THIRD PLACES: Good article by Catherine Donaldson-Evans on FOXNews.com about "Third Places", an term which grew out of The Great Good Place, a book by Ray Oldenburg, was advanced by Virginia Postrel in her book, The Future and its Enemies, and lately has been picked up by Glenn Reynolds on his Instapundit site, and in a December 2001 Wall Street Journal article (reprinted here).

Donaldson-Evans says that:

The offices-away-from-the-office are frequently the ubiquitous chain coffee shops like Starbucks, or the loungy café bookstores like Borders and Barnes & Noble, where no one hovers over customers — even if they buy nothing and stay for hours.

Starbucks has actually capitalized on and encouraged the trend by making some of its stores "wireless." Patrons who subscribe to a Voicestream plan can bring their wireless-enabled laptops or pocket PCs to some Starbucks locations, boot up and connect to the Internet.

"We’ve known for quite some time that folks use our locations for work. People really tailor it to their needs," said Starbucks spokeswoman Megan Behrbaum. "We’ve heard of photo-desk folks in Starbucks uploading their images to the [news]papers."

University of Tennessee law professor Glenn Reynolds, a Foxnews.com contributor who has written about the phenomenon, said people have for centuries had the need for a "third place" to gather, other than home or work. And there's something about cafes that gets the ideas percolating.

Incidentally, the one problem I've had with Starbucks' wireless Internet service, is that often the clerks don't even know that they have the service! We have two Starbucks close to our house, and one knows they have wireless, the other is clueless. Fortunately, MobileStar, Starbucks' wireless 'Net provider, publishes an extensive list of wired Starbucks, and has fairly helpful customer support people.