Cybercafes feed hunger for Internet
By Greg Wright
Gannett News Service
Henry Fricke's summer vacation was just getting started.
Here are some cybercafe tips from www.netcafeguide.com, cyberSTOP cafe co-owner Paul Scutt, and Cyber Java cafe manager Alan Delerson: Call ahead to make sure the cafe is open because many have high failure rates. Take passwords you need to access e-mail accounts or edit personal Web pages. A list of favorite Web addresses is another good thing to carry. Find out what connection speeds are offered. Not all cafes have high-speed Internet lines preferred by gamers and folks who want to download music. Check the cafe's rules and equipment availability. Many do not allow customers to download personal software. Others do not let customers download music. However, many cafes try to attract customers with state-of-the art services such as Internet telephone software, Webcams and color printing. Ask about peak times to avoid the rush. Some cafes are busier in the mornings, others cater to the after-work crowd. Take blank disks because some cafes might not sell them.
He said farewell to his job teaching geology at a college and hello to khaki shorts, a loud aloha shirt and a few days catching up with old friends in Washington, D.C.
•
Cybercafe advice
Then the phone call came from his office at Colorado College in Colorado Springs. They needed some information from Fricke pronto. Could he e-mail it?
Fricke, 34, did not have a laptop and a computer wasn't handy, so he went to cyberSTOP cafe (www.cyberstopcafe.com) in Washington's eclectic Dupont Circle neighborhood. On the menu: latte, espresso, pastries and nine computer terminals with fast Internet connections.
"Everything worked out fine," said Fricke, who also uses computers at Kinko's copy shops when away from the office. "The environment of the coffee shop was definitely nicer than Kinko's."
Fricke is among a growing number Americans who have discovered cybercafes — shops where customers can get a jolt of caffeine and a pastry while sending e-mail, instant messaging friends, browsing the Web and downloading music.
More than 4,000 cybercafes have opened worldwide, including more than 475 in the United States, according to Cybercafes .com (www.cybercafes.com), a Web-based cafe finder. And that's just for starters as companies, such as gourmet coffee superstore Starbucks, begin adding Internet access.
But with computers in 60 percent of American homes and laptop and handheld computers becoming must-have accessories, who is using cybercafes?
Four types of users have emerged, according to the experts. They include:
• Tourists, such as Fricke, business travelers and immigrants to the United States.
• Folks who prefer some company when surfing the Web.
"Hermits with Internet access will not take over the world," said Harvard business professor Rosabeth Moss Kanter, author of "Evolve!: Succeeding in the Digital Culture of Tomorrow" ($27.50, Harvard Business School Press). "Indeed, the Net seems to make people crave more social contact — one of the paradoxes of the Internet age."
• People who move around a lot, such as young people living in major cities, but who do not have space for a computer or can't afford one.
"Hollywood is an area where there are a lot of transients," said Alan Delerson, a manager at Los Cyber Java, a Los Angeles Internet cafe that caters to many aspiring actors and actresses. "(Our customers often are) people who don't settle down in any one place."
• Computer users looking for high-speed access.
Visits to a couple of Internet cafes revealed customers who fell into each of these categories.
Dita Matin, a native of Kuwait, uses cyberSTOP's high-speed
Internet connection to instant message her sister who lives in Germany. At $7.99 an hour, she said a cybercafe is cheaper than calling long-distance.
What's more, Matin visits cyberSTOP, which occupies two floors in a Victorian-era row house, to search for news about Iranian and Iraqi troop movements in the Mideast.
Many of Matin's relatives live in Kuwait, where several friends disappeared after Iraq invaded the country a decade ago.
About 35 miles south of Washington, in the Marine Corps town of Quantico, Va., world events are not on Nic Wisecarver's mind. Wisecarver, 22, who is from Reno, Nev., is a Naval Academy graduate and in the past year began a career as a second lieutenant in the Marines.
Sometimes he has to take officers' courses on a computer. Wisecarver can't afford a computer, however, and even if he could he doesn't want to lug one around from base to base. In a few weeks, he has to move to Virginia Beach and then Okinawa.
So Wisecarver goes to General Java's Internet Coffee House, just a few blocks from the docks along the Potomac River, and plunks down $7.50 for an hour of computer time to take online courses and use his free MSN Hotmail account.
Wisecarver said that these are just a couple of the reasons he goes to General Java's.
"I like the girls that work here," he said, sitting with friends at an old-fashioned wooden kitchen table that doubles as a computer desk. "I've become friends with them."
Lisa Green, one of the owners of General Java's, said romance sometimes goes hand in hand with Web surfing at the 4-year-old cafe. "Oh God, yes," she said, laughing. "Several people who met here got married."
More than a decade ago, the United States had just a few cybercafes, usually in tech hot spots such as Seattle and California's Silicon Valley. They were places where engineers and computer programmers went to bond and unwind after work but still stay connected to the Internet, Kanter said.
But cybercafes took off in the rest of the world. In some of the less affluent countries of Africa, Asia and South America, cybercafes are the only place people can get access to computers and the Internet.
