EightBlack.

It’s called wireless. Ask your teenage child to install it for you. Apple - that’s the iPod people, make it even easier with a gadget called an Airport. See photo.

Apart from the fact that you’ll have to go through some initial pain talking to someone called Suresh or Mahit or something like this in India when ordering, the whole ordeal can probably be done in a week.

All those people with laptops will thank you for it.

They might even sit in your cafe for a bit longer, drinking their chai lattes or double decaf whatever you call those over-priced coffee substitute drinks.

If you ask me, you should only be allowed to serve espresso, double-espresso or if you must, long blacks. All the other coffee drinks are for homosexuals. Or people who still live with their parents.

Anyway.

This wireless thing. It’s important. Pull your fingers out and install it. It’s good for business. Trust me.

And if you really have to - you can charge for it. It will piss a few people off, but having the service there is better than none at all, even if you want to be a cheap arse and make people pay.

Obviously the Westin has vision impaired people working for them. I think that’s the politically correct term for “blind” nowadays.

Anyway.

There we all were. All 300+ of us at the opening session of the Omniture Summit. Matt Belkin, the Head Of Omniture Consulting was struggling through his presentation waiting for the wireless in the ballroom to catch up to his requests.

It wasn’t like he was waiting for a YouTube clip to download or a Microsoft security patch.

Nope. All he was trying to do was demo some basic features of the new interface for SiteCatalyst - Omnitures’ core analytics platform.

It must jack the yanks off unbelievably when they come into town and then hit our archaic wireless infrastructure. You’d think that the Westin had just installed wireless and was sort of coming to terms with how much bandwith they might need.

Don’t you think by now the Head of Engineering for the hotel (any hotel) would just look at the order form on the wireless request and tick the box that said “warning, this capacity is not really recommended for private use. Typically only reserved for military installations, organisations wishing to conduct any sort of a jihad or suitable for a group of teenagers”.

Or something like that.

If it was me, I’d flood the joint with radio-waves. I’d make people sign a waiver when they came into the hotel saying that if they were pregnant or needed to operate heavy machinery later that day, then it was recommended that they shouldn’t enter. Or something like this.

When I was at Blogworld in Vegas, the organisers spent US$65k over the duration of the event on wireless base stations and more importantly, wireless capacity. They were in every session room, the hallways, the main lobby - just everywhere. There was no issue. And no presenter sat looking dumbfounded at their screen waiting for a page to load.

Now I know I have a.d.d. My 7 year old son gave it to me.

But in this day and age, hotels like the Westin (and the Hilton isn’t much better) need to pull their lazy ass fingers out and spend the money on the infrastructure they need.

Before we all go mad.

Apparently, the airlines (with the help of Boeing) have started to install wifi onboard. I just read a guy’s blog where he was on a Korean Airlines flight, and able to use GMail, normal web mail, VOiP and Video Streaming. All while hurtling through the air at 500+ miles an hour. And onboard Korean Airlines!

If you ask me, the only reason Korean Air has wifi antenna’s fitted to the rooftop of their planes is because they used to have a habit of crashing into the sides of mountains. Maybe wifi will help the rescue teams talk with the survivors via instant messenger.

Anyway. Back to the hotels.

Enough with your silly turn down services, your coconut butter herbal shampoo, your heavenly beds, your goddam TV’s that I need to call my children at home to teach me how to use.

I want wireless. I don’t want to pay $24 bucks a day to use it (hide it in the room rate if you have to). And I want it to work everywhere.

Matt Belkin did a solid job. He laughed it off. He shouldn’t have. But he did.

There was a lot of digital folk today at the Summit. Some of Australia’s largest companies were represented. C’mon. Let’s get serious. It’s 2008. Figure this shit out already.

Am I being pedantic? I hope not.

I don’t get this.

Maybe retailers, restaurants, coffee shops and any other business who have direct face to face with humans are all scared. Of what I’m not sure.

It just staggers me in this day and age, and with this thing called the internet gaining momentum by the second, that wireless is not commonplace.

During the last month, I’ve been away on holiday and visited plenty of cafes, pubs and restaurants. Not one had free wireless. And the place we rented for the Xmas period didn’t have wireless either.

Some of the cynics out there might say - “get a life, you don’t need wireless at the local coffee shop, bakery, supermarket or restaurant or when you’re on holiday”.

Why not?

And what gets up my frock even more, is that when you do find a wireless network, capitalism well and truly takes hold, and the owners of the establishment want to charge you the equivalent of $15,800 per minute to use the damn thing. Or something like that.

Look, it should be free. Absorb the pitiful charge (like $80-100 bucks a month) or simply charge more for something else.

McDonalds, Starbucks, independent cafe owners, bars and pubs - why don’t you do a test and see what happens to customer satisfaction if you offer it for free for a month. And Qantas, take some of that billion dollars you made this year and flood the freakin’ airport and lounges with the stuff. With your buying power, surely it can’t be that hard.

Unfortunately for those technophobes, purists or members of any movement that protects small rodents that live in even smaller ponds, the internet is not going to go away. We need it. Just like mobile phones.

You can turn it off when you die. But for the time being, let use it and access it everywhere we need.