Noah Coad

Want to know where to hang, just you and your laptop in the Dallas area?  Since living in Seattle I got ‘the laptop hang’n bug, it was a big thing up there.  Now it’s tricky to know where the best laptop zones are here in Dallas.  We’re going to do this using a collaborative Google Maps, aka a wiki map.

Yes there are many ‘locate free wifi’ sites out there like laptopfriendlycafes.com, but none that I’ve seen can just show you a Google Map of the places around you that the community updates based on laptop or hangout rating. Sure you can do an advanced filter on yelp.com, but I find the experience lacking.  So this is a bit of a social experiment, can us Dallas people collectively put a map together?

The idea of this map is to point out places us techies have actually been to; where we have first hand experience.  It’s not enough these days just to have open WiFi, but instead to create a friendly atmosphere for creativity.  Someplace where you feel comfortable hanging out for a few hours with your computer.  These kinds places are usually good meet up spots for playing a board game with friends too (ok, maybe a bigger deal in the NW, but picking up steam here in Dallas too).

Please keep the map to the Dallas area, including Plano, Irving, Carrollton, Addison, Lewisville, Denton, Prosper, Garland, Grapevine, Flower Mound, Richardson, Irving, Arlington, Carrolton, Lewisville, Grapevine, Allen, McKinney, Frisco, etc

Basic Ground Rules

1. Join the open collaborative Google Map
2. Add a place that is laptop friendly with free WiFi (with or without purchase), power, seating, and a chill ‘here for laptop time’ atmosphere.  The local car wash w free internet doesn’t count.
3. When adding a place, include:
1. Description, tell about why the place is good for laptops.
2. Colored marker, use one of these markers…

	Average Place Like a coffee shop, bubble tea shop, donut shop, etc
	Super Laptop Hang Zone A place really catering to laptop users, usually not a chain
	Big Chain Like a Starbucks or Tully’s

Other Resources

Here are places that list free WiFi in the Dallas area:

• openwifispots.com, big long list with map of free wifi (but which are laptop hang’out friendly?)
• laptopfreindlycafes.com, they’ve got a list w user comments, but terrible location searching, no master map and searching for “Plano, TX” doesn’t return any results.  If they added a good map you could move around (to look outside of Dallas proper, like in Plano) and an overall ‘laptop friendliness’ rating, they’d have it!  There’s be no need for this map.
• yelp.com free wifi in Dallas, probably the best list I’ve found so far, easy to use navigation, user comments, and good overall ratings, but still the signal to noise ratio is low since even your car mechanic and sushi bar have free wifi these days, it’s hard to find by a ‘laptop friendliness’ rating.

Update: Thanks to @latish for the contributions!

Update (12/19/2012): Please join us and vote on getting a 24-hr Starbucks in Dallas