Cars with wifi

Amen to Dave Winer, who ponders wifi-enabled cars. I would take it a step further, though. I want a car that like my Verizon-powered Blackberry or a phone-company issued wireless card, can jump on a network and do its thing almost wherever you are.

As some know, I am prone to typing on my Blackberry while driving (do not try this on your commute!), so I in effect have the capability Dave craves -- though my Blackberry and my car stereo are not connected. But I would so love the ability to pull over to the side of the road during an important conference call, fire up my in-dash laptop, and voila, be connected.

Somewhat related: I went through quite an adventure Monday, when my Comcast connection was on the fritz (for those following the saga via my Tweets, it turns out it was legitimately down, thanks to a fried wire outside... I am now very grateful to the Comcast fix-it-man for his visit yesterday).

I first tried the free wifi at the Dan'l Webster Inn. Great connection, but sitting in the lobby between the front desk and the restaurant was not optimum for the many conference calls I had to attend. The speaker above me was blaring classical music from WFCC, and the grandfather clock next to me chiming on the quarter hour.

This is actually a fairly common challenge. Whether its Panera, or Starbucks, or any other coffee shop that provides wifi -- free or otherwise -- it's hard to find a quiet spot from which you not only can connect your computer, but also from which you can place phone calls without significant background noise that either makes it hard for call participants to hear you, or makes it difficult to concentrate even when you place your phone on mute. The car, however, is usually just fine for such circumstances, until you need to refer to something online that is referenced on the call. That's when you need the wifi.

Back to Monday... because my Verizon Wireless signal was essentially nonexistant at DWI, I couldn't have placed calls even if there was less noise. So I hopped in the car for a couple of calls, meanwhile driving to Mashpee Commons, where they claim to have free wifi. While I could pick up the signal pretty easily, I could not get past the SQL errors on their login page. I finally gave up, went home, and decided to focus on offline work tasks, which actually turned out to be quite a productive day.

The ultimate solution would have been to walk out to my driveway and fire up my car's wifi. I would have had a quiet, connected space within which I could have worked. The only negative? I would have wanted to run the AC, which would have meant cranking the engine, contributing to the demise of the planet with my emissions. So the ultimate solution computer-enabled car would have to be a hybrid or biodiesel, of course.