A San Francisco laundromat may be the one of the world's most unusual places to surf the Internet but a sleek club on Moscow's Red Square is definitely the sleekest, according to a Yahoo! survey of the globe's best cybercafes.
The winners of the first Yahoo! Mail Internet Cafe Awards were published on Wednesday to mark the 10th anniversary of the world's first cybercafe in London's West End.
Among the top picks were the unusual Brain Wash in San Francisco, cited as "the height of Internet cafe cum laundromat cool" and Moscow's Phlegmatic Dog, selected as Most Stylish with its "unique combination of comfort and hi-tech".
Taking the Best UK Internet Cafe award was Cafe Curve in Brighton, southern England -- "a must for anyone who likes style, comfort, typing and keeping in touch".
And the title of the world's Most Remote Internet Cafe went to an internationally funded centre in Timbuktu, Mali.
The winners were chosen by a panel of judges who considered travellers' more than 1,000 nominations of cybercafes in 111 countries. The results have been compiled in a Rough Guides e-book, available at (http://yahoo.co.uk/internetcafes).
In the decade since London's Cafe Cyberia first opened its doors in 1994, approximately 20,000 Internet cafes have sprung up in 171 countries, according to Yahoo! Mail.
"Despite the fact that home and work Internet access is now commonplace, Internet cafes fulfill the same role as they did 10 years ago," Eva Pascoe, a co-founder of Cafe Cyberia, said in a statement.
"They are the post offices of the wired generation."
