PlaceSite in NYT

Sean, Jon and Damon McCormick's project PlaceSite made it into a story in today's NYT on cafes throttling back the free WiFi:

Some Cafe Owners Pull the Plug on Lingering Wi-Fi Users

[...] Independent cafes have experienced mixed results with free Wi-Fi, however, according to many cafes and hotspot operators. A cafe's nature can be classified as "office," "social," or a hybrid, according to research by Sean Savage, who recently earned his master's degree from the [School of Information Management and Systems (SIMS) at the] University of California, Berkeley. His thesis focused on the intersection of technology and society in cafes.

In his work, Mr. Savage found that an office cafe discouraged conversation and was filled with people who came alone and were focused on their work. Social cafes have customers who arrive in groups. "If you come into a place like that and it's a particularly busy time, you get dirty looks if you open a laptop and start zoning out," Mr. Savage said. But the hybrid cafes were more complicated. Many of these hybrid cafes, like the Canvas Gallery in San Francisco, are a "different place at different times of day," he said.

Personally, I think cafes should require that you buy something every hour or two. I don't know how to enforce that though. People who think that it's a right for them to sit in a cafe for 6-8 hours and get free network service having only purchased a single drink are delluded.