Award Marks Ten Years of
Internet Cafes
SYDNEY, 3 July 2003 - These days popping down to the local internet café, checking your mail and sending snaps of yourself on the beach or bonding with a buffalo to friends and family back home is an integral part of the holiday experience. Hard to believe therefore that in 1994 the only internet café in the world was in London's Whitfield Street .
To mark ten years of internet cafés in 2004, Yahoo! Australia & NZ Mail, along with other Yahoo! sites around the world, are launching a search for the Internet Café of the Year. www.yahoo.com.au will also be looking for overall winners in four different categories in order to better arm travellers when communicating with their friends and family on the move:
- internet café in the most unusual / remote location
- the most stylish internet café
- the internet café with the best coffee and food
- the most "24/7"accessible internet café
The overall winner will be the world's "must see" internet café - somewhere that is almost a tourist destination in its own right.
Nominations can be made until 1 November 2003 to: internetcafeawards2003@yahoo.com.au
As well as the nominees' contact details, entries should include maximum 500 words about why the cafi in question deserves to win and where appropriate a link to the café's homepage. A photograph of the café can also be sent via email.
The ten most remote Internet cafés on earth
To provide inspiration, Yahoo! has published a list of the ten of the most remote places to surf the internet on earth - both in terms of geography and infrastructure.
- The internet café on Everest. Sponsorship from Yahoo! enabled the highest Internet café in the world to open in time for the recent 50th anniversary celebrations of the 1st successful climb of Mount Everest.
The brainchild of Tsering Gyaltsen Sherpa, 32, whose grandfather took part in the original climb with Sir Edmund Hillary, the café is located on the Khumu glacier at a height of 5,300 metres. Proceeds from the cafi go towards clearing the pollution left by climbers.
- Internet Outpost, Broome, Western Australia (broome@internet-outpost.com). Between the Great Sandy Desert to the east and the Indian Ocean to the west, it is 200 kilometres to the nearest town.
- Two years ago surfing the Internet was banned in Kabul, Afghanistan. The country's first mobile phone provider, the Afghan Wireless Communication Company (AWCC) has now set up an Internet café in the city's Intercontinental hotel http://www.afrikamedia.com/afghan-intercontinental.htm
- Norwegian Cruise Lines became the first company to offer a fully wired fleet in 2000. The Internet cafés aboard all ships are available 24 hours a day and the Norwegian Sky was the first ship to offer "in stateroom" connections to the Internet.
- The Hard Disk Café (hard.disk@horizon.co.fk) in Port Stanley in the Falkland Islands provides locals and tourists with networked computers for multi player gaming, email and internet services.
- It might endure freezing temperatures and darkness for most of the day in winter, but Greenland is extremely well connected to the net. Greenland's largest internet café the Nuuk Net Café is open until 1am every day and even boasts a 220 square metre store.
- The Himalayan Kingdom of Bhutan, which restricts tourist numbers, got its first Internet café in 2000 - only a year after it got television. The Internet café in Thimpu promises "free and smiling assistance" to those new to the Internet.
- Few tourists ever visit the West African country of Benin but those that do are well catered for by the ten computers in CyberDophi in the capital Cotonou.
- The Pacific Island of Tuvalu is famous for having turned its .tv domain name into a thriving business opportunity and there are also fears that with global warming it will soon be swallowed up by the ocean. The Island does however have a two-computer Internet café located in the offices of Tuvalu.tv, whose site says "we don't have coffee yet, but we have Internet."
- Inverie in the Scottish Highlands is the only village on the UK mainland not connected to the main road network with a boat service to the nearest town only running three days a week. Last Christmas Yahoo! UK & Ireland installed an "online shopping station" to allow residents and visitors to the local pub, The Old Forge, to do their shopping over the Internet and save themselves the five hour journey to Glasgow. The Old Forge is the most remote pub on the UK mainland.
Entries to: internetcafeawards2003@yahoo.com.au
-ENDS-
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