Starbucks, iTunes and my iPod touch

Well, since Saturday’s are a bit more leisurely (during the work week there are always 100 people to talk to at the local Starbucks) I was able to take a few min this morning and try out the iTunes @ Starbucks that was just rolled out. The concept is pretty cool and the implementation is nice enough. I think the filtering they added to recognize the iTunes request without requiring a tmobile account was horribly slow but once it authenticated me it was pretty quick accessing content.

What I liked:

  • It was slick being able to see the recently played list
  • I can certainly see that this would be cool for extended travel (like my sabbatical this summer when I was gone for weeks) for getting new music without needing access to my main PC back home

What I disliked:

  • Slow connection time - assuming this really is the connection speed I can expect then this is certainly not something I’d do while running in and out
  • It did confirm that I hate all music ever played at Starbucks. Being able to see the now playing and recently played list was awesome and a great marketing idea if I thought any of the music was interesting.

I am curious to see if they allow podcast and other non-paid downloads or larger content like video. That would be awesome. You’re talking to someone over coffee about the shows they watched last night and you log-on and purchase it right then. Maybe I’m in the minority on that being useful… but I might do that since I often stockpile content and then use downtime to catch up.

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