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Got a Starbucks gift card?  Bam, you’ll get 2 free hours of WiFi at Starbucks soon.  AT&T DSL customers will soon be able to sip lattes and surf for free as Starbucks just announced it will be switching WiFi services at its 7000 locations in the US.  Holders of paid subscriptions to T-Mobiles service will still be able to access the WiFi at Starbucks, thanks to some hearty negotiations.  The AT&T rollout will begin this spring.

This makes some sense for Starbucks as they have worked to partner with Apple on iTunes and there was the rumor of a iPhone/touch ordering system that may or may not be still in the works.

According to Crave,

But the new AT&T plan allows all customers 2 free hours per day, with a $3.99 fee for additional 2-hour chunks of time. Monthly subscriptions will cost $19.99 and will enable access to other AT&T hot-spot locations in addition to Starbucks.

Read [Crave]

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It goes without saying that after a long day at the office, you want nothing better than to unwind at the gym while getting all that stress out of your system. The AquaFit 19 Dual Temp brings together both fitness and hydrotherapy aspects, offering the ability to keep yourself cool even when performing the most vigorous of workouts. You will be able to swim stationary laps in this, row around just to work the upper body and arms or even jog underwater for a total cardiovascular workout. In the end, settle for a massage with fully adjustable, hydrotherapy jets for total bliss.

Source: RGS

[MWC] The successor of the N95 is here and Nokia has built it to be a media powerhouse: The N96 has 16GB of internal memory and can be extended to 24GB with a MicroSD card. All that storage is there to hold video (up to 40 hours, according to Nokia) that will be played on the 2.8” display. The Nokia N96 supports popular video formats such as MPEG4, Windows Media Video and Flash Video. The latter lets users browse videos from YouTube, but we heard that more services would be supported. Finally, Nokia announces that the N96 can capture DVD-resolution videos.

Posted Feb 11th 2008 12:11PM by Darren Murph
Filed under: Cellphones, Wireless
Announced today, Starbucks is gearing up to transition its WiFi relationship from T-Mobile to AT&T in over 7,000 of its locations in the US. For T-Mobile HotSpot customers feelin’ a bit like day old espresso right about now, fret not, as the coffee giant has assured us all that you folks “will be able to continue to access WiFi services at no additional cost through an agreement between AT&T and T-Mobile.” Starting “sometime this Spring,” Starbucks card holders will be treated to two hours of free WiFi access per day, while more than 12 million “qualifying AT&T broadband and U-verse internet customers will have unlimited free access.” For whatever it’s worth, the press release also notes that the carrier will “soon extend the benefits of WiFi at Starbucks to its wireless customers,” but it (sadly) fails to elaborate. For those of you out there without any ties to AT&T, expect to pony up $3.99 for a two hour session or $19.99 for monthly access.

[Via mocoNews]
Read - Starbucks to expand technology relationship with AT&T
Read - More than 12 million AT&T, Starbucks customers to get free WiFi access

Creative was at the forefront of the MP3 player industry with its line of Zen players many years ago, and time has shown that it has the necessary elements to remain in the game. The company has just passed the 32GB threshold where flash-based MP3 players are concerned, featuring 32GB of internal memory as well as an SDHC memory card slot that could potentially bump up the total storage space to 64GB (assuming you throw in a 32GB SDHC card). In addition, this 32GB Zen also comes with a wallet-friendly price of $299.

Source: Crave

The Sony Ericsson XPERIA X1 is one of the most exciting Windows Mobile phones since the Blackjack 2 and the (phantom) i-mate 9502. With a 800×480 pixel display, it is probably going to be the new reference in terms of productivity and entertainment. Users can control it the way they want: Touch screen, joystick or via the elegant Arc slider QWERTY keyboard. Finally, it has WiFi, 3.5G and assisted-GPS – features that will make a big difference, given that web browsing and location based are popular apps these days.

Highlights

• 3” touch display 800×480 pixels
• QWERTY keyboard
• GSM/GPRS/EDGE 850/900/1800/1900 + HSDPA (3G)
• WiFi, Bluetooth
• Windows Mobile
• Touch screen
• 3.2 megapixel camera with Auto-focus
• Joystick navigation
• Assisted GPS
• Bluetooth, WiFi
• 110 x 53 x 16.7 mm, 145g
• The Sony Ericsson XPERIA™ X1 will be available in “selected markets” from the second half of 2008.

The LG KF510 is a slim slider phone offering a 3 megapixel as well as the following features:

* 11mm (.43″) thick
* metal frame
* tempered glass display
* available in two color schemes, Stardust Dark Gray and Sunset Red
* MP3 player
* LG’s advanced tactile touch technology
* contextual buttons that change based on the current activity

Via MobileBurn.

Most folks often read the morning news with a hot cup of joe in one hand, but the Yuno PC concept wants to bring both ideas together in a single device. It is a coffee mug that keeps your favorite morning beverage warm while delivering news and information such as weather, time, stocks, traffic and more wirelessly on its wraparound touch screen display. Sounds pretty difficult to read, especially with a curved surface facing you. I think I’d stick to my standard paper-and-mug combo, thank you very much.

I have been busy sorting out several nagging little problems recently. Firstly, I was battling with my own Blog hosting at Jason Slater Weblog after an unfortunate incident with the virtual server which caused the hosting platform to stop working. Fortunately, after a great deal of digging around in search engines (and an awful lot of Goggling, see Are you Goofling, Goggling or Gooping?) I managed to get it working again and it’s always surprising when the problem turns out to be something quite simple as I explain in How my Linux network unreachable problem got fixed. Secondly, our first proper VISTA machine went into operation recently, in our graphic design studio, and trying to get fonts transferred from the old XP platform posed a bigger challenge than it should. Have you ever had trouble installing fonts under Vista from a network share? There is a relatively straightforward work around to cure this problem but I’m sure there will be many more VISTA adventures in the months to come especially with SP1 on the horizon. Then of course there was Wireless woes - change the channel where our wireless access point has been misbehaving but a small configuration change kicked the problem into touch.

I am still considering the Dell Vostro after my previous post “the low cost Dell Vostro” but I haven’t encountered many people who have implemented them yet. If you are unfamiliar with the Vostro range they are a range of laptops and desktops from Dell which are designed with the small/medium enterprise in mind (with a low price point to match). My plan for the next few months however is to try and make real progress with our Sharepoint installation after considering whether Sharepoint is the way to go? There are a number of open source platforms for content management based systems, intranet systems and document management systems but Sharepoint really looks like it could make a huge impact in our business - I see it as an evolution of data management from simple user based shared folders to something that makes more sense of the information presented to it.

On a lighter note, the boys at the Abbey have been busy as Monk and his IT Junk not only reached his 100th cartoon panel but also moved to a new hosting platform at http://www.monkandhisitjunk.com./

Finishing on a tip, if you are curious about your broadband throughput then you can use an interesting online checking service that will let you Test your Broadband speed from and to various different servers around the globe. Have a great week.

[MWC] The new Nokia 6220 is equipped with a 5 Megapixel camera and an A-GPS function that allows users to geo-tag their photos, capture/edit their videos and post them directly on Ovi, Flickr or Youtube. Nokia is making clear that we do not have phones in our pockets any more, but mobile computers… Features include TV output, 3.5G connection, xenon flash, 2.2 inch screen, up to 8 GB of storage, Nokia maps 2.0 with POI and Widsets.