Home What's Brewing? Apple’s Starbuck’s Brew

Apple’s Starbuck’s Brew

Starbucks and Apple launched their iTunes partnership on Tuesday in both Seattle and New York.

Seattle’s Glenn Fleishman reports that the Apple-Starbucks iTunes offering will work for anyone with an iPhone running the recent 1.1.1 software update, iPod touch, or computer running a recent version of iTunes. When those users are in a Starbucks, they’re able to see what song is currently playing in the store, see recently played songs, and access the entire iTunes Wi-Fi Music Store—a subset of the iTunes Store.It’s an intriguing notion in theory—who hasn’t wandered into a Starbucks, heard a catchy tune, and wondered who the artist is and how you could get your hands on a copy? In practice, however, things didn’t go smoothly on this first day. In order to use the free iTunes access on an iPhone, iPod touch, or computer, you have to connect to the “tmobile” network. Access to the rest of the Internet isn’t included; you need to purchase that separately or use a T-Mobile HotSpot account you might already have in place. If you want to stop using the iTunes Wi-Fi Music Store at Starbucks, and use your included EDGE network service, you have to press the Home button, tap Settings, tap Wi-Fi, tap the blue right-pointing arrow next to “tmobile,” and finally tap Forget This Network. Or you can turn Wi-Fi off entirely in the Settings, Wi-Fi area.

Flieshman does not believe The Starbucks/Apple partnership lives up to the simplicity of browsing and purchase that were promised — first in the lack of superb execution at a launch store; second, in the poor execution of how Wi-Fi and at least portable devices work for connections. [24×7]

Seattle Blogging Pioneer Anita Rowland Passes
Anita Marie Rowland, a cornerstone of Seattle’s early blogging community and a pioneering personal Weblogger, died Monday after a long battle with cancer. She was 51.

As Monica Guzman posted in the Seattle P-I, Rowland was best known among local bloggers as the organizer of the Weblogger meetup group, which meets monthly at Ralph’s Grocery and Deli, has drawn the likes of Robert Scoble and Chris Pirillo and over the years has played a pivotal role in forging, uniting and promoting Seattle’s online community.

Her husband, Jack Bell, posted the last entry on Rowland’s 10-year-old blog journal shortly after her death: “As most of you reading this know, Anita has been battling cancer since 2003. Even her doctors thought we had six months or more left. We didn’t. Anita passed away today at 4:40 in the afternoon, December 10th. She died quietly in Seattle’s Swedish Hospital after a sudden decline over the last few days. I was holding her hand as she passed.”

Rowland’s final post, written Nov. 8, linked to a post about a story another blogger told her child — a story that gave Rowland a “big laugh.”

Karen Anderson, the assistant organizer of the group, announced to members that she will host this month’s meetup at Ralph’s Dec. 19 at 7 p.m. The meetup will mark the group’s fifth anniversary. Friends of Anita are invited to share their memories and discuss the group’s future. [24×7]

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