The Boston Globe resident hi-tech weblogger DC Denison writes about the hippest hangout in my hometown; I’d never heard of it:

“The Rack, that upscale pool hall/celebrity jock hang-out next to Faneuil

Hall Marketplace, is not where I’d normally look for the latest in wireless

technology. But now that I’m here, at 7 p.m. on a weeknight, the idea is

starting to make more sense.

This place is an epicenter of electronic cacophony and techno tack (stuff

that you can do technologically, but probably shouldn’t). Sports highlights

are looping on video screens, a closed-circuit TV is pumping out an

in-house channel, a Fox TV sports kiosk is waiting to capture “fan

comments,” an Internet web cam is scanning the premises, and off in a

corner a band is covering Jimmy Buffett tunes. Oh yeah, and many of the

black-clad denizens have cellphones pressed very tightly to their heads,

trying to communicate over the din. This place is electro-diversion,

short-attention-span heaven (or hell depending on your view on info

overload.)

His point in blinking to The Rack is to talk about its innovative use of handhelds:

But wait, there’s more! Last week the club shoe-horned in a fleet of small

electronic gadgets: Touchpak hand-held wireless entertainment units,

which are intended to divert and entertain customers while they are waiting

for tables: pool or dining. I picked one up from a hostess just inside the

door.

A Touchpak turns out to be a standard PDA, a Compaq iPaq, customized

and loaded up with news, sports, movie clips, shopping sites, and tiny

little ads. Here’s where it intersects with Rack-land: it alerts you when

your table is ready. So it’s a beefier version of the pagers many

restaurants use.

And here’s the tech angle: Touchpak uses wireless LAN technology,

which means there’s now an antenna on the roof of The Rack that allows

the restaurant to communicate with the devices in a confined area

(basically the restaurant and the outdoor patio). Because it’s a closed

system, the bandwidth can be much higher, allowing the streaming of

movie trailers, for example.

For ten minutes or so, I impersonated an anxious patron waiting for a table

and used my unit to navigated between Reuters news, sports, and The

Rack’s menu (eventually The Rack hopes to allow patrons to order from

these units). It was mildly diverting, another option piled on to The Rack’s

squawking collection of electronic boxes.

Note to the criminally minded: The Rack feels reasonably protected from

your larcenous inclinations. First, patrons are asked to leave a credit card

or driver’s license as a kind of deposit. Second, a tracking device sounds

an alarm, and notifies security, when a device gets too close to an exit.

Third, Touchpak is working on a system that will permanently disable

these devices when they are outside the network.”

The Rack’s site has a webcam where the curious can remotely check out the ambience during open hours. [The closest I’m ever likely to get to such a with-it place…]