Friday, April 15, 2005

Hotel WiFine Weinberger comments on the sorry state of hotel WiFi, and the chains that just don't get it: Worst hotel wifi...ever. I'm at the Scottsdale Plaza Resort (trip #2 of my 3 trips to Phoenix over the course of 8 days). The hotel is lovely but their broadband offerings consist of two parts: You can get broadband via a wire in your bedroom for $10 for 24 hours, or you can take advantage of the wifi in the hotel lobby for $10 per use. Yes, per use. Cheaper hotels offer wifi for free. More expensive hotels sometimes, in my experience, make you pay for a wired hookup in your bedroom but provide free wifi in the lobby. Leave it to the... [Joho the Blog] Oh, yes, I forgot in my earlier post-CHI post to mention the hotel I stayed in: the Red Lion, which is just across the street from the convention center in Portland. I could literally look out the my room's windo at the convention center entrance. With the light rail line in between. The official conference hotels were the DoubleTree, two light-rail stops away, and the Hilton, several more stops away toward downtown Portland. Both considerably more expensive than the Red Lion. OK, the amenities were clearly fewer and lower quality at the RL, but the WiFi was free, as opposed to the $10 a day at the DoubleTree. Why pay 40% more for a room and then add a daily charge for Internet connectivity? Makes no sense, I tell you. 9:17:20 PM    Questions? Comments? Flames? []

More CHI reportage Another take on CHI 2005: The State of Computer-Human Interaction. "You might say it's the toughest problem to solve in the modern world of computing; it's certainly the hardest to define. This month more than 1,800 designers, programmers, academics, professional researchers, industrial engineers, artists, and musicians gathered in Portland, Oregon, for another bash at the question, How do you make these monstrous electronics we've created easier and more pleasant to use? Welcome to CHI 2005, the annual meeting of the Association for Computer Machinery's special interest group on Computer-Human Interaction (ACM SIGCHI)." (Quinn Norton - O'Reilly Network) [InfoDesign: Understanding by Design] 9:09:55 PM    Questions? Comments? Flames? []

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