Thumbs Up – Free WiFi for the Holidays

Google announced yesterday that they will be offering free wireless at 47 airports across the United States between November 10 and January 15, 2010.  The only catch is that when you log on to the internet, you are asked if you want to try some of Google’s services or donate to a charity.  What a small price to pay for Internet!  Oftentimes when I fly, I wish I could get WiFi at the airport to check my email and such, but it is almost never worth the cost, oftentimes in the $10 range, for a short period of time.

Other Internet movers and shakers will also be giving away free WiFi during the holiday season.  Ebay will be offering free WiFi on Delta flights (the first page users see when they log on is the Ebay site – so they can do their holiday shopping while flying).  Bing is offering free WiFi in certain airports and hotels, although they haven’t announced which ones specifically (as long as the user performs one search in Microsoft’s search engine).  And Yahoo is giving away WiFi in New York’s  Times Square for the next year.

Even though some cynics might bring up that these Internet giants are using free WiFi only to get more customers to use their services (and they are most definitely correct), it is hard for most people to be upset with free WiFi!

Below is a list of the airports where travelers can receive free WiFi from Google:

Austin (AUS)
Baltimore (BWI)
Billings (BIL)
Boston (BOS)
Bozeman (BZN)
Buffalo (BUF)
Burbank (BUR)
Central Wisconsin (CWA)
Charlotte (CLT)
Des Moines (DSM)
El Paso (ELP)
Fort Lauderdale (FLL)
Fort Myers/SW (RSW)
Greensboro (GSO)
Houston (HOU)
Houston Bush (IAH)
Indianapolis (IND)
Jacksonville (JIA)
Kalamazoo (AZO)
Las Vegas (LAS)
Louisville (SDF)
Madison (MSN)
Memphis (MEM)
Miami (MIA)
Milwaukee (MKE)
Monterey (MRY)
Nashville (BNA)
Newport News (PHF)
Norfolk (ORF)
Oklahoma City (OKC)
Omaha (OMA)
Orlando (MCO)
Panama City (PFN)
Pittsburgh (PIT)
Portland (PWM)
Sacramento (SMF)
San Antonio (SAT)
San Diego (SAN)
San Jose (SJC)
Seattle (SEA)
South Bend (SBN)
Spokane (GEG)
St. Louis (STL)
State College (SCE)
Toledo (TOL)
Traverse City (TVC)
West Palm Beach (PBI)

BlindSearch – Thumbs Up

Thumbs Up: With the release of Microsoft’s new search engine, Bing, I’m interested to see if it is actually more effective than the dominant search engine, Google. Thankfully, Michael Kordahi designed a cool experiment to test which search engine works the best without branding. Type in something to the search bar and results for your query show up in three columns from Google, Bing, and Yahoo without being able to see the search engine’s logo. So far I’ve found that Google tends to give me the best results. Find out which search engine works best for you: http://blindsearch.fejus.com/