Apologies for the corny headline. This has nothing to do with working out.

But it is good news for all those laptops that are backing up online…

G.Y.M. is short for Google, Yahoo & Microsoft. The three companies seem to be in the midst of a flurry of FREE WiFi announcements. Here’s stuff that came through from G.Y.M. in the last 48 hours:

Google announced free WiFi at 47 airports – through the holiday season and into January 2010. They even have a FreeHolidayWifi web site on this. In what could easily be spun as a “limit the joy to Microsoft” tactic, Seattle airport joins the list of 47 a little later.

Yahoo announced free WiFi at Times Square, NYC – for a whole year.

Microsoft, not to be outdone, and in an effort to popularize Bing,  has announced an interesting promotion going with JWire. Their “search for access” program offers  a session of free Wi-Fi access in exchange for a search on Bing. Users are presented with their search results, and they can then enjoy free Internet service for a specified time period.

So there, you have it. Connectivity can’t be your excuse this season – for not backing up! I’m curious though – how did the free WiFi idea hit G.Y.M. – at almost the same time (all of the above announcements happened in the last 48 hours)

Crunchgear has an article on this too.

Prediction: Amazon will make a similar announcement – soon.

The above post was written by Lakshmanan (Lux) Narayan of Vembu Technologies. Vembu Technologies is a backup software vendor whose product, StoreGrid, powers the online backup services of a large number of service providers across the globe. Besides remote backup, StoreGrid is also used for on premise backups of workstations and servers at various companies & universities.

Vembu Home is the only FREE consumer backup solution for free local backups and optional Amazon Cloud backups. Get your FREE COPY now.