Ryan Twomey

Web developer and entrepreneur in Woburn, MA.

Jun 4, 2008 5:08pm
Jun 4, 2008 1:38pm
Hard work was certainly part of Williamson’s improbable personal turnaround: He recalls years of working 20-hour days and says he still only sleeps four or five hours a night. But chance guided his entrepreneurial success as well: a car accident that jolted him out of a destructive life, a paint recipe that became a hit, and early exposure to the burgeoning software industry. - From-Homeless-to-Software-Success: Personal Finance News from Yahoo! Finance
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Jun 4, 2008 12:08pm

The Free WiFi No-Brainer

This morning, I stopped at a Starbucks to grab an iced coffee and noticed the place was hopping a bit more than usual.  Perhaps it was just the rain outside, but nearly all the tables were full - and, I noticed more laptops than usual.  Could this be due to the “free” WiFi rollout announced yesterday?  After a couple of mis-starts, it now appears that all Starbucks customers who buy a Starbucks card (and use it once a month, yadda-yadda-yadda) can access the Internet connection without an additional charge to T-Mobile.

To me, giving out free WiFi like this is almost a no-brainer.  The main thing that makes me pause is a recent Boston Globe article about coffee shops around the city that had tried the free WiFi route before and been disappointed in the result.  To them, giving out the free access put more butts in seats at their shops, but didn’t necessarily result in increased sales (some were claiming that customers would come in, buy a small coffee, and take up space for the entire day).

Cafe owners said they must determine which kind of Internet service — paid or free — will be most profitable, a calculation based largely on the number of seats and neighborhood competition. Owners of venues that offer free wireless believe it makes them attractive to customers. Shops that charge for wireless bank that they will make more from the access fees than they would in the additional traffic a free signal might bring. But in both paid and free hot spots, owners become concerned when tables are commandeered for hours and new customers cannot find seats.

My argument to this (and probably the one shared by Starbucks) is simple: more butts in seats means the increased likelihood of increased sales.  People sitting in a coffee shop are more likely to buy coffee, and those who go to the shop and can’t find a seat aren’t any less likely to buy a cup of coffee then if they could find a seat (after all, if they go in, can’t find a seat and leave, they weren’t showing up for the coffee in the first place).  So, if shop owners are worried about customers not finding seats when they want them, they should expand to meet capacity.

Of course, coffee shop owners are in business to sell coffee.  If they’re concerned with having enough capacity for people to sit down, meet with other people, work together, etc, then they should relocate to a library.

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Jun 4, 2008 11:16am
Jun 3, 2008 11:28pm
Experimenting with wordpress themes. I’m really liking WP 2.5
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Jun 3, 2008 10:55pm
Jun 3, 2008 1:06pm
Jun 3, 2008 11:10am
Jun 3, 2008 11:10am
Jun 2, 2008 11:25pm
Jun 2, 2008 11:25pm
Jun 2, 2008 10:53pm
You know, at some point you actually start to prefer plain C”. The seasoned C++ lover replied: “You mean, the C with classes style, with no tricky stuff? Sure, don’t we all end up writing most of the code like that?” No, said I, I meant plain C. No plus signs attached. File names ending with .c. C without classes. C. - OO C is passable
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Jun 2, 2008 4:01pm
I’ll take Madagascar, raise lemurs on diet sodas, and eventually make them into a formidable army with tiny guns and cute uniforms. Naturally, they’ll have no pants. Zippers are hell on monkey fingers. - A friend, on taking over the world.
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Jun 2, 2008 3:57pm
Jun 2, 2008 3:57pm