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In digital age, cubicles are wherever WiFi is

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WASHINGTON – Frank Gruber’s workstation at AOL in Dulles, Va., could be in any cubicle farm from Washington to Bangalore – push-pin board for reminders, computer on Formica desk, stifling fluorescent lighting.

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It’s so drab, there’s nothing more to say about it, which is why the odds of finding Gruber there are slim.

Instead, Gruber often works at a popular coffeehouse called Tryst in Washington’s Adams Morgan neighborhood, at Liberty Tavern in nearby suburban Clarendon, Va., at a Starbucks, in hotel lobbies, at the Library of Congress, on the Bolt Bus to New York or, as he did last week, beside the rooftop pool of the Hilton on Washington’s Embassy Row. Gruber and Web entrepreneur Jen Consalvo turned up late one morning, opened their Mac laptops, connected to WiFi and began working. A few feet away, the pool’s water shimmered like hand-blown glass.

“I like the breeze,” Consalvo said, working all the while.

Gruber and Consalvo are digital nomads. They work – clad in shorts, T-shirts and sandals – wherever they find a wireless Web connection to reach their colleagues via instant messaging, Twitter, Facebook, e-mail and occasionally by voice on their iPhones or Skype. As digital nomads, experts say, they represent a natural evolution in teleworking.

The Internet let millions of wired people work from home. Now, with widespread WiFi, many have cut the wires and left home or the dreary office to work where they please – and especially around other people, even total strangers.

For nomads, the benefits are both primitive and practical.

Primitive: Tom Folkes, an artificial-intelligence programmer, worked last week at the Java Shack in Arlington County, Va., because he is “an extrovert working on introvert tasks. If I’m working at home by myself, I am really hating life. I need people.” Folkes has a coffee shop rotation. “I spread my business around.”

Practical: Marilyn Moysey, who sells virtual-collaboration software, often works at Panera Bread near her home in Alexandria, Va., even though she has an office in the “boondocks.” Why? “Because there is no hope for the road system around here,” Moysey said. Asked where her co-workers were, Moysey said, “I don’t know, because it doesn’t matter anymore.”

Nomad life is already evolving. Nomads who want the feel of working with officemates have begun co-working in public places or at the homes of strangers. They work laptop-by-laptop in living rooms and coffee shops, exchanging both idle chitchat and business advice with people who all work for different companies. The gatherings are called jellies, after a bowl of jelly beans the creators were eating when they came up with the name.

Although the number of digital nomads is intrinsically difficult to measure – they are constantly in motion and difficult to pin down for polling – evidence of a real shift in where Americans work is mounting. Dell reports that its digital nomad Web site gets tens of thousands of hits a month. Panera, a popular spot for people working wirelessly, logs 1.5 million WiFi sessions a month.

One only needs to visit Tryst to see dozens of people spending money on food and drinks in exchange for the privilege of setting up a day office at a table there.

Cafe owners love the trend.

“If there was nobody in here, people would say, ‘That place is no good,’ ” said Dale Roberts, who owns the Java Shack. “It feeds on itself. If you go to a movie theater and see a long line, people want to see that movie. It’s the same thing for a coffee shop.”

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