Starbucks has opened a store without its name in the title with free Wi-Fi: In Seattle, the home of that is right and good (and trendy) about hot and cold beverage consumption made by the hands of humans, Starbucks opened 15th Avenue Coffee and Tea. The Starbucks name is relatively hidden, apparently in small type here and there. The store doesn't sell frappucinos, it has a manual espresso machine, and it focuses on specialty tastes and custom tweaking of coffee. There's a Clover there, of course. You can read about the store in greater detail via the link above (Seattle Post Intelligencer) or in this story at the Seattle Times.
And it has free Wi-Fi. My colleague Brian Chin tweets that there's an attwifi network name, but there's no password required for access. Because the store apes independent and small-chain coffee shops in the vicinity, Starbucks is echoing the free Wi-Fi in those stores as well.
The store is near Victrola Coffee and Art, a store I wrote about in 2005 for this site and the New York Times when the owners at that time chose to turn off Wi-Fi on the weekends. (The WNN story was the most-commented article I've ever had on the site, except for a thread complaining about Linksys firmware.)
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