San Francisco, the narnia for geeks ?

On the plane, my collegue remarked that a lot of new teenager movies are somehow about the interplay between the real and the fantasy world. Think about "The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe", "Arthur et les Minimoys", "The Spiderwick Chronicles", ... The funny thing that occured to me, is that, in a way, I was leaving the daily reality in Belgium and was heading to a geeky fantasy world where:

• everybody has an iphone
  
• Google provides free Wifi with decent coverage and bandwidth
• Starbuck allows you to visit the Itunes Store
• a 3D measuring system in the Levis Store scans you body and manufactures a ideally fitting Levis for you in the store
• ....

It was time for some reality checking. I first went to the Levis store on Union Square. No 3D machine at all. Somebody in the store had to measure me in the old fashioned way.


On our first free day in San Francisco, we took the caltrain to Mountain View. The idea was to walk to the Googleplex and check out the Google Wifi service. When we stepped out of the caltrain, I found the Google signal. As we walked to the Googleplex, the signal strength was fluctuating. So using a ipod touch as a GPS is maybe a bit to far streched. I guess you really need an Iphone for that.


I also often visit a Starbucks for a Café Latte or so. In most Starbucks, a screen is showing what Itunes tracks they are playing. The idea is that if you're interested in the song, you can take out your iphone or ipod touch and buy the song. Unfortunatly, my ipod touch can not make a connection with the Itunes Store. A Starbucks logo shows up in the left bottom corner but a message appears that says "Can't make connection to the Itunes Store". I tried it in several Starbucks with no success. I even bought a Starbucks Card. You can deposit some money on the card upfront and use it for later purchases. When I asked to the barista if the card was necessary to go visit the Itunes Store online they didn't know what I was talking about. They knew I had to buy a T-mobile card to use the wifi. That was already something. I guess Starbucks baristas will need some training as Starbuck will become the media outlet in the near future. Read the interesting article "Starbucks Deal Brewed with AT&T Has Hints of Apple" to understand that.