Austin gets online in the great outdoors
Austin outfitting downtown parks with free wireless Internet
11:44 AM
CDT on Saturday, May 22, 2004
By CHRISTY HOPPE / The Dallas Morning News
AUSTIN –
This no-starch city has come up with an answer to the office blues and
coffee shop pallor.
Aiming at those who like being plugged-in, Austin is making it easy to
get unplugged by outfitting downtown parks with wireless technology.
It's all about connecting to the Internet while connecting
with nature.
(Don't tell my bosses in Dallas, but that's what I'm doing right now in
Republic Square Park. This office has a ceiling of live oak boughs and
carpet of green grass. There's a great water-feature and a nice ground-floor
view.)
Republic Square Park, tucked between Antone's house of blues and Whole
Foods headquarters, began beaming people aboard this week. It is believed
to be the first park in Texas and one of the few in the nation to offer
free Internet access to anyone who stops by with a radio-card equipped
laptop or hand-held computer.
Three other downtown parks will soon provide the same wireless service.
Eventually, Austin techies will be able to send e-mail between softball
innings at most parks in the city.
"This is about giving back to the people," said Jay Stone of
the Austin Parks and Recreation Department.
"This is about giving free access and telling people to come out
and enjoy your parks," Mr. Stone said.
He himself took his Palm Pilot out to the park this week and answered
a few e-mails and did a little work.
"The
people of Austin love their parks and their high-tech gadgets, and we
just thought of a way to bring them together," Mr. Stone said.
Jack Lupton and his golden retriever Allie went to the park recently.
No Frisbees or tennis balls. They sat side-by-side on the grass peering
into a laptop screen.
Mr. Lupton, a Web programmer, was not so much escaping work as looking
for it.
"I'm a victim of the dot-com bust," he said while scanning job
postings and sending out e-mails.
Without Internet service at home, Mr. Lupton has been using coffee shops,
but the new wireless park seemed a better place.
"This gets me out, so it's good. You meet nice people," he said.
And, of course, this office allows pets.
Richard MacKinnon, president of Austin Wireless City Project, worked with
the city and nonprofit City Park Foundation to unwire the whole thing.
The technology costs about $3,000 so far are being underwritten by Schlotzsky's.
"It's part of our overall mission to get people into parks,"
Mr. MacKinnon said.
Austin has about 90 free "hot spots," in places like hotels
and restaurants. A recent survey by Intel Corp. named Austin the fourth-most
wireless city, despite its microchip size compared with the leaders –
San Francisco Bay area, Orange County, Calif., and Washington, D.C.
Wireless parks have been tried in a handful of other cities, such as New
York, but the commercial-free aspect of the Austin experiment is fairly
unusual, Mr. MacKinnon said.
In Dallas, officials said they have no plans to create wireless city parks.
Mr. MacKinnon said the week-long experience in Austin has shown him that
there are two types of users: "One, those who will want a change
of pace from all the indoor venues already all over town.
"Then I think we'll find a whole new group not used to hot spots.
I call them drive-by users," he said.
People in the second group drive up, sometimes double-parking, then appear
to shoot off an e-mail before revving off again without so much as rolling
down the window.
"It's more Dallas, isn't it?" Mr. MacKinnon said.
The great
thing about technology, he said, is that people, regardless of how it's
intended, will use it in a way that suits them best.
"The overall mission is to get them access to the Internet, whether
that be barefoot in the park or sitting in their car," he said.
e-mail: choppe@dallasnews.com
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