Today was the first day I was able to do some real work in the park, Brooklyn’s Prospect Park that is, and I must say it was pretty nice: watching people with their kids and dogs, hearing the breeze in the branches, feeling the sunshine on my shoulder, feeling like John Denver (well not exactly).

The 2 biggest drawbacks were the upload speed, which I’ll complain about (nicely) and the glare on the glossy screen of my MacBook. Coincidentally I received a 3M privacy filter that I had ordered from Amazon.com today and was pretty disappointed to find that the dimensions did not fit my screen at all even though it is supposed to be for 13.3″ laptops. I just found another one from ViewGuard that’s even more expensive but seems to be made specifically for 13.3″ wide screens and glare reduction.

As another coincidence the Lifehacker blog today has a post about an anti-glare hood for using laptops outside. I’m not sure if I would want to use that thing, it looks kind of weird, but if it works and eliminates 100% of glare then what the heck!

I should mention that while the glare was pretty annoying it did not make it impossible to use the laptop. I was there for only 2 hours, any longer would have been unbearable. The problem wasn’t so much from over head sunlight but from reflections of objects facing the screen, mostly me. The fact that I was wearing all black with long sleeves made the situation a lot better than it would have been otherwise though I couldn’t really angle the screen in a way that would only reflect my upper body and none of the sky behind me. These observations lead me to believe that something to cut the reflectivity of the screen like a glare filter would be more useful to me than a hood to shade it from over head light.

Other must-haves while working outside in the park are the already mentioned external battery from Batterygeek.net and the Kennsinton cable lock. There are no outlets in the park, and this is Brooklyn after all… I don’t want anybody to be tempted to snatch my Mac while I’m using it out in the open!

I found this post at Web Worker Daily that sparked a very interesting discussion about whether or not it’s appropriate to do your work at an internet cafe.

There are quite a range of opinions with the opposite ends of the spectrum represented on the one hand by this comment:

How hopeless! You go to the cafes to relax and chat. Not effing work and tap away on your damn laptop.

and on the other hand by this:

Disagreeing with most comments on this — cafes like this are a “third space” for many of us. Not work, not home, but public yet available for working/surfing. One is “alone together”, which is often a very productive position indeed.
Many people feel more able to work with the background noise that comes from being in a public place, yet none of the folks around you are cow-orkers who will interrupt. Plus there is coffee. Bliss.

That’s my idea of bliss also, if you throw in a full kitchen with table service!

Ironically enough some negative reviews that you read online for venues are actually very positive from the point of view of the cafe commuter. Here’s a review for one of my favorite places to work:

Well, Supercore is a definitely cool place, but watch out for the worker-bee/laptop vibe on weekdays. I went there with some friends to hang out on a weekday morning, and got looks from the waitress because we were sitting around and talking. What are coffee shops coming to? Guess you have to keep the cappucinos flowing, or do some important web-surfing to hang out in this joint.

from freewilliamsburg.com

and here’s another:

There is nothing here but laptops. It looks like an office inside, just rows of laptops. . . with a coffee counter. How is it that someone can spend $2.00 on a cup of coffee and be entitled to take up space at the tables for a whole day? Bad place for a conversation because your the only ones talking and its weird, everyone else is “working”. What happened to the days when cafes were social?

from yelp.com

Obviously these are 2 places that would be ideal to spend some hours with your laptop. On the other hand some people work regular jobs, and when they’re not at work the last thing they want to see is a bunch of people busy at work. There are a number of bars in Brooklyn that now offer free wifi but I’ve never been to one where I didn’t feel a vibe like “this is a place to socialize and get drunk, not work on a freakin’ laptop!”

Anyway this is an issue I’m trying to sort out here: distinguishing between places that just have free wifi and those where you’re actually welcome to hang out and do some work for a few hours. I wish venues would be more up front about it and advertise as ‘worker/student friendly’ or something like that but instead you have to rely on more subtle cues, though like at the place mentioned in the second review above they have power strips plugged in all over the place so it’s pretty obvious they don’t mind you hanging out for longer than your laptop’s battery life.

Hi my name is Eric Kittell and I am a freelance web developer. I recently traded in my Mac G5 desktop for a MacBook laptop so that I could work in other places besides my home office. It can get kind of lonely here not to mention the boredom of sitting in the same room, with the same view, same walls, day after day… blah!

I am starting this blog to share some of my experiences as a ‘cafe commuter’ as well as recommend different products, devices and software that I have found to make my life easier. I also want to setup a database of locations that are conducive to the cafe commuter lifestyle. There are many wifi hotspots around and many lists of hotspots also but just because a place has wifi doesn’t mean you’ll feel comfortable or even be allowed to work there for any length of time.

So then there’s my first post. I feel I should write something inspirational, like cafe commuters of the world unite! (lol) Anyway we’ll see how this thing turns out. I think more and more people will take up this lifestyle while more venues will begin to cater to us and our special needs.