Starbucks Brings Wireless Charging to its Coffee Shops

After a test in Boston, Starbucks is bringing wireless phone charging to ten coffee shops in Silicon Valley next month.Starbucks is bringing wireless cellphone charging to a handful of coffee shops in Silicon Valley next month.

Starbucks is hoping to jumpstart the wireless charging industry as it did with WiFi over ten years ago.

For both tests, Boston and Silicon Valley, Starbucks is using technology compatible with the  Power Matters Alliance, one of the three wireless charging standards.

Starbucks has partnered with Duracell Powermat, a key product behind the PMA standard. The main competitor, is the Qi standard, which AT&T and several tech companies. Since few people have charging sleeves, Starbucks is planning on giving away charging sleeves to frequent customers.

Google Will Soon Power Starbucks WiFi

Today, Google has announced it will be teaming up with Google to bring 7,00 of its coffee shops faster WiFi. This new partnership will have Google replace AT&T as the official provider of WiFi, in store. This will offer customers much faster WiFi speeds.
For Starbucks stores in Google fiber regions, Google will wire up the coffee houses with the lightning fast internet. The roll out will begin this August and will take approximately 18 months. The SSID of the network will also change from "attwifi" to "GoogleStarbucks".

The Revolution of Ticketing

Say you were going on a vacation to Orlando just 10 years ago. You had to go to the airline ticket office, and buy your ticket there. Then just a few years ago, the airlines invented the Quick Ticket Kiosk. First you buy your ticket online, then you show up at the airport, check in, and get your boarding pass from a simple little machine. It was truly the next big thing of the airline industry. But then came the ability to print your boarding pass at home. The lines at the kiosks were greatly reduced. And now, we are at the next stage of evolution for not just the airline industry; but for the movie and transportation industries. This stage of evolution is mobile ticketing. The customer can buy and load up their boarding pass all from their small phone. For example, most major airlines are now rolling out smartphone apps that allow customers to have an electronic boarding pass. And this is also starting to roll out in mass transit. The Boston commuter rail network is running a pilot for electronic tickets on most of its lines. This really shows that focus of ticketing is really heading towards all electronic. This is the main reason for the creation of Apple's Passbook app and Google's Google Wallet; let customers have tickets and cards in a neat mobile app. And that's all that's been happening. Everyone is coming out with electronic ticketing. Fandango, jetBlue, United, American, and the list goes on of all of the big guys who have mobile ticketing in their systems.
And it's not just the fact that the tools are available that makes customers want to come. It's the fact that it's so easy that makes everyone flock to new technology. And hopefully, the interfaces will only become more intuitive and easier to understand as the ticketing industry evolves further. But for now, I enjoy pulling up my Fandango movie ticket on my phone, paying for my Strawberry Frappucino at Starbucks with my Starbucks card in Passbook, having my Starwood Preferred Guest card on my phone, and my jetBlue plane ticket on my phone. What more can I ask for? :)