A suggestion from a reader:
As community leaders meet to discuss plans for the future, preserving the past, and helping to enhance Crozet’s business independence – how about developing free internet access as is available in downtown Charlottesville? My husband and I are both in lines of work where the computer is our office and it would really be great to be able to go to a coffee shop or park bench to tap out e-mails, read the news, etc., while being in the company of our Crozet neighbors. See the following link as a reference: Charlottesville Free Wireless
Perhaps the new library will help to facilitate this notion?
I think this is a fantastic idea. The Jefferson-Madison Regional Library offers free wireless. If the new library were to provide free wireless in all directions – wow!
I’ve broached the idea of a regional wireless cloud once before. Wireless access for The Square would be fantastic. Say what you will, providing wireless is a form of drawing people together, of encouraging community. Even if this interaction is fleeting, as we say a quick hello and return to our laptops. It is about the community.
Unfortunately, Crozet does not yet have a coffee shop, and if we get one at the new Clover Lawn Shoppes, it might be a Starbucks, with their ridiculous pay-for-use T-Mobile internet, another reason I won’t go there.
This note from a reader provides me the perfect opportunity to correct one thing from the recent profile done on realcrozetva by the Crozet Gazette. The saturation of internet access in Albemarle is around 75-80%, not broadband saturation; but we are getting there!
While we’re imagining this, let’s add that ideally the coffee/tea “shoppe” would be next to the bus stop for the Crozet/Charlottesville loop as envisioned in the master plan:
“Bus Transit: Two types of transit improvements were considered for the Crozet area – a circulator
system that serves trips beginning and ending in Crozet and a connector for trips between Crozet and
Charlottesville. Express bus service, most likely in the form of Bus Rapid Transit (BRT), on Interstate 64
appears to be the most economically viable service given the ridership potential. The route could begin in
downtown Crozet, travel south and west along Crozet Avenue and Route 250, then use I-64 and the US 29
Bypass to reach the University of Virginia and downtown Charlottesville. The local circulator service
could include two routes that converge in downtown. The first route could travel east/west along Route
240 and Main Street into downtown. The second route could travel north/south from the employment
center along Western Avenue to downtown. Each route could require two buses to attain a 15 minute
headway (time between buses).”
Regarding wireless – this is an interesting FTC article about just this.
“The Jefferson-Madison Regional Library offers free wireless. If the new library were to provide free wireless in all directions – wow!”
~Jim Duncan
I disagree with your sentiment about free wireless, Jim. One negative about the Library providing the wireless service would be the filtering, mandatory under new federal laws, that would revoke the rite to visit many web-pages do to their content. This would not only block pornography, but also dissenting views about Christianity* and other Right-Wing movements. Another reason is that the wireless system would be an open-network, and thus someone could easily hack into your online banking, if you were foolish enough to preform it on an unsecured network. People, especially those who are not familiar with newly emerging technology, might not know of the dangers of an open network and thus be easy targets for crackers**.
*The JMRL system uses a filter that has been identified as having been made by programmers who added their own political agenda into the codding.
**A hacker is someone who writes code, a cracker is a person who breaks into other computers.
“The Jefferson-Madison Regional Library offers free wireless. If the new library were to provide free wireless in all directions – wow!”
~Jim Duncan
I disagree with your sentiment about free wireless, Jim. One negative about the Library providing the wireless service would be the filtering, mandatory under new federal laws, that would revoke the rite to visit many web-pages do to their content.