DIGITAL SPIN:
At the Café -- It's a T-1, Hon
By Theta Pavis
Special to WHYY
Deep inside PoliticalFest, a secret was waiting to be discovered.
 It was almost 7 p.m. when I dashed inside the Convention Center to check out the presidential exhibits that have been on display there all week. PoliticalFest is part trade show, part historical Americana. The place was hopping, but I strode right past the replica of Air Force One, around a singing choir, and through a display of inaugural gowns.
I wanted to check out the CyberCafé.
While there was no coffee in the café (and I could have used one), there were about 50 computers.
Now, I've visited a lot of these cyber joints before -- in Toronto, New York and even Montana. A new café just opened in Philadelphia the other day.
But this café was different. For one thing, it was free.
The café was sponsored by Voter.com, a news site that has recruited Carl Bernstein as its editor. Voter.com has had a big presence at the Republican National Convention, and hosting the café was another way for the company to get its name out.
The PCs were, of course, all set to bring users directly to Voter.com's home page. It's full of useful information that any political news junkie could love. The company has been doing daily polls during the RNC, for example, and lots of outfits -- including CNN -- have been citing them.
But I wanted to see what other sites I could pull up, so I went Web surfing. The connection was so fast, though, that I found myself wishing I'd left more time to hang out in the café.
It's not everyday you get free access to a lightening fast connection.
This is the problem with the Internet. It can be a lot of fun to be online, but waiting for pages to load is a major drag. Having a super connection makes the whole Internet experience different, and more like interactive television.
Think about it. When you're home on the sofa watching TV and want to see what else is on, you can use your remote control and flip through 50 channels in a second.
That's sort of like the experience I had at the café, so I went in search of someone who could tell me what sort of connection they'd arranged at the Convention Center and why it was so fast.
The first woman I asked seemed to be a Philadelphia volunteer. She thought the connection might be DSL (digital subscriber line) but went to check with someone. While she was gone I probably visited about 10 different sites.
"It's a T-1, hon," she reported back a few minutes later.
On my way out, I stopped to talk to Douglas Smith, a Voter.com spokesman. Actually, it turned out that it was DSL.
Most people who have computers at home these days and want a fast connection can choose either DSL or a cable modem. But plenty of us are still using a dial up modem, so an industrial-strength line like they had at the café was a joy.
"We've had unbelievable traffic on our site," Smith told me. Most of the people coming into the café were staying for about 15 - 20 minutes.
Paul Strasko was one of them.
Strasko works in Philadelphia but lives in Delaware. He didn't attend the GOP convention this week, but he stopped in to check out PoliticalFest and, like me, ended up hanging out in the café.
"It's very nice," he said, flipping through page after page of online content. "Very pleasant."
Strasko works for CDI corporation, a technical services outsourcing company. He's got computers at work, two at home, and, like me, was lugging around his laptop as well.
"I have a dial up modem," he sighed. "It's embarrassing."
I can relate.
Turns out Strasko and I have another thing in common: I think we'll both be looking into getting a DSL connection next week.
More Digital Spin: Ridge Spotlights
Technology
By Patrick McGee, of Technophilly.com
Governor Ridge kicked off the convention by appearing at an event at the Franklin Institute that highlights the state's technology. (Read the full story.)
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