Last Friday I had 2 appointments, and like most entrepreneurs they were at coffee shops. Each shop offered WiFi, with their own access method and process – which is more of the norm than the exception today.

My first stop was Caribou Coffee who offers free WiFi, providing you buy something. The barista will give you a code upon request that you will need to enter into the default Web page that comes up when you log into your computer. The code is only good for one hour, but you can get another code upon request. My guess is that it is at the discretion of the staff, and buying more should help you get a new code.

Starbucks was my second stop, and they use T-Mobile’s HotSpot service. As I am a T-Mobile customer, I pay an extra $10 a month for HotSpot on top of the $20 I pay for data service for my Treo smartphone. If I didn’t have T-Mobile or its data service, I would have to pay a daily fee under $10 or a monthly fee around $30.

Before I left for my meetings I saw this article on the cost of unused WiFi service, and I could relate to it. Had my meetings been elsewhere, I may have had to pay a different way, or not at all if I went to a forward-thinking locale. There is certainly money to be made from Internet access, and it makes sense to be forward-thinking for how you yourself will use the Internet and plan ahead as to where you go and how you connect.

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Congrats to my good friend and colleague Eric Patel and all of the team at the DJ Mix Academy in Boston for their mention in this Sunday’s New York Times! They were mentioned in the article, Mix, Scratch and Spin: You, Too, Can Become a D.J.

DJ Mix Academy is the only school in New England where you can, in an interactive classroom setting, learn to DJ. Most DJs out there learned in college or on their own. The instructors are all accomplished DJs who not only share techniques but their stories, which are usually worth more than the tuition price! They have extended their programs with the Global DJ Mix Academy, where you can receive CDs, DVDs and instructional manuals and self-study. To extend this virtual campus, I am proud to be still involved with DMA as “interactive media director” and consult them on the Internet, all the while listening in on those DJ stories.

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Am I a nerd? Isolating my technical knowledge, I would consider myself a moderate nerd. My guess is that friends and clients would rate it much higher. I have always considered myself a generalist, balancing both technical and business knowledge, and making me the Internet professional I am today!

So I could not resist taking a Nerd Test that I read about on Cshel’s blog. And how did I do? I got a 67. I attribute the score to my lack of knowledge of the periodic table, owning a simple calculator and not having a biohazard logo in my bedroom (hey, it doesn’t really match my wife’s décor!).

Give the short survey a try – how did you do?

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Just as I was pondering how I should categorize all of my blog feeds into folders in Google Reader, I got tagged by Cartoon Barry on how I use Google Reader for reading and managing RSS feeds.

As I mentioned before, I have only used Google Reader for managing feeds, and tried to keep that number to around 200 – and it is at 217 today, with a few added and deleted over the last several weeks. The opening message on the Trends page of the Reader states, “From your 217 subscriptions, over the last 30 days you read 2,862 items, starred 1 items, and shared 0 items.” Wow, that many?

Here’s what my reading looks like over the last 30 days:

Trying to maintain a balance of work and life, I don’t read feeds as much on the weekends, and if I do it is using the Reader on my Treo, which by its nature and design is much slower than reading in a browser.

The times of the day that I read most often did not surprise me:

For those who know me, I am not a morning person, so I rise early, get caffeinated and catch up on email and feeds prior to the start of the work day.

For the days of the week that I read, this also was not surprising:

Some days it seems like there are more feeds than others, but that is just a gut feel. I know recently my postings have been on a less regular schedule, and that has been more related to the projects I have been working on.

This is the first time I have been tagged, so now I really feel like a blogger! To keep this going, I will tag the following people – Daniel Sitter, Matt Maldre and David Dalka. I’m not sure what readers they use, but neither did Cartoon Barry.

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While taking a break from the keyboard over the holiday weekend, I went for a walk and saw this object and took a photo of it.

It is a barrier in the parking lot of the University of Wisconsin – Fox Valley in Menasha, WI. There were several of these barriers that were comprised of what appeared to be a planter with a large PVC pipe with quotations.

The quotation reads, “The biggest obstacle to change is a successful past. Unknown”

Unfortunately this person is unknown, as I would like to know what experiences in life drew them to this conclusion.

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