AT&T has purchased Dallas-based WiFi hotspot operator Wayport for a stunning $275 million in cash. The privately held company administers over 10,000 WiFi hotspots for various hotel chains like Wyndham, Marriott Vacation Club and Four Seasons as well as McDonald’s restaurants nationwide.

I caught this bit of acquisition news a little late (it’s been on the PR wires for about fifteen hours now), but I got pinged by Austin Startup on the news early this morning, and it made me wonder if the same deal that’s been proffered to Starbucks customers will also be extended to McDonald’s patrons.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m a coffee-addict, and I’ll use any excuse to hang out in a coffee bar for extended periods of time to suck down that sweet, sweet nectar of the gods.. but as a father who happens to be a web worker, I more often find myself setting up shop at a McDonald’s than the Starbucks across the street. To that end, I’d be far more likely to start up a tab there and set myself up with a McDonald’s Card if it came with two free daily hours of WiFi (and I imagine I’m not the only one in that boat).

Stacey Higgenbotham over at GigaOm sees it as more of a move by AT&T to aleviate the load off the mobile data network than as a value add for McDonald’s customers:

Buying Wayport and offering 20,000 hot spots (including in airports and McDonald’s restaurants) in the U.S. allows AT&T to provide its customers with more places to do their bandwidth-sucking applications. Already, AT&T is willing to let iPhone and BlackBerry users access its Wi-Fi hotspots free at Starbucks. It also means AT&T can hold out a bit longer before deploying its 4G LTE network, which is designed for data.

While that’s likely the rationale being used to justify the purchase, one hopes that they see the opportunity here to continue to expand their reach and build up business for their host partners.

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It would take a lot to pull San Francisco’s bloggers out of their default Starbucks habitats, but with a new, cheap line of espresso drinks and its free Wi-Fi, McDonald’s may well yet lure poor newsfeed slaves to its golden arches. While the constant aroma of fried food may not be the most appealing work environment, neither is the modern-day Starbucks.

When is the last time an outpost of the latte empire captured Starbucks chairman Howard Schultz’s vision of “a ‘third place’ where people gather between home and work and feel some of the romance of the European cafe.” In fact, the ease with which McDonald’s has entered the gourmet-coffee arena proves that Schultz’s “third place” is little more than a fast-food joint. Unfortunately for the ubiquitous coffee joint, Mickey D’s has been in the fast-food game much, much longer.

Why are so many websites painful to look at and worse to use? Web designer Jeffrey Zeldman has found the culprit: the media. Reporters don’t get the Web, he claims, or if they do, their bosses force them to run stories about business deals instead of design. An entertaining conspiracy theory, but entirely false. If anything, there’s been very real pressure from newspaper and magazine publishers to churn out page after page of “special coverage” on design, packaged nicely with high-gloss advertisements. Online editors who closely watch website stats know better: Design stories, while occasionally worth doing, don’t get the clicks. Good design is like pornography: People know it when they see it. They don’t need to be lectured about it.

Source:Valleywag

Men get their coffee 20 seconds earlier than women who order from the same staff in the same coffee shop, according to a recent study written up in Slate. If you’ve ever stood behind iJustine ordering her triple grande nonfat no-whip 6-pump extra-hot white mocha, you know being on camera doesn’t speed up slacker baristas one bit.

“Ted,” the secretive creator of VC-ratings message board TheFunded.com, isn’t hard to reach. I called him on his easy-to-find Skype line: 415 992 8801. He was busy getting ready for the $500-a-seat event tonight, held on the Stanford campus, at which he plans to reveal his identity at 6 p.m. We’ll all know his real name soon enough. I asked him, instead, where the pseudonym “Ted” came from. He told me that early members of TheFunded.com picked it for him, apparently to annoy him, since it was the name of his nemesis. So who’s the Ted who hates “Ted”? Ted Leonsis, the annoying AOL retiree? Ted Dintersmith of Charles River Ventures? Ted Dziuba of sarcastic tech blog Uncov? None of them fit, so I’m hoping you might have a better guess.

Source:Valleywag

Not even the thrill of purchasing the coffee shop’s soundtrack on an iPhone is luring customers into Starbucks. Foot traffic to individual locales is declining. It could be that trendy new coffee bars are leeching away Starbucks brand loyalty. Or it’s the simple fact that there’s essentially one Starbucks per child in some neighborhoods. No one can drink that much coffee.

OK, that’s it. Apple Stores are officially the new Starbucks. They’re everywhere. There’s a new store opening in Brooklyn. There’s a megastore opening on 34th Street in Manhattan. Meanwhile, Apple is opening a superstore in my hometown of Boston to go with the eight already in Massachusetts. There are new stores planned for San Francisco, Zurich, Chicago, Maui, Berlin, Taiwan, another in Manhattan near NYU, two in Paris, at least three in Japan, several in Canada, a few in Australia, some in South Africa, Hong Kong and Munich. At least they’re decent to look at. I shudder to think what Zune kiosks, probably appearing soon at your local megamall, will look like. (Image by sarahbaker)

All the record-label kevetching that the Internet is killing their livelihood may actually be true. But it’s not college kids sharing files in broadband-equipped dorms that they need to worry about. Radiohead is releasing its new album sans label. Novel, but the interesting bit is that the band is giving a choice to consumers: Pay $82 for a super-fancy, boxed edition of In Rainbows, or download the album — for whatever you think it’s worth. This follows a similar campaign by Trent Reznor of Nine Inch Nails who says once his band’s label obligations are completed, it will release digital albums for about $4. Of course it’s not just the music industry that should be concerned.

Amazon.com touted the fact that it had secured Radiohead for its new MP3 store, after the band had long refused to sell on Apple’s iTunes. But how valuable will this relationship be if fans can essentially obtain Radiohead’s music for free, with the band’s blessing?

Source:Valleywag

Starbucks has a rumor response website that it uses to dispel nasty gossip about the company. We wish all companies had this sort of thing so mock scandals can be quashed before they get out of control. [Barron’s]

Apple is promoting its Starbucks partnership by giving away 50 million songs at the chain of coffee shops. The new wireless service “Now Playing” allows iPhone- and iPod Touch-using Starbucks patrons to preview and purchase the music that happens to be playing in their local shop. [AppleInsider]

Sometime actor Andrew Shue, pictured left, is best known for playing Billy Campbell, the most boring character on ’90s nighttime soap opera Melrose Place. Less well known is his status as cofounder of CMI Marketing, the parent company of social networks ClubMom and CafeMom, the latter of which recently received $5 million in funding from VCs Draper Fisher Jurvetson and Highland Capital Partners. Moms or not, we have a great idea for how to get more traffic on the CafeMom site: Post pictures of Andrew Shue in his underwear. We bet he’ll pose for new ones in exchange for just a few extra stock options.

Source:Valleywag

Microsoft is allegedly demanding that startup XBux change its name to the far less hip XBucks, lest consumers be unable to distinguish between its Xbox 360 videogame console and a network that unites athletes with sponsors. Of course, we imagine Starbucks will then have grounds, as it were, to complain. [VentureBeat]