an iPhone, and then granting you full access to their tubes of Internet.
[UNEASYsilence - Trick AT&T To Give You Free Wi-Fi At Any Of Their Hotspots]
Blank is Like Blank is a simple site that provides the occasional analogy to live by.
With quips like:
Justin Feinstein is firmly establishing himself as the king of the one liner.
Black Gold is “a story about coffee and trade”.
But while we continue to pay for our lattes and cappuccinos, the price paid to coffee farmers remains so low that many have been forced to abandon their coffee fields.
Nowhere is this paradox more evident than in Ethiopia, the birthplace of coffee. Tadesse Meskela is one man on a mission to save his 74,000 struggling coffee farmers from bankruptcy. As his farmers strive to harvest some of the highest quality coffee beans on the international market, Tadesse travels the world in an attempt to find buyers willing to pay a fair price.
Against the backdrop of Tadesse’s journey to London and Seattle, the enormous power of the multinational players that dominate the world’s coffee trade becomes apparent. New York commodity traders, the international coffee exchanges, and the double dealings of trade ministers at the World Trade Organization reveal the many challenges Tadesse faces in his quest for a long term solution for his farmers.
It looks like a fascinating film, and definitely brings light to an issue that few Americans consider while waiting in line at the local Starbucks.
Sure, the Asus Eee PC is small, and the MacBook Air is powerful, but what about making your very own lightweight portable computer out of an old Palm Pilot a keyboard, and a copy of the Guinness Book of World Records?
It might not be small and powerful, but it is cheap, and the DIY factor alone should give you plenty of bragging rights at your next Starbucks laptop spec shootout.
[Via: MAKE: Blog]
Sure, Starbucks brings Wi-Fi to the masses, but most people who use it are either on a laptop or an iPhone.
What would happen then if Starbucks and their semi-public Wi-Fi had existed a few years ago?
Improv Everywhere wanted to find out, and decided to take a few old desktops complete with CRT monitors down to the local Starbucks and set up shop.
It’s a pretty funny idea, and the results are unexpected, so check out the Mobile Desktop:
Phil Lu’s QuickOrder is an “iPhone/iPod Touch application that allows the users to purchase their favorite Starbucks drink without waiting in line”. It’s also a great example of what will be possible when the entire world lives in your cell phone.
Instead of actually interacting with a real live person, you simply point and click in your order, complete with customization and a kind little thank you area to remind your barista that someone actually cares about what they’re doing.
There is even a semacode system in place to verify your order.
Will this be the future of customer service? Considering the fact that this goes one step further towards a world where we cease to interact directly (and despite how beautiful and simplistic this looks), I sure hope not.
[Via: NOTCOT]
Radar wondered: Would sniffing the white stuff in public go unnoticed, or do people still care? Armed with a bag of confectioners’ sugar and the phone number for a lawyer, they set out to find out.
Potential targets include the swank (Graydon Carter’s Waverly Inn), and the pedestrian (Starbucks), and the results might surprise you.
Care to indulge?
To get folks to try out the new Starbucks-Apple iTunes Wi-Fi Music Store, Apple will be giving away $50 million in “Song of the Day” cards to coffee customers from October 2 to November 7.
The cards will be good for a hand-picked song from the iTunes library, which might sound limiting, but with artists like Bob Dylan, Joss Stone, Dave Matthews, Bebel Gilberto, John Mayer, KT Tunstall, John Legend, Annie Lennox, Joni Mitchell, Keith Urban, Paul McCartney, Sia, Band of Horses, Hilary McRae, Frederico Aubele and Sara Bareilles, it’ll probably be something worth hearing.
It might not pay for the $5 coffee, but at least you get something with your daily caffeine fix.
[Via: Apple Insider]
P.B.Loco is “The Adult Peanut Buttter”. With flavors like CoCoBanana, Asian Curry Spice, Sun-Dried Tomato, and Sumatra Cinnamon and Raisin, They hope to do for peanut butter what Starbucks did for coffee. PB&J will never be the same.
[P.B.Loco]
[Via: Boing Boing]
If you want to be the best, you need to learn from the best, and it’s hard to deny that Howard Schultz is anything but the best. As CEO, Schultz was responsible for Starbucks’s transition from Seattle’s David into the world’s Goliath, and he shares his secrets in a book called, Pour Your Heart Into It: How Starbucks Built A Company One Cup At A Time.
If you’ve always wanted to look inside the mind of the man who made coffee a commodity, Pour Your Heart Into It is here to guide the way. Make mine a double.
