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)

Kelly Hildebrandt – Thumbs Down

On the front page of Yahoo! there is a link to a very important news story about Kelly Hildebrandt marrying Kelly Hildebrandt.  No, she’s not marrying herself, she’s marrying a guy with the same exact name.  They met on Facebook when she sent a message to him saying, “Hey, I saw we have the same name, and I thought it was kind of cool, Just wanted to say hi I guess. LOL.”  Three weeks later they met in Florida, and now they decided to get married in October – only eight months after they met.

 

The Kelly Hildebrants. (NBC Miami)

Not only is this a bad idea because of the quick turnaround, but think about how inconvenient things are going to be for their family and friends.  Every piece of mail will need to be examined to see who it is really for.  Each person calling their house and asking for “Kelly” will have to explain themselves.  I think that the stress and just plain weirdness of being married to someone of the same name will be too much to handle and the marriage won’t last.  Here’s a link to the article.

 

On a related note, I did a Facebook search to see if there was anyone with my name that I wanted to marry.  The results weren’t too promising. I don’t think I’ll be marrying any of them in eight months, but who really knows for sure?  Here were the results:

Summer Food Myths – Thumbs Down

According to an ABC News video on Yahoo!, some Summer foods aren’t as healthy as you might think.  The video focused on food that people assumed was healthier than a classic summer dish, such as a turkey burger rather than a hamburger.  So you don’t have to watch the video for yourself, I’ll break down what they explained.

Turkey Burger: While you might think a turkey burger is healthy for you, it still has a lot of fat.  As much as 17 grams, which the nutritionist in the video explains is as much as 4 pads of butter.  Gross!  She explains that a better healthy alternative for the grill would be shrimp and vegetable kabobs.  Since shrimp are 70% water, they are very low in calories (about 5 calories per large shrimp).

Soft Pretzels: One soft pretzel has 500 calories and as much carbohydrates as six slices of bread.  That’s as many calories as five servings of cotton candy.  The nutritionist says that a good alternative is french fries, but only if they are made from real potatoes and fried in vegetable oil.  (Somehow i don’t think she means fries from McDonalds).  She explains that the potatoes have several nutrients and a small serving size will have about half as many calories as the pretzel.

Club Sandwich: By the pool, you might be tempted to go with a club sandwich over a burger because you think it’s healthier.  Don’t do it!  With the mayo, bacon, and cheese, a club sandwich has about 800 calories, or the equivalent of two burgers and a six chicken nuggets.  Personally, I’d take the two burgers and nuggets, but the nutritionist said that she’d go with a chilled potato salad instead because cooked potatoes served cold are a good source of resistant starch, which “revs up” our calorie burning ability.  

Frozen Yogurt: While fro-yo is lower in calories than regular ice cream, a serving still has 40 grams of sugar, which is twice as much as the suggested amount for a whole day.  That’s sixteen cubes of sugar!  Instead, the nutritionist suggests the dark chocolate dipped strawberries, which has only 35 calories and 4 grams of sugar per strawberry.  Also, strawberries have a lot of other great nutritional value as well with vitamin C, fiber, and antioxidants that you won’t get from the frozen yogurt.  

So I hope that corrected some myths about healthy summer food.  Now I feel like making some shrimp kabobs for dinner tonight.  Here’s a link to the video.

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/