Brought your laptop to the Games?

So you're here in Vancouver and Whistler for the Olympic and Paralympic Games. You've brought your laptop so that you can upload from your camera the great photographs you're going to take. You'll need a wireless connection to email them to friends and family back home. What do you do?

Well, if you don't mind paying for the privilege, you can go visit coffee shops displaying the logo of the green giant from the Emerald City (Seattle, to you and me), where there are no free hotspots, or you can visit one of the many local coffee shops, such as the Blenz chain, co-hosts of this fine blog, where free WiFi is the norm.

(As an aside, Blenz is rolling out a creative new wireless environment with an associated Blenz Community Web site - check it out for Olympic news and updates).

As well as a free WiFi network, you may also need somewhere you can save or upload your pictures so that you have them backed up in case disaster strikes while you're here.

A couple of options are to use an external USB disk drive or, for more security, consider using Dropbox, a site where you can upload your files and then download them if needed when you get back home.

Welcome to Vancouver!

Originally posted February 3, 2010.