The next likemind will be tomorrow Friday, June 15 in 25 cities around the world. In Chicago, it will be at Intelligentsia Coffee,, 53 E. Randolph, at the corner of Wabash.

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Is it getting better for Palm? Apparently so, as today it was announced that the mobile device manufacturer sold a 25% stake in itself to Elevation Partners, a private equity firm who counts as one of its partners Bono, the lead singer of U2.

This announcement makes it a beautiful day for Palm, as not only are they getting some star power, but some horsepower in management. Apple’s former top hardware engineer Jon Rubenstein, who ran the iPod division for 2 years, will walk on to the Palm board as Executive Chairman. My guess is he had nothing to do with last week's announcement of the already much maligned Palm Foleo which may be destined to be a lemon.

If you look at the corporate history of Palm, it seems like it still hasn’t found what it’s looking for. Take the spinoff of its software division, the manufacturer of the Palm operating system, then to only license it back from its new owners. You have to wonder with repeated moves like this over the years where did it all go wrong?

As a loyal Palm user until the end of the world, I take pride and welcome this move like a summer rain. Hopefully today’s announcement will be like New Year’s Day for Palm, and not a day too soon with the announcement of the Apple iPhone’s release on June 29. If Palm doesn’t act soon, it may be stuck in a moment that it can’t get out of.

Ok, now tell me how many U2 songs I referenced in this post!

(The accompanying photo is a picture of Bono I snapped from Google Images with my Treo 680, then I took a picture of the Treo with my digital camera.)

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Last Friday I had 2 appointments, and like most entrepreneurs they were at coffee shops. Each shop offered WiFi, with their own access method and process – which is more of the norm than the exception today.

My first stop was Caribou Coffee who offers free WiFi, providing you buy something. The barista will give you a code upon request that you will need to enter into the default Web page that comes up when you log into your computer. The code is only good for one hour, but you can get another code upon request. My guess is that it is at the discretion of the staff, and buying more should help you get a new code.

Starbucks was my second stop, and they use T-Mobile’s HotSpot service. As I am a T-Mobile customer, I pay an extra $10 a month for HotSpot on top of the $20 I pay for data service for my Treo smartphone. If I didn’t have T-Mobile or its data service, I would have to pay a daily fee under $10 or a monthly fee around $30.

Before I left for my meetings I saw this article on the cost of unused WiFi service, and I could relate to it. Had my meetings been elsewhere, I may have had to pay a different way, or not at all if I went to a forward-thinking locale. There is certainly money to be made from Internet access, and it makes sense to be forward-thinking for how you yourself will use the Internet and plan ahead as to where you go and how you connect.

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Congrats to my good friend and colleague Eric Patel and all of the team at the DJ Mix Academy in Boston for their mention in this Sunday’s New York Times! They were mentioned in the article, Mix, Scratch and Spin: You, Too, Can Become a D.J.

DJ Mix Academy is the only school in New England where you can, in an interactive classroom setting, learn to DJ. Most DJs out there learned in college or on their own. The instructors are all accomplished DJs who not only share techniques but their stories, which are usually worth more than the tuition price! They have extended their programs with the Global DJ Mix Academy, where you can receive CDs, DVDs and instructional manuals and self-study. To extend this virtual campus, I am proud to be still involved with DMA as “interactive media director” and consult them on the Internet, all the while listening in on those DJ stories.

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With the upcoming spin-off of Chrysler from DaimlerChrysler, we will surely see less of the chairman of the parent company, Dr. Dieter Zetsche. A brilliant engineer and executive in his own right, he led the merger and now divestiture of the German and American automakers.

Most Americans first saw the chairman in TV commercials, referred to as Dr. Z, as well as his own animated Web site, Ask Dr. Z. I have to admit, when I first saw this, I thought it was a joke – would you expect someone in his role to be doing sketch comedy, or be an animated character? But a little research found this to be true. The ad campaign did not prove to be that successful and was short-lived.

The Web site remains, however, as of this posting, so check it out while you can.

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