Ïðîñìîòð ïîëíîé âåðñèè : Some news ...
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Texting Important Part of Plane-Crash Response
By Colleen Long
January 20, 2009 7:50AM
Soon after US Airways Flight 1549 took off from LaGuardia Airport, Vallie Collins heard a boom and started smelling smoke. When the captain urged passengers to brace for impact, she immediately reached for her phone.
"I thought, 'OK, I'm not going to see my husband and three children again. And I just want them to know at this point, they were the No. 1 thought in my mind,'" she said.
She sent them a text message: "My plane is crashing." There was no time for the final three words she wanted to include: "I love you."
The crash-landing was one of few aviation accidents in which passengers were able to send frantic dispatches to loved ones before their plane went down.
After the plane came to rest in the water, Collins and all 154 others aboard were quickly rescued by ferries and emergency crews.
Larry Snodgrass, of Lake Wylie, S.C., grabbed his cell phone as the plane descended, sending a text message to his wife telling her an engine was on fire and that he loved her with all his heart.
He said his eyes were shut as the plane hit the water, and he opened them in disbelief when he realized he was still alive.
Meanwhile around the city, witnesses were recounting what they heard and saw via text message, on the SMS-blogging service Twitter, and on online photo-sharing Web sites. Janis Krums wrote that there was a plane in the Hudson, and he was on the ferry going to pick up people.
Krums quickly uploaded images of passengers standing on the wings of the plane bobbing in the frigid waters, waiting to be rescued. The images were picked up by The Associated Press and distributed to media outlets around the world. Hundreds of users on the photo-sharing site Flickr posted photos within moments of the splash landing.
A fan club on Facebook quickly formed for the pilot, Chesley B. Sullenberger.
After the passengers were rescued from the sinking plane, they began calling relatives. Passenger Michele Davis, 23, of Olympia, Wash., lost her phone in the crash, so she borrowed one to call her mother, Susan Dunham.
Dunham told the Seattle Post-Intelligencer that when she answered her phone she heard, "Mama, mama, mamma. My plane's crashed. I'm on the lifeboat. I'm OK."
Denise Lockie had just slid down the plane's emergency landing chute when she called her older sister, Nancy Kallile of Toledo, Ohio.
"Basically she said, 'We've crashed in the Hudson River. I love you. I'm still alive,'" Kallile said, who was getting fitted for eyeglasses when her sister called.
Snodgrass was one of the last people off the plane. He told The Herald of Rock Hill that he called his wife as he stood in shin-deep water on the wing, waiting to be rescued. She was distraught, watching television and fearing the worst after getting that text message, but all was well.
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Frustrated, Bewildered Air Travelers Can Blame System
By Susan Stellin January 19, 2009 7:40AM
One of the most agonizing aspects of air travel is waiting out a flight delay, desperate for information.
Within the United States, for example, one in four domestic flights runs late, meaning that about 400,000 passengers sit captive at gates or on the tarmac every day .
"They're very poor at getting on the intercom and saying, 'Here's our situation,'" said Jennifer Shirkani, owner of a management consulting business in Manchester, New Hampshire, who flies about 100,000 miles, or 161,000 kilometers, a year. "In some cases, there's not even a crew member at the gate until two minutes before the scheduled boarding time. So we're really on our own to find out what's going on."
If you have ever felt frustrated by the disconnect between what you hear from a gate agent, see on an electronic display, find out when you call the airline or even see out the window -- no aircraft ready to go -- it turns out there is a disconnect. Literally, there is a convoluted flow of information.
Passengers are at the end of a communication chain that involves multiple computer systems, gate agents, pilots, flight dispatchers, air traffic controllers, and other personnel, with updates moving along different paths.
"You can have three or four different systems providing information, one quicker than another at any point in time," said Cindy Bouchard, a former airport customer service supervisor with US Airways.
During a delay, gate agents and the flight crew communicate with the airline along separate channels, and do not necessarily talk to each other. Pilots typically get more updated information because they are in direct contact with the airline's system operations control center -- essentially, the brain that keeps track of every aircraft's schedule.
In the United States, pilots also communicate with tower personnel who are linked to the Federal Aviation Administration's command center in Herndon, Virginia. That is the master system each airline connects with to determine when its planes are allowed to come and go.
But even if members of the flight crew share information with their colleagues at the gate, Bouchard said, "We couldn't make the announcement to the passengers until it was official in the system, because the crew could be wrong."
Gate agents are also reluctant to jump the gun because they dread the onslaught they will face after announcing bad news. "Imagine dealing with a cancellation and 200 passengers standing in front of you -- it's incredible," Bouchard said. "So are you going to announce a cancellation without knowing for sure? I don't think so."
Cutbacks in airline staff have made the problem worse because there are fewer agents left to deal with passengers at the airport.
Of course, in cases of extreme weather, no one can predict when planes will be able to take off.
"Everyone is dealing with information that's not perfect, and it's changing," said Basil Barimo, vice president of operations for the Air Transport Association, which represents the main U.S. airlines. "That's what creates the challenge for the folks out there at the airport."
But he acknowledged that information flowed through separate, and not always equal, channels.
"The crew is connected directly to the operations center so they're getting the latest and greatest information," Barimo said. "The customer service agent is not directly connected, so is getting the information from airport channels."
Depending on the technology available at the gate, that may mean a radio transmission or a phone call. As for the electronic flight displays throughout the terminal, they do not necessarily show the latest data because they get information from sources contracted by the airport.
That is why passengers can often get more timely information about a flight delay by checking the airline's Web site or Flightstats.com. Or, in the United States, they can send a text message to Google with the flight number (AA117, for example), which will send back a text message with the latest departure and arrival information from Flightstats. If there is no plane at the gate, savvy travelers have learned to check the status of the incoming flight, which is often a better way of gauging how soon the plane will turn around.
"You really have to be almost a forensic traveler to know what's going on," said Kate Hanni, founder of the Coalition for an Airline Passengers' Bill of Rights, an advocacy group that has primarily pushed for better treatment of travelers during extended tarmac delays.
Hanni also served on a task force created by the U.S. Department of Transportation to establish guidelines for the airlines when long on-board delays occur on the tarmac. She voted against the group's recommendations, which essentially let the airlines continue with the status quo.
"We got a totally unenforceable document with a number of 'mays' and 'shoulds' and no 'musts' and 'wills,'" she said. "I feel like we as a group totally failed."
The task force recommended that airlines attempt to update passengers every 15 minutes during a tarmac delay, even when there is no new information to share.
While many carriers made similar promises in the customer commitments they adopted to forestall earlier passenger rights proposals, few would claim that they actually do update passengers that often.
"I think every 15 minutes is extremely optimistic," said a pilot for a major carrier, though he agreed that communication could be improved. The pilot agreed to speak anonymously because he is not authorized to speak to the media.
"The left hand isn't always talking to the right hand," he said. "I would say the information isn't flowing in the right order."
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Go Online on Board, Just Keep It Quiet
By Micheline Maynard February 10, 2009 7:28AM
For all the annoyance of being crammed into an aluminum tube at 35,000 feet with a bunch of strangers, air travel has offered one benefit: the ability to tell bosses and colleagues, "I'll be on a flight, so you won't be able to reach me."
So much for that excuse.
Wireless Internet service is starting to spread among airlines in the United States: Delta and American have installed it on more than a dozen planes each, and several other carriers are planning to test it.
For the airlines, always desperate for new sources of revenue, offering the service -- about $10 for three hours and more for longer flights -- was an easy call. And many passengers will cheer the development as an end to Web withdrawal.
But this new frill is hardly as benign as a bag of pretzels. It may be a new source of tension between passengers on packed planes. A flight attendants' union has even expressed concern that terrorists could use it to plot attacks.
And there is the inescapable fact that one of the last places on earth to get away from it all can now be turned into a mobile office.
Brent Bigler, a financial planner living in Los Angeles, said he paid the $12.95 fee on a recent American Airlines flight to New York, and spent several hours reading e-mail and searching the Internet. When his plane was delayed, he was able to reach a friend to say he would be late for dinner.
Even so, Bigler said he worried about the downside.
"This could be the same thing as what happened with cell phones and BlackBerrys," he said. "Once it's cheap and ubiquitous, employers might expect employees to participate. I may feel guilty if it were a Monday and I napped or read and didn't use the Internet to do work."
Airline executives said they were aware that the new service had the potential to raise issues beyond the bottom line.
"We want to be respectful of the fact that an airplane is a public place," said Ranjan Goswami, director of product development at Delta. "You're in close intimacy with other passengers and the cabin crew."
Delta has told its flight attendants to treat overly enthusiastic users of Wi-Fi -- who might, say, forget to mute the volume on YouTube videos of skateboarding dogs -- like people who imbibe too much. In other words, cut them off if they start bothering others around them.
"It's just like alcohol," Goswami said. "The flight attendants understand how to interact with that."
But the Association of Flight Attendants, which represents 55,000 employees at 20 airlines, though not Delta, views Wi-Fi as a potential threat to flight attendants' ability to keep order in the cabin, said Corey Caldwell, a union spokeswoman.
"Our duties involve securing the safety of the cabin, not acting as censor police," Caldwell said. "It just adds another layer of duties inside the cabin, which take away from the main requirement that flight attendants are on board for."
Caldwell said the flight attendants' union also feared that terrorists plotting an incident on a plane could use Wi-Fi to communicate with one another on board and with conspirators on the ground.
"Right now, their ability to do that on board is limited," she said. "But we can see an instance in which this becomes a potential threat."
The Federal Aviation Administration currently bans use of cell phones aboard planes because they may interfere with a jet's navigation system. But Wi-Fi, as most technophiles know, offers a way around that ban, since the wireless connections can be used to tap into Skype and other programs that offer telephone service via a computer.
Clarel Thevenot, vice president for sales at Xtellus of Jersey City, New Jersey, said that during a flight from Stockholm he donned a headset with a microphone to call a friend in Paris. "I made the call brief and pretty much said, 'I'm at 35,000 feet and I'm calling you,'" Thevenot said.
Both airlines are using Wi-Fi service provided by Aircell. For now, American is offering its service on 15 Boeing 767 jets, said September Wade, a spokeswoman. If the test is successful, American will consider offering the service on its entire domestic fleet, but it has not decided yet whether to do so.
On Delta, the service is $9.95 for a flight of three hours or less, and $12.95 for a longer flight. U.S. carriers do not yet offer the service on their international flights, although Delta is exploring it.
If all 150 passengers on a typical domestic flight were to buy three hours of time, that would mean an extra $1,500 or so in revenue per trip -- equal to selling several extra seats per flight. Delta said that its service was too new to accurately gauge its popularity, and American would not say how many travelers were using the service.
By offering the service, airlines in the United States are catching up to many foreign carriers, like Lufthansa, which has offered the service for the past several years.
Travelers who have used it say the service works well for video clip sites like YouTube, although it isn't quite fast enough for streaming live events or television programs. They say, however, there is enough bandwidth to download a TV show from iTunes.
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American Airlines Will Expand Wi-Fi Access in the Sky
By Patricia Resende March 31, 2009 1:51PM
American Airlines is giving passengers Wi-Fi access in the sky. The airline will expand on its trial flight with Aircell, a provider of airborne communications.
American will move from the trial phase by installing Aircell's Gogo Inflight Internet on 300 domestic aircraft over the next two years, the company said Tuesday.
Thousands of passengers traveling on more than a dozen of American's Boeing 767-200 airplanes have had access to the in-flight Internet service on nonstop flights between New York's JFK and San Francisco, Los Angeles and Miami.
"Our trial over the past six months offered customers the choice to remain connected to work, home or elsewhere when flying on American Airlines," said Dan Garton, American's executive vice president of marketing . "And it also gave us the ability to study customers' willingness to take advantage of high-speed, onboard connectivity and to gauge how the service performed technically in a variety of settings over an extended period of time."
"Customer feedback was extremely positive and, as a result, we will be working with American to bring Gogo to domestic MD-80 aircraft and B737 aircraft as quickly as possible," said John Happ, executive vice president of airlines at Aircell. "We are pleased that the results were positive and that we have decided to move forward."
Live Access
Aircell's Gogo service, which uses three antennas installed outside the airplane to connect to Aircell's mobile broadband network, allows passengers to surf the Web, check e-mail, send instant messages, and also gives passengers access to a corporate virtual private network.
Once the plane reaches 10,000 feet, passengers get the okay to turn on Wi-Fi devices, including PDAs, smartphones and laptops. Cell-phone and Voice over Internet Protocol services are not provided.
"In-flight Internet is extremely important to travelers, evidenced by American's decision to expand Gogo service beyond their existing Gogo-equipped aircraft," Happ said.
American will install the Aircell system on its domestic MD-80 and Boeing 737-800 fleets. The service will be introduced on 150 MD-80 planes this year.
Out-of-Pocket Costs
Depending on the length of the flight and what device is used to access the service, passengers will pay from $7.95 to $12.95.
Passengers on flights that are three hours or less will pay $9.95 for the service, while those on flights three hours or longer will pay a fee of $12.95. For customers using a handheld device, the price is $7.95.
It's not clear whether American Airlines will expand the service to its entire fleet of 900 aircraft under the American Eagle and American Connection airlines.
"We want American passengers to continue enjoying in-flight Internet to the fullest and are eager to begin the necessary steps toward the expansion efforts," Happ said.
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Nikon Camera Is First To Project Images on Flat Surfaces
By Barry Levine August 5, 2009 9:16AM
You take lots of photos and movies during your vacation trip, and each night in the hotel room you project them on the wall for your family -- from the same camera. That's the scenario that Nikon envisions with its announcement Tuesday of the first compact camera with a built-in projector.
Bedtime Story Companion?
The COOLPIX S1000pj can project photos or videos on any flat surface of up to 40 inches. Photos can be shown one by one, or as a slide show with music and effects. A projector stand and remote control are included.
Among other uses, Nikon suggests that parents use the new camera "to display photos of their own artworks or other images on the ceiling to complement bedtime stories they tell their children."
Avi Greengart, an analyst with industry research firm Current Analysis, suggested that there might also be some business uses for this kind of device, such as projecting images for a family or for agents after a day of scouting real estate.
"It's not necessarily a mainstream product," he said, but it could be useful when a monitor is otherwise not available, such as on a camping trip.
Greengart said it's "highly unlikely" that such micro-projectors will show up in many devices, although he noted that he has seen prototypes of similar projectors in camera phones.
"The downside there," he said, "is battery life," especially since draining your phone to project pictures could leave you without your communications device.
Micro-Projectors at CES
Ross Rubin, director of industry analysis for consumer technology at NPD Group, said he saw at the most recent Consumer Electronics Show "a number" of devices that integrated micro-projectors. "It's become a way to move beyond the limitations of finding an LCD monitor," he said.
Cameras are a good device for this add-on, he said, because the picture taker is "continually sharing photos with small groups," but he pointed out that it will add some cost and bulk to the device, at least in the near term.
The COOLPIX S1000pj, available in black or "warm silver," features a 5x zoom NIKKOR lens with 28mm wide-angle coverage and macro shooting as close as 1.2 inches. With its EXPEED digital image processing, Nikon said the camera has an "effective" resolution of 12.1 megapixels.
The camera is packed with the kind of features that can help reduce the embarrassment of others seeing your badly captured face projected on a hotel room wall.
An Electronic VR image stabilization system helps to produce images without blur, and motion detection controls shutter speed and ISO setting automatically to compensate for movement. A Best Shot Selector feature shoots a sequence of frames and saves the one with the sharpest focus.
A "face-priority" feature adjusts focus and exposure for up to a dozen faces, and a "skin softening" function adjusts smoothness. A Smile Timer clicks the shutter automatically when the face smiles, and a Blink Proof function takes two images, but only saves the one where the eyes are their widest open.
In case someone accidentally blinked, Blink Warning will issue an alert, and the in-camera red-eye fix corrects the vampire eyes that a flash can sometimes produce.
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Gotcha! 'Big Brother' Camera Dock Takes the Pictures
By Barry Levine August 6, 2009 9:42AM
You and your friends sit down to a dinner party and, while everyone munches and chats, a Sony camera in the corner decides when to take pictures.
That kind of auto-recording of parties is the idea behind the company's new party-shot camera dock, the IPT-DS1. It pans 360 degrees, tilts 24 degrees, detects faces, adjusts composition automatically, and, when it decides a shot is right, takes the photo.
'A New Style of Photography'
The dock is compatible with two of Sony's Cyber-shot digital cameras, the DSC-WX1 and the DSC-TX1. It utilizes each camera's BIONZ image processor, whose features include Face Detection and Smile Shutter. The Smile Shutter, as one might expect, detects when the subjects are smiling.
Shigehiko Nakayama, product manager for Sony Electronics digital-imaging accessories, said the new dock "offers a new style of photography" so "you no longer have to worry about taking photos when you are with your family or friends."
Ron Glaz, an analyst with industry research firm IDC, said camera makers have, to this point, been focusing on making photos as perfect and as easy to take as possible. But with red-eye detection, face detection, and other features becoming commonplace, they have reached a plateau.
"Consumers are beginning to ask why they need 10 megapixels, much less 12," he said. So camera makers are looking for other ways to differentiate their products.
He expects the creativity of adding new features to cameras to continue. "We have phones that are cameras," he pointed out, "but who says we can't have cameras that are phones?" Glaz suggested we might also see larger screens, GPS, geotagging and similar differentiators become more common on cameras.
'Solves a Problem'
Glaz said that while this kind of auto-picture-taking "could make sense for a certain generation" that doesn't mind being constantly photographed at a get-together, it's not necessarily for everyone.
Michael Gartenberg, a vice president at Interpret, said this kind of feature allows Sony to up-sell the dock to owners of the compatible cameras, and it "solves a problem that sometimes happens at parties, where most people want to live in the moment and not take the pictures."
But, he noted, there is a big question whether party guests will mind being photographed "candidly." The accepted mode of picture-taking at parties, he said, is smiling and standing next to others, or at least putting your best face on, rather than "being watched all the time."
"This is a great innovation Sony has made," Glaz said, "but I don't think it's going to conquer the world."
The dock works on most tripods, and can use either two AA batteries for 11 hours of operation or a separately sold AC adapter. It will be available for "about $150" beginning in September.
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Virgin America and Google Offer Wi-Fi for the Holidays
By Patricia Resende October 19, 2009 2:28PM
Virgin America and Google are wasting no time in offering recession-stricken passengers a little something for the holidays: The companies are teaming up to give passengers free Wi-Fi.
Since May, Virgin America has offered Wi-Fi access on its fleet of airplanes, but for a fee. "Virgin America was the first airline to offer travelers Wi-Fi on every flight, as well as power outlets at every seat," said Abby Lunardini, corporate communications director at Virgin America.
Now the airline is giving travelers who fly with Virgin from Nov. 10 to Jan. 15 free access to its Gogo Inflight Wi-Fi service. Virgin America executives hope the free offering will generate more business by allowing passengers to have a free run at the service.
Heavily marketing its Wi-Fi service during the holidays is also a way to generate business from new passengers who want to utilize Wi-Fi in the sky.
A recent survey of Virgin America frequent fliers showed that more than half of respondents said the availability of Wi-Fi would influence their choice of airline.
Giving Back
Providing Wi-Fi service is also a way to give back to its passengers during the holiday season by enabling them to keep in touch with family via e-mail and social-networking services, complete online shopping, and use the service for other personal and business needs.
"And as two California companies known for connecting people in new ways, we thought it was a perfect fit to team up with Google to give holiday travelers the gift of staying in touch with family and friends wherever they go -- even at 35,000 feet," Lunardini said.
"As millions of people pass through airports this holiday season in order to celebrate with their families, we wanted to give our users a gift -- one that makes their travel easier and more convenient," said Marissa Mayer, vice president of search products and user experience at Google. "The fundamental power of the Internet is in connecting people, and we hope that having a free Wi-Fi connection while en route will make home and family seem that much closer."
Wi-Fi Takes Off
Virgin America said it has seen an overwhelming positive response from travelers since launching the Gogo Wi-Fi service on all its planes.
For Virgin America's long-haul routes, such as Boston to San Francisco, the airline is reporting that up to 20 to 25 percent of guests on a given flight are logging in.
While passengers traveling during the holiday promotional period get free access, users traveling before the promotion begins and after it ends will have to pay fees ranging from $5.95 to $12.95, depending on flight times.
Photos: Tokyo DC Expo focuses on 3D
by CNET News.com | 10-26-09
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Text-a-Tip Programs Allow Tipsters To Help Police
By Denise Lavoie December 1, 2009 7:46AM
A mother in Boston tells police her 8-year-old boy was shot to death in their apartment by gunmen in hooded sweat shirts during a home invasion.
Officers later receive a text message from an anonymous tipster that leads them to a much different conclusion: the boy's 7-year-old cousin accidentally shot him while the two boys were playing with a loaded 9 mm handgun.
Meanwhile, authorities in Douglas County, Colo., thwarted a threatened Columbine-style attack after an anonymous text about a student's "kill list" led them to weapons in the child's home.
After struggling for years with an anti-snitching culture that made witnesses too afraid to come forward, police across the country are getting help from text-a-tip programs that allow people to send anonymous, text messages from their cell phones.
In Boston, the first city to heavily promote texting for crime tips, police have received more than 1,000 tips since the program began two years ago. Police credit text tips for providing them with key leads in at least four high-profile killings, including: the accidental shooting of Liquarry Jefferson by his cousin; an arson fire that killed two children; the shooting of a Boston teenager on her 18th birthday; and the fatal stabbing of a man during a bar fight.
Officer Michael Charbonnier, who oversees the program, said people who live in high-crime neighborhoods are often afraid that if they talk to police, they could be hurt or even killed by gang members, drug dealers or other criminals.
"It's either call 911 or live with the bad guy. And if you call, there could be repercussions," Charbonnier said.
"So when they have this option of texting us -- knowing no one will know who they are -- well, now, people give us license plate numbers, they give us names," he said.
In the past, people feared retaliation for talking to police, but with the texting programs, police never see the tipster's name or telephone number. The text messages are sent to a separate, third-party server, where identifying information is stripped out and they are assigned an encrypted alias before being sent to police.
Texting programs have caught on across the country. The exact number is hard to pinpoint, but Anderson Software, one of the leading providers of technology for text-a-tip programs, has at least 400 law enforcement agencies as clients, including Tucson, Ariz., Savannah, Ga., Hartford, Conn., San Diego, Seattle and Miami.
Company founder Kevin Anderson said text-a-tip programs are rapidly gaining popularity and could soon become as popular as anonymous Web tip programs, which have been around for about five years.
"You want to provide the means of communication people are most comfortable with, and right now, texting is the more comfortable means of communicating for young people," Anderson.
The system allows a tipster to send a text message of up to 160 characters to police, who are then able to send text messages back to the sender to ask follow-up questions. Charbonnier said that because of the two-way communication, Boston police have been able to get the information they need. He said police, who promise tipsters confidentiality and anonymity, have never tried to get a tipster's identity from the third-party company, either by asking for it or through a subpoena.
"The reality is the protection of the tipster is more important than any one case," he said.
Police would not release transcripts of the actual text messages they receive or give specifics on how the tips have led them to suspects, citing the confidentiality they promise tipsters.
Charbonnier said police use the tips as leads and have to corroborate the information given by tipsters, so the tipsters themselves aren't called to court to testify.
Some police departments have heavily promoted the texting service in schools, leading to a flurry of tips about students having drugs and weapons.
In Douglas County, Colo., the sheriff's office got a text message in May from a high school student who said another student had a "kill list." Authorities never found the list but did find weapons in the student's home.
"We did believe it was a credible threat," said Phyllis Harvey, who administers the Text-A-Tip program for the Douglas County Sheriff's Office.
"Did we prevent something? Maybe, maybe not. We don't know if the student was actually going to go through with the threats that he was making, but we would like to hope that we did prevent something."
In Springfield, Mass., the texting program was just days old last month when police received a tip about a crack house. Police raided the house, made eight arrests and shut down the headquarters of a crack distribution ring, said Sgt. John Delaney.
"People don't want to be labeled as a rat," Delaney said. "This is breaking the barriers down."
At the University of Southern California in Los Angeles, campus police have promoted the text-a-tip service as a way to keep rowdy football fans under control during games.
"We get tips like 'three guys who are non-students are being rude and obnoxious behind us,' 'someone is cutting in line at the student gate,'" said Carey Drayton, chief of USC's Department of Public Safety.
"Those are things that could turn into fights. We are trying to stop things before they get too big," he said.
Boston police say the anonymous nature of the text-a-tip service, combined with police foot and bicycle patrols in violent neighborhoods, has helped them build trust with people and put a dent in the anti-snitching attitude that was prevalent for years. Five years ago, some court spectators even wore "Stop Snitchin'" T-shirts to the trial of two men charged in the shooting death of a 10-year-old girl.
"We've made a significant amount of progress in connecting with the community," said Police Commissioner Ed Davis. "That makes a big difference when you're dealing with the whole snitching situation."
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Remote Control: Travelers Can Keep an Eye on Home
By Melissa Kossler Dutton November 17, 2009 7:25AM
This holiday season, many travelers will be able to keep a close eye on home.
Thanks to new security system technology, including live video feed, you can monitor everything from the front door to the sump pump from hundreds of miles away.
"You can see anything that's going on from anywhere in the world," said Jay Park of Park Place Installations in Buffalo, N.Y.
Homeowners can set the new alarm systems to send text messages or e-mails when something goes wrong at home.
Eric Harper, marketing director of the Lexington, Ky.-based Elan Home Systems, said a customer was on vacation recently when he got a message that his front door was open. He confirmed it by going online and pulling up feed from a camera by that door. A neighbor followed up, discovering that the pet sitter had not pulled the door firmly shut and it blew open in a storm.
New York City resident Eli Karp said he uses his cell phone to check his house about 10 times a day. His HomeLogic alarm system offers live video feed from inside the house, and Karp also can disarm the security system by phone to let in workers or delivery people.
"It's a time saver," he said. "It's extra peace of mind."
Homeowners can monitor the weather, as well as heating and cooling units and other household systems while traveling, said Richard Ginsburg, president of Protection One, based in Lawrence, Kan. Cameras show whether it's snowing or raining on the driveway, so you can decide whether to call a plowing service, he said.
Other homeowners set their systems to alert them if the sump pump or furnace stops working, developments that could lead to water damage from flooding or frozen pipes.
Installation costs for the new technology range from $150 to $600 depending on whether the residence has an existing security system. Monthly monitoring fees are between $15 and $40.
Do-it-yourself systems also are available, said Julie Strietelmeier, editor of The-gadgeteer.com, a Web site that reviews high-tech products. Prices vary depending on the number of cameras installed, she said. A startup kit would cost around $330 plus monthly monitoring fees.
Such systems -- professional and DIY -- have a lot of advantages, she said.
"I think it's useful if you're working during the day and you want to see what's going on at your house," said Strietelmeier from her home office in Columbus, Ind. "There's some really hardcore systems. You can do almost anything."
Homeowners with alarm systems usually recoup some of the costs with discounts on their insurance premiums, according to insurance professionals.
During the holidays, many clients use the system to receive packages, Harper said. Homeowners will leave a note asking the delivery person to phone them; when they receive the call, they can use the security cameras to verify that the caller is a delivery person, and remotely open the garage door or unlock the front door.
The security system also can send an alert upon the arrival of a handyman or cleaning person. The homeowner can keep track of what rooms the person enters and how long they are in the home.
Parents can use the system to keep track of the comings and goings of children, and can arrange to be alerted if someone opens the liquor cupboard or medicine cabinet.
The systems also can be programmed to turn on lights when you arrive home, or adjust the home's temperature before your arrival.
Customers who use the systems to control heating, cooling and lights may see savings in their energy bills, said Don Boerema, chief marketing officer of ADT Security Services in West Palm Beach, Fla.
http://www.newsfactor.com/story.xhtml?story_id=1000037VTPVO&nl=2
You Want Wi-Fi with That? McDonald's To Make Wi-Fi Free
By Barry Levine , December 16, 2009 10:38AM
Your next business-office-away-from-home could be a McDonald's. The fast-food chain has announced that, beginning in mid-January, it will offer free Wi-Fi Internet access at 11,000 of its 13,000 U.S. restaurants. The service is presented as a partnership with AT&T.
McDonald's already offers free Wi-Fi in some other countries, such as Belgium and Italy. McDonald's currently charges U.S. customers $2.95 for two hours of wireless Internet, although AT&T customers get free Wi-Fi.
No Purchase Required
McDonald's said that, in addition to no hourly charges, no food or drink purchases will be required. In fact, in some cases users don't even have to be in the restaurant. Some customers report that wireless is often accessible in the parking lot of McDonald's restaurants.
In 2003, McDonald's started offering Wi-Fi in its 75 San Francisco Bay Area restaurants, in 10 New York locations, and in 140 locations in Singapore. Originally, there was a $4.95 charge for two hours of service.
Free Wi-Fi has become a kind of loss leader, where companies provide it to attract customers to locations or services and, hopefully, promote goodwill and up-sell to paid offerings.
For instance, in the fall Microsoft started providing free Wi-Fi at thousands of hot spots across the U.S. if a user tried its Bing search engine at least once. Google is offering free Wi-Fi at nearly 50 airports in the U.S. as part of an arrangement with Boingo Wireless.
'An Awful Lot of McDonald's'
This is in addition to Google's free Wi-Fi on all Virgin America flights. The service at the airports and Virgin America, however, only lasts until Jan. 15. Users can donate to specific charities during sign-in, which Google will match up to $250,000. The company noted that about 100 million people will be traveling through airports through January.
And, for one year, Yahoo is giving away free Wi-Fi throughout New York City's Times Square.
Avi Greengart, an analyst with industry research firm Current Analysis, noted that the availability of free Wi-Fi at McDonald's could be very useful for business and family travelers, since there are "an awful lot of McDonald's, even more than -- 'gasp' -- Starbucks."
He noted that McDonald's has been steadily expanding its menu to provide more fare around coffee, and even offering a "McCafe" area in some of its locations. The attempt to provide more café-like offerings, Greengart said, in addition to this free Wi-Fi, could induce customers to stay longer than they otherwise might.
Customers could be either business users or family members. "Keep in mind," Greengart pointed out, "that Wi-Fi is not just for laptop computers," but also for many smartphones, the iPod Touch, PSPs, and other devices.
However, even with more free Wi-Fi hot spots, Greengart said business users in particular will still need cellular data plans if they expect to be online regularly while traveling.
http://www.mobile-tech-today.com/story.xhtml?story_id=112003WWJHPC&nl=8
Ford Will Let Car Occupants Access the Web at 70 mph
By Barry Levine December 21, 2009 2:14PM
Starting next year, the latest trend for with-it groups of travelers could be posting on each others' Facebook pages while hurtling down the highway. On Monday, Ford Motor Company announced that cars with its next-generation SYNC system will be able to use a USB broadband modem to turn the entire car into a Wi-Fi hot spot.
The capability, available on selected vehicles, won't require any additional hardware or subscriptions, except for a mobile broadband modem or "air card," which is not supplied by the car maker and connects to a USB port on the car. Wi-Fi will then be available throughout the car wherever the broadband modem has reception.
Driver Controls Network
Mark Fields, president of Ford's Americas division, said that "while you're driving to grandma's house, your spouse can be finishing the holiday shopping and the kids can be chatting with friends and updating their Facebook profiles."
Lest one shudder at the thought that any Wi-Fi-equipped laptop in an adjacent car could tap into the traveling hot spot, Ford said only owner-permitted devices will be able to use the network , and standard Protected Access 2 (WPA2) security protocols will be employed. Users have to enter a randomly chosen password, and any new Wi-Fi device must be specifically allowed to connect by the driver.
Ford said the potential customer base for this feature is more than a third of Americans, who, according to a study by the Consumer Electronics Association, would like to be able to check e-mail and visit web sites in their vehicles.
The USB port to the SYNC system will take any external technology plugged into it, which the company said would allow the system to "ensure 'forward compatibility'" by leveraging a user's current hardware.
SYNC Going Open-Source
The SYNC system, developed by Ford with Microsoft , provides in-car communications and entertainment, and was first shown at the 2007 Consumer Electronics Show. It's an integrated, flash-memory-based system that allows such things as drivers making hands-free calls, or the ability to control digital audio through voice commands or steering-wheel-mounted controls. The voice-recognition system can accommodate English, Spanish and Canadian French.
Ford is also reported to have decided to make the platform open source, so third-party developers can create downloadable applications for use in the car, such as traffic reports or news. This would make Ford's SYNC-equipped cars into a new kind of platform, comparable to, say, iPhones.
Bill Ho, an analyst with industry research firm Current Analysis, compared car-based Wi-Fi to the popular MiFi, a personal router that turns a 3G signal into a hot spot. He noted, however, that "there may be some performance issues when you're comparing a static hot spot to a mobile one."
Ho added that "being connected is the way to go," so expect to see more car makers getting their vehicles connected not only through GPS units but to the Internet.
http://www.mobile-tech-today.com/story.xhtml?story_id=0110009U473L&nl=8&full_skip=1Hybrid Camera, Credit-Card Reader Among CES Gadgets
By Adam Dickter, January 4, 2010 2:16PM
For those looking for some non-Apple or non-Google news from this week's Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, there's more than enough going on is this tech-heavy week.
On Sunday, Samsung unveiled its hybrid, mirror-free NX-10 camera, packed with new features, that will compete with midrange Micro Four Thirds cameras. With all the details about the camera's features -- including a 14.6-megapixel sensor and a system that shakes that sensor up to 60,000 times per second to keep it dust-free -- the only mystery is the price. Similar cameras range from $899 to $1,099, according to analyses published Monday.
At the same time as Samsung's announcement came word of Mophie's entry into point-of-sale card readers, a growing field that will make it easier for individuals and small businesses to accept credit-card payments.
The New York Times reported Monday that CES will also be a key gathering for movie executives and consumer electronics manufacturers to plan the future of digital entertainment with an eye toward developing portable digital movies that can be viewed on multiple platforms. Currently, venues such as iTunes only sell movies that can be viewed with their company's software.
Big Show
Other much-anticipated presentations at CES, the largest tech gathering in the world, will include auto executives talking about increased web access in cars; the touting of 3-D high-definition programming by satellite provider DIRECTV; showcasing of the increasing ability to connect home appliances to the Internet; the emergence of smartbooks, or small computers with cell-phone processors for fast surfing; and the explosion of new tablet and e-reader devices.
While this year's convention features 330 first-time vendors, it's still smaller than last year's show, with 110,000 participants, down from 113,000 in 2008. That year saw a 7.8 percent drop in consumer electronics revenue from the previous year, from $175 billion to $165 billion, according to the Consumer Electronics Association, which runs the convention.
It remains to be seen if all the buzz about the Google Nexus One smartphone and an expected Apple tablet computer, the subject of major announcements this month, will overshadow other products struggling for their share of the limelight.
"I'm sure they'll all get some small buzz by virtue of so many [media] outlets, pro and amateur, covering the event," says Michael Gartenberg, a vice president at Interpret. "But it's clear that without a presence at the show, Apple and Google have already captured much mindshare before CES even starts. Google will likely unveil further plans regarding mobile strategy at their event tomorrow, and Apple, without scheduling a product announcement or even confirming the existence of new products, has already cast a long shadow over CES with the speculation of a new tablet device said to be in production."
Swipe Away
The new device by Mophie, which specializes in add-on accessories for iPods and iPhones (such as the JuicePack external battery), enters a rapidly growing field of point-of-sale mobile-card readers.
Last month, Twitter cofounder Jack Dorsey unveiled the Square reader, which plugs into an iPhone's earphone jack and interacts with its own application. The Square is also expected to work with Android phones. The more-boringly-named Credit Card Reader from Mophie is larger but performs essentially the same function.
The devices are a threat to VeriFone, which sells dedicated devices to process credit-card payments. Dorsey has said he will give away his Square device free via the company's web site, which means his company will likely profit from percentages of transactions.
Details about the Credit Card Reader's price and availability have yet to emerge.
http://www.newsfactor.com/story.xhtml?story_id=012000E3RJYO&nl=2&full_skip=1 Companies Seek Alternatives to the Old Desktop PC
By Rachael King , January 6, 2010 7:05AM
Tech executive Parikshit Arora had an unconventional response the morning he discovered that his office computer was no longer working. Rather than fixing it himself or calling in help from the information technology department, he discarded the device. "It wasn't booting up," says Arora, vice-president for technology at iQor, a company that handles call-center work for clients. "I didn't even care to find out why. I threw it away and got another one."
The same goes for most of iQor's 11,000 employees. Why the seemingly cavalier take on computers? Two years ago, New York-based iQor ditched most of its Dell and Hewlett-Packard desktop computers and installed a fleet of cheaper, stripped-down machines that lacked hard drives. Also made by HP and known as thin clients, these smaller, virtually disposable devices leave most processing and storage tasks to a centrally located server. "We refer to thin clients as lollipops," says iQor Chief Executive Vikas Kapoor. "If yours isn't working, just get another one." Now, about 75 percent of iQor's employees use thin clients with files and software stored elsewhere. When a machine dies, staffers get a new one and resume work in minutes.
iQor may be a harbinger of things to come in corporate computing. While traditional laptops and desktops reign supreme in the workplace, accounting for the vast majority of employee computers, companies are increasingly willing to consider alternatives. Some are experimenting with thin clients in a bid to cut costs while many others are betting on netbooks. Employees are spending more work time on smartphones, while Apple's Mac -- once viewed as a machine for artists and educators -- is wending its way into corporations. "We've got the most diverse offerings of PCs that we've ever had," says Richard Shim, research manager for IDC's personal computing program, which is now tracking some 20 different kinds of personal computers, up from 16 in 2008.
No single kind of machine has gained wide workplace acceptance. Yet in aggregate, the alternatives reflect a shift in the way corporations think about computing. For instance, the Mac operating system was installed in about 2.7 percent of corporate computers in July 2008 but the figure had increased to 3.6 percent by March 2009, according to Forrester Research. As of October 2009, about 9 percent of 1,414 business technology professionals surveyed by InformationWeek Analytics said that their organizations made extensive use of netbooks and 19 percent predicted they would make extensive use of them by 2011. About 33 million netbooks were shipped worldwide in 2009.
Eliminating the Help Desk
The worldwide thin client market may grow to 7 million units in 2012, from 2.9 million in 2007, according to IDC. Gartner expects that by 2014, 15 percent of traditional professional desktop PCs will be replaced by so-called virtual desktops, which also leave most computing and storage tasks to a centrally located computer, rather than maintain them at the employee's workstation.
Executives at iQor opted for a nontraditional computing environment in large part to save money. "For every dollar I spent buying a PC, I spent 50 percent to the dollar every year maintaining it," Kapoor says. "There's a lot of technical expertise that's required to do that maintenance." iQor has eliminated its help desk and, before long, expects to cut its IT staff to about a quarter its previous size.
Decisions about what kind of computer to buy will come to a head in 2010 for the multitudes of companies expected to step up hardwarepurchases as the recession ends. In a November survey of 1,752 IT employees by ChangeWave Research, about 22 percent of respondents said they plan to increase IT spending in the first quarter of 2010, up from about 10 percent a year earlier. No longer can chief information officers make a straightforward choice between a desktop or a laptop. Now companies need to assess rising demand for portable computers, smartphones, virtual desktops, and so-called cloud computing, where processing, storage, and other tasks are handled off-site, often by a third-party provider such as Amazon.com.
While many companies are basing IT spending decisions on the state of the economy, several are also taking their cues from the availability of the newest Microsoft computer operating system, Windows 7. The recently released OS is accelerating hardware purchasing decisions for about 19 percent of the respondents in ChangeWave's survey. In many cases, corporate IT departments put off computer upgrades not only because of the economic slump but also from dissatisfaction with Vista, the prior iteration of Windows.
Windows Vista Prompted Doubts, Change
Case in point: Silicon Valley law firm Fenwick & West, which like many companies still uses machines that run Windows XP, the operating system that preceded Vista. In early 2010, Fenwick & West will give its 700 employees new machines, their first computer upgrade in three years. As of March 2009, Windows Vista was installed in about 11.9 percent of corporations, while 86 percent of companies remained on Windows XP, according to a July 2009 Forrester Research report. Windows Vista generally required hardware upgrades, which was one reason more companies didn't adopt it.
Dismay over Vista prompted many companies to contemplate alternatives to PCs, including Macs and machines that run the open-source Linux OS. In an October 2009 survey by InformationWeek Analytics of about 1,400 business technology executives, 13 percent of respondents said Vista's foibles had significantly affected their organizations and that they were actively encouraging the use of non-Windows systems. Another 26 percent said Vista had a minor effect and that their organization was now more open to non-Windows systems.
Windows 7 has been well-received and in some cases may wed companies more closely to a traditional PC environment. Yet because it -- unlike earlier iterations of Windows -- doesn't compel users to change their hardware, Windows 7 is also giving IT execs greater leeway for experimentation. "Windows 7 is the first Windows operating system we've released that didn't require an upgrade to hardware," says Gavriella Schuster, general manager for Windows at Microsoft. "Our goal is to make sure that we capitalize on the latest technology like touch and netbooks." Microsoft has also made enhancements to Windows 7 to better support desktop virtualization.
Transition Left "Lashes on My Back"
This time around, Fenwick & West is upgrading to laptops and desktops, but Matt Kesner, the law firm's chief technology officer, says opting for conventional machines won't always be a given. "It's possible this is the last refresh we will do with traditional computers," Kesner says. The company is considering desktop virtualization, an arrangement that would give the law firm more flexibility in the devices employees use, and meet the company's need for increasing mobility for its workers. "Next time we may be providing keyboards and monitors for something that attaches to your belt," Kesner says.
Weaning employees off customary equipment isn't always easy. "Initially [the thin client) wasn't as fast as our PCs," says iQor's Arora. "It was quite frustrating at the beginning," he says, adding that since the kinks were worked out, everything has functioned as it should. "I feel I have the lashes on my back to show the pain," CEO Kapoor says.
While growing numbers of companies are toying with alternative computing modes such as thin clients, few have committed to putting thousands of users through the transition, says Annette Jump, research director at Gartner. "In times like this, CIOs are going to experiment with a lot of different technology," says Ric Echevarria, a vice-president at chipmaker Intel. He says many CIOs conclude that business PCs provide better performance and security and that they're easier to manage.
No one expects PCs to go away altogether. "Up until now, the center of a corporate user's universe was their PC, but as we go forward the PC is going to be just one of the key tools that workers use," says Al Gillen, an analyst at IDC. "The net result is that we're talking about a PC market that will still grow in size in the future but it won't be the fastest-growing market anymore -- there will be many more options."
xolodenko
11.01.2010, 16:33
What do the news in post #10 have to do with aviation?
Here is aviation news -
http://airlineworld.wordpress.com/2010/02/27/women-only-lavatories-aboard-ana-flights/ Women Only Lavatories Aboard ANA Flights
Published February 27, 2010
All Nippon Airways (ANA) is rolling out a new service targeted for women passengers aboard its international routes: A dedicated, Women Only Lavatory at the back of each airplane.
Beginning Monday, March 1, 2010, ANA Group will begin introducing women-only lavatories on all of its international routes (except those flown with Airbus A320/Boeing 737 aircraft).
According to the company press release, following numerous requests from passengers for this service, one women-only lavatory will be designated in the aft section of the passenger cabin (location may differ depending on aircraft and configuration) and will be available for use by women passengers in all classes of service. Women-only lavatories will be indicated using the signage below.
Lavatories with such signage will only be available for women passengers throughout the flights except for a few special occasions. Depending on flight conditions, the otherwise restricted men passengers may also use the lavatories but will have to check with a cabin attendant after boarding. The special situations may include:
- When required for safety reasons, just prior to the seatbelt sign being turned on during take-off and landing
- When a passenger is not feeling well and a personal emergency requires such use
- When there are very few female passengers on the flight, and the women-only designation has been lifted for the flight – this will be signaled by an in-flight announcement
Wheelchair accessible lavatories on board ANA flights are separate from the Women-Only facilities.
Signage will be installed on current aircraft beginning March 1, with signage scheduled to be completed by the end of April.
Most probably the Japanese member of Star Alliance will also introduce this new “service” on its maiden Boeing 787 Dreamliner, scheduled to start operations at ANA as the launch customer at the end of this year.
by balint01
Pilotguy
02.03.2010, 01:18
Good idea!
http://www.mobile-tech-today.com/story.xhtml?story_id=0020002IKYWS&nl=8&full_skip=1 Travelers Demand More Airport Wi-Fi
By Roger Yu March 2, 2010 7:12AM
Travelers love free Wi-Fi at airports. But the amenity is still hard to come by for many U.S. fliers, despite a couple of airports that have recently announced that they're switching to the free model.
Twelve of the top 20 airports that handle nearly 60% of all domestic boardings charge for wireless Internet. Large airports that offer it for free include Denver, Charlotte, Las Vegas, Phoenix and Orlando. Boston Logan and Seattle launched their free service earlier this year. Houston Bush Intercontinental offers free Wi-Fi, but only for 45 minutes.
Travelers' insistence on fast Wi-Fi networks at airports will only grow stronger because they're carrying other devices beyond laptops -- smartphone, iPod Touch, netbook, Wi-Fi camera -- that will take up capacity.
But airports are reluctant to introduce a free system because it's costly to own and operate the equipment and handle customer service, especially in current economic conditions.
Airports that offer free service run ads to make up for the cost, but generally aren't making any money. They see it as another amenity whose cost must be borne by the airport authorities, says Richard Bogen of FreeFi Networks, which operates the free networks at Denver and Oakland.
Dave Hagan, CEO of Wi-Fi network operator Boingo Wireless, predicts most airports will retain paid service because "what may be a relatively small cost center (for the airport) will be enormous" as Wi-Fi networks become more complex. "You'll definitely get more usage in a (free) model," he says, adding that heavy traffic at Denver International -- the largest U.S. airport to offer free Wi-Fi -- has drawn complaints from travelers about their user experience there. Travelers' payments will help airports keep up with demand for greater Wi-Fi network capacity, he says.
Bogen disputes that Denver's service is lacking. "It's not a question of you get what you pay for," he says, adding Denver is not any slower than comparable airports. He says most airports "would love to go free, because so many are getting heat for (having) a paid service," but most are under contracts with network operators that run several years or are mired in local bureaucracy. "There's pressure to go free, but also economic pressure not to."
Several airports are experimenting with Wi-Fi networks to juggle competing interests.
Houston is trying a tiered model, in which travelers can use the network free for 45 minutes after viewing a 30-second commercial or pay to skip ads and have more time.
Philadelphia waives its $7.95-a-day charge on weekends, and college students can access it for free every day.
Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky's free wireless Internet at Terminals 2 and 3 is provided by Project Lily Pad, a local volunteer initiative "to create an environment that attracts mobile 'creatives' to the Greater Cincinnati area." Those traveling from Concourses A and B pay for Wi-Fi.
*In the latest sign of airports' financial pressure, Las Vegas McCarran officials are considering a plan to become the first U.S. airport to install a liquor store in the baggage-claim area. Many airports sell liquor at bars and duty-free stores, but the proposal is aiming to capture revenue from arriving passengers who are headed into Sin City.
Clark County commissioners voted to allow the airport to issue "requests for proposals" from vendors that would run the operation. The airport estimates its revenue from the store could range from $400,000 to $600,000 a year. "This is just to do research," airport spokeswoman Elaine Sanchez says.
"Oh, I know it will be a gold mine for some liquor store, but does this mean we'll do anything for money?" Commissioner Steve Sisolak told the Las Vegas Sun. "What's next? Airport strip clubs? Topless bars?"
*Midwest Airlines will launch non-stop service between Kansas City and both Columbus, Ohio, and New Orleans. Flights to Columbus, operated Sunday through Friday, will begin May 3, while daily flights to New Orleans will kick off on May 20.
*Ratings agency Moody's says its outlook for the U.S. airport industry remains "negative," citing downside risks that outweigh growth potential in the next 12 to 18 months. During the last two years of financial difficulty, many U.S. airports exercised financial flexibility by consuming reserves, reducing capital plans and trimming expenses. With "this flexibility gone, many U.S. airports will struggle to maintain their financial position without positive enplanement growth," it says.
http://www.flightglobal.com/articles/2010/05/17/342035/interiors-3d-movies-poised-to-take-off.html
DATE:17/05/10
SOURCE:Flight Daily News
INTERIORS: 3D movies poised to take off
By Mary Kirby
As 3D movies capture the imagination of theatre audiences around the world, in-flight entertainment (IFE) manufacturers are working to bring the technology to aircraft cabins, and are confident it will happen in the near term.
"Filmmakers have learned the art of 3D. It's all about depth of field. Passengers will demand that same feeling on the airplane. Panasonic, Thales and everybody else will have solutions to meet those needs," Panasonic director, product line management Marshal Perlman said at the World Airline Entertainment Association (WAEA) conference on IFE and seats at Airbus' facilities in Hamburg.
Some challenges exist to bringing 3D on board, including concerns related to potential passenger motion sickness. "We're studying that very closely," says Perlman. "Panasonic is currently working on a research white paper called 'user issues with stereo/video in commercial aircraft'. We're using leading scientific groups that work with NASA and the Air Force and other people that are interested in motion and vision."
From a hardware perspective, there is nothing radically different about 3D technology for the IFE head-end, distribution network or most seat equipment. But the monitors are slightly different and need to be built to handle nearly twice as much information and to display 3D images to your eyes.
"3D will also initially change how airlines source content, as airlines may need to source 2D and 3D content separately until the whole aircraft has 3D due to licensing costs and the technology differences between the two displays," says Perlman.
Protocol for supplying 3D glasses also needs to be addressed, he says. "Do you hand out the glasses? Where do you store them? Do the passengers keep them? Do you rent them, and how do you clean them? These questions will need to be answered."
Any obstacles to bringing 3D on board aircraft will be overcome, however. "It will definitely happen on an airplane because it's the next level of experience. It will happen sooner than you think," says Perlman.
"In all likelihood it will initially be directed at premium passengers because the larger the screen the more compelling the 3D experience. That's not to say it won't end up in economy at some point."
A source tells Flightglobal that a carrier has already ordered a Panasonic 3D IFE solution. However, Perlman says he can neither confirm nor deny that information.
http://www.mobile-tech-today.com/story.xhtml?story_id=001000183NKJ&nl=8&full_skip=1 GPS To Be Required for Planes in Commercial Airspace
By Dan Reed May 31, 2010 8:50AM
The so-called NextGen Air Traffic Control system, with global-positioning technology, is supposed to improve safety, reduce air traffic congestion, increase traffic capacity, lower fuel consumption and shorten commercial flight times. As a result, airlines, businesses and individuals are expected to save billions of dollars annually.
Airlines, private jet operators and other aircraft owners are officially on notice: Their planes must be equipped with new global -positioning technology by Jan. 1, 2020.
The equipment, which could cost U.S. airlines as much as $6.2 billion by some estimates to install in all aircrafts' cockpits, is a key element of the so-called NextGen Air Traffic Control system that would replace the 1950s-era ground-based radar control system now in use.
NextGen is supposed to improve safety, reduce air traffic congestion, increase traffic capacity, lower fuel consumption and shorten commercial flight times. As a result, airlines, businesses and individuals are expected to save billions of dollars annually.
The U.S. Transportation Department set the new deadline on Thursday. It applies to airlines and business jet operators. But many individuals who own small single-engine planes also would have to install the new equipment -- at a cost of up to $10,000 a plane -- if they expect to operate at commercial airports or close to congested airspace.
The equipment required under Thursday's order would broadcast a plane's exact position in the sky to both ground controllers and to every other plane in the sky. Eventually, planes will be required to carry equipment that allows them to receive positioning signals from other aircraft, as well as from satellites and ground stations.
Federal Aviation Administration Administrator Randy Babbitt said the order gives equipment manufacturers the green light to begin making the equipment "that will allow our air traffic controllers to know where aircraft are with greater precision and reliability."
Not everyone in the aviation community is enthused. The biggest concern: the cost of the equipment.
Many private aircraft owners say they can't afford to install the equipment and don't fly where it's necessary.
The airline industry, which has been critical of the nation's outmoded system and blames it for congestion, is somewhat divided.
Some carriers, including Southwest and American, already have begun ordering equipment for new planes and retrofitting older planes. But others have moved more slowly and now question whether the promised benefits of NextGen justify the costs.
All, however, want the government to help cover the high cost of equipping their planes.
Their argument: Communities, businesses and even individuals who never fly will benefit from the economic efficiencies created by a new, high-tech air traffic control system, and it's not fair to expect the perennially profit-challenged airline industry to cover the full costs.
Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood suggested Thursday that government might be able provide some financial help to the industry for equipping its planes. But there's little support in Congress for such spending.
http://www.ai2010nyc.com/ The 2010 Airliners International - New York
The World's largest gathering of airline enthusiasts will meet in the greater New York City area, between August 12, 13, 14, 2010 (Thursday, Friday and Saturday) at the newly remodeled Robert Treat Hotel in downtown Newark, New Jersey. You don't need to be a member of WAHS or any particular organization to participate in Airliners International 2010 or attend the trade show - you only need to have an interest in commercial aviation!
Trade Show Hours - Open To The Public
Friday, August 13th 1:00pm to 10:00pm
Saturday, August 14th 9:00am to 5:00pm
One Day Pass- $10 per person
Two Day Pass $15 per person
Children Under 12 Free
Meet fellow airline fanatics from all over the world!
- Exhibition hall for buying, selling and swapping airline memorabilia
- Tours of local aviation facilities and museums
- Special Saturday night banquet and guest speakers. Seminars devoted to the airline enthusiast. Talk to the men and woman who flew for the airlines during the 'Golden Age of Aviation' in the 1950s and 1960s
- Model Contest
- Photography Contest! Slide Contest! Postcard Contest
- And many other surprises to come
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Examples of Memorabilia being Exhibited
* Apparel
* Air Sickness Bags
* Books
* CD’s, DVD and Video
* Color Slides and Photos
* Decals
* Die Cast
* Dining Ware
* Display Models
* Flight Bags
* Glassware
* Labels
* Model Kits
* Military
* OAG’
* Pins
* Playing Cards
* Postcards
* Posters
* Miscellaneous Printed Matter
* Safety Cards
* Special Diorama Displays
* Timetables
* Wings More info is here: http://www.ai2010nyc.com/
http://www.mobile-tech-today.com/story.xhtml?story_id=012000EP7ZQC&nl=8 Flying Cars May Be Just Around the Corner
By Joan Lowy July 2, 2010 12:16PM
If cars had wings, they could fly -- and that just might happen, beginning next year. The company Terrafugia, based in Woburn, Mass., says it plans to deliver its car-plane, the Transition, to customers by the end of 2011. It recently cleared a major hurdle when the Federal Aviation Administration granted a special weight limit exemption to the Transition.
"It's the next 'wow' vehicle," said Terrafugia vice president Richard Gersh. "Anybody can buy a Ferrari, but as we say, Ferraris don't fly."
The Transition is a long way from cartoon dad George Jetson's flying car zooming above traffic, or even the magical Chitty Chitty Bang Bang.
"There is no launch button on the (instrument) panel," Gersh noted.
Rather, the car-plane has wings that unfold for flying -- a process the company says takes one minute -- and fold back up for driving. A runway is still required to takeoff and land.
The Transition is being marketed more as a plane that drives than a car that flies, although it is both. The company has been working with FAA to meet aircraft regulations, and with the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration to meet vehicle safety regulations.
The company is pitching the Transition to private pilots as a more convenient -- and cheaper -- way to fly. They say it eliminates the hassle trying to find another mode of transportation to get to and from airports: You drive the car to the airport and then you're good to go. When you land, you fold up the wings and hit the road. There are no expensive hangar fees because you don't have to store it at an airport -- you park it in the garage at home.
The plane is designed to fly primarily under 10,000 feet. It has a maximum takeoff weight of 1,430 pounds, including fuel and passengers. Gas mileage on the road is about 30 mpg.
Terrafugia says the Transition reduces the potential for an accident by allowing pilots to drive under bad weather instead of flying into marginal conditions.
The Transition's price tag: $194,000. But there may be additional charges for options like a radio, transponder or GPS. Another option is a full-plane parachute.
"If you get into a very dire situation, it's the ultimate safety option," Gersh said.
So far, the company has more than 70 orders with deposits, he said.
Terrafugia is Latin for "escape from the land." The company was founded in 2006 by five Massachusetts Institute of Technology grad students who were also pilots. They received some seed money from the school.
The concept of a car-plane has been around since at least the 1950s, but it's possible that Terrafugia may become the first company to mass-produce one, FAA spokeswoman Laura Brown said.
"We're working very closely with them, but there are still some remaining steps," Brown said.
Boeing displays Dreamliner at Farnborough Airshow
Plane makes its first appearance outside the U.S.
FARNBOROUGH, England — Boeing's long-anticipated 787 Dreamliner jet touched down here Sunday, tipping its wings to the crowd and building buzz at the Farnborough International Airshow.
The arrival of the blue-and-white Dreamliner at the aerospace industry's premier event after years of delay underlined hopes that the two-year downturn in the aviation and defense industry is nearing a bottom.
Boeing Chief Executive Jim McNerney claimed that the Dreamliner would be "the way planes are going to be built for the next 80 years."
The plane is the first passenger jet to be largely built from lightweight and environmentally friendly composite material rather than steel and aluminum.
McNerney acknowledged that delivery of the aircraft — already more than two years overdue because of production problems — could slip into 2011. He blamed administrative delays.
"End of the year is the plan," McNerney said. "There could be some paperwork that pushes it into next year."
Boeing, which entered the air show with orders for 863 of the twin-aisle jets, originally planned to deliver the first of the Dreamliners in 2008.
The plane's appearance at Farnborough comes as Boeing and European rival Airbus seek to rejuvenate commercial aircraft sales in the aftermath of the global recession. But they face new threats from smaller manufacturers, including Canada's Bombardier and Brazil's Embraer.
New orders for commercial aircraft are likely to be restrained and restricted to buyers from strong emerging markets in the Middle East and Asia.
Boeing last week downplayed the likelihood of big deals at Farnborough, stressing it didn't save up orders for international shows — a dig at Airbus' tendency in recent years to reveal a block of attention-grabbing announcements at Farnborough and Le Bourget at the Paris Air Show.
"At the end of the day, what matters is where we are at the end of the year, or over the longer term," said Randy Tinseth, Boeing Commercial Airplanes vice president for marketing.
Analysts say they're not expecting commercial plane orders anywhere near the record-breaking $88.7 billion worth announced in Farnborough in 2008.
"A lot depends on if the economic recovery continues; if there is a double dip in the recession, then all bets are off," says analyst Raymond Jaworowski of Forecast International. "We should start to see orders accelerate late this year."
The Geneva-based International Air Transport Association has forecast that global industry profits will reach $2.5 billion this year, an upturn from the huge $9.4 billion loss in 2009.
Analysts expect Asia and North America to lead the recovery, with Europe lagging.
Boeing is hoping to retain some of the limelight with the international debut of its fuel-efficient Dreamliner.
The announcement that its first planned delivery of the aircraft — to Japan's ANA — might be delayed by inspections and instrument changes was a setback. But the sight of one of the five test planes landing at Farnborough — the first time one has left U.S. airspace — was a major draw.
TUI Travel, parent company of Thomson Airways, said it would be the first British airline to take delivery of the 787 in January 2012, buying 13 aircraft across the group.
Boeing officials took journalists and U.S. congressmen on a tour of the 787's cabin, where they chatted with pilots and engineers and played with the dimmer switch on the plane's windows.
http://www.usatoday.com/printedition/money/20100719/index.htm
Scott AFB Airshow 2010 (http://www.scottairshow.com/)
Blue Angels (http://www.blueangels.navy.mil/)
Óëóêèòêàí
04.08.2010, 09:38
"Free admission n parking" - I really like that! ))
http://www.marthastewardess.com/?p=2462
United Arab Emirates Airlines to Add 80,000 Workers Over Next Decade
July 10, 2010
By Martha
UAE Airlines to Recruit 80,000 Staff in a Decade
Ivan Gale, The National, July 10. 2010
Abu Dhabi Airport
The country’s two largest airlines are gearing up for one of the biggest recruitment drives in aviation history, with plans to hire 80,000 pilots, cabin crew and other staff over the next decade.
The immense growth in hiring at Emirates Airline and Etihad Airways comes at a tough time for the industry in many other parts of the world.
In Europe, carriers have resorted to cost-cutting, which includes shedding jobs. They also face constraints in the form of environmental taxes and opposition to the building of new runways that would ensure continued growth.
The UAE carriers’ extra staff will be needed to operate hundreds of new aircraft that are on order. The number of aircraft being bought is expected to increase this month when representatives of the region’s big carriers gather at the Farnborough International Airshow to announce their latest orders.
Dubai officials have already hinted at yet another order for Emirates, on the heels of an US$11.5 billion (Dh42.23bn) purchase of new Airbus A380s announced last month at the Berlin Air Show.
In Abu Dhabi, Etihad is already one of the largest employers, with about 8,000 staff. By 2020, when all of its planes have been delivered, it should have 27,000 employees.
Emirates Group has even greater staffing needs. The company, which includes the airline and a global network of ground handling, travel and ticketing agencies, will double in size by 2020 to a fleet of about 300 aircraft, from 149 today.
It took us 25 years to get to 40,000 employees, but in the next 10 years we will double that to 80,000,” said Rick Helliwell, the vice president of recruitment at Emirates. Factoring in current employees who retire or move on, Emirates will require more than 60,000 new employees over the decade, including 2,500 pilots and 20,000 cabin crew, Mr Helliwell said.
Recruitment agencies say the big Middle East airlines such as Emirates and Etihad are always favourites among qualified aviation professionals. However, their staffing would become more challenging throughout the decade……. (continued)
---------- Äîáàâëåíî â 04:55 ----------
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704017904575409364143584100.html
* THE MIDDLE SEAT
* AUGUST 5, 2010
From the NYPD to JetBlue
Some airlines try to hire flight attendants who are young and attractive. JetBlue Airways has a type, too: cops and fire fighters.
It's "Law & Order: Cabin Crew." Or "CSI: jetBlue."
Since its launch 10 years ago, the New York-based airline has hired several hundred New York police officers and fire fighters, most of them retirees, for its flight attendant ranks. By some counts, 10% of its total cabin crew workforce of 2,400 has emergency response experience, though the airline doesn't have an exact number.
The very first class of jetBlue flight attendants included a retired fire fighter, Leonard Spivey, who became the role model for the airline and is still flying today at age 70. Mr. Spivey brought gravitas to the job—crucial for an airline with no experience—and provided a pipeline to bring in others. To jetBlue, his focus on safety was appealing; his take-charge manner and calm under fire were crucial and his corny jokes and upbeat nature were infectious.
JetBlue decided from the beginning that hires didn't have to have airline experience and it wanted to hire locally. When Mr. Spivey showed up, it dawned on recruiters that people who had been through emergencies routinely wouldn't panic onboard airplanes. Fire fighters and police officers come from careers where they dealt with the public and provided customer service, jetBlue officials say. They're used to working holidays. They knew how to handle people in stressful situations and could take command of an aircraft cabin.
"Past experiences are predictive of future behavior,'' Chief Executive David Barger says. "People who don't get too high and don't get too low, you want that in areas where decisions have to be made."
Vicky Stennes, jetBlue's vice president of inflight experience, notes that the airline cabin changed considerably after the 2001 terrorist attacks, putting more pressure on flight attendants. Before hijackers commandeered jets and flew them into buildings, flight attendants could always call the captain to march back to authoritatively end problems. Now flight attendants are on their own because pilots can't leave the cockpit.
"NYPD and FDNY are almost brands themselves and it fits well for us," Ms. Stennes says. "It proved to be such an early success we make a targeted effort to get crew members with emergency response background."
For NY police and fire department veterans, who typically can retire after 20 years of service and receive yearly pensions of half their annual salary, a second career as a flight attendant offers all kinds of benefits, including free or deeply discounted flights. The NYPD and FDNY veterans at jetBlue say the schedule of a flight attendant fits well with what they are used to: a few days on with long hours, then several days off. The pay is less than what they earned working for the city, but the flexibility is better in some cases.
"I came here for the schedule,'' says Laura Romer, 53, a former NYPD detective and hostage negotiation team member who got married, went back to school and found working part-time at jetBlue fit her lifestyle well. "I like that I get off the plane and the job is finished. The beeper doesn't go off at 1 or 2 a.m. with someone saying, 'We got your guy,''' she says.
Police and fire veterans say that like most flight attendants, they try to size up passengers as they board, keeping an eye out for people who need extra help or people who might turn into a problem. The best skill they bring to the airplane cabin, they say, may be the ability to put an end to conflicts before they turn into air rage incidents.
As a police officer, "you learn to de-escalate the situation,'' says Ms. Romer. "It's not what you say to people. It's how you say it to them.''
Once, when two passengers got into an argument because the man in one row reclined his seat and the passenger behind responded by hitting him in the head with a plastic soda bottle, Ms. Romer interceded as a detective might.
"I let him know I witnessed it,'' she says. Then, taking control of the argument, she calmly asked questions to learn more. It turned out that the man with the bottle was ill and agitated. He apologized. The man who had reclined said he understood.
Charles Harris was trained at FDNY in part by Mr. Spivey and spent 25 years in the department when he decided to retire after the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks. He had been at the World Trade Center as it was destroyed; like so many, he lost friends and colleagues, and attended countless funerals.
Now as a jetBlue flight attendant, Mr. Harris, 56, says he thinks of himself more as a "security chaperone'' than a flight attendant. He says he teaches younger flight attendants a firefighter's tactic—how to vary the tone and volume of their voice to get and keep someone's attention.
"Taking someone down a ladder, they can freeze. You have to vary your voice. If you keep yelling at people the same way, they freeze,'' he says.
On flights, Mr. Spivey makes a point of delivering pre-flight instructions while standing at the front of the cabin making eye contact with passengers. He does it from memory rather than reading a card so that people are more likely to pay attention. He always ends with a folksy story, a parable about not sweating the small stuff, that gets people thinking about what's most important in their lives.
If they clap, and most do, then passengers are rewarded with a corny joke from his extensive repertoire.
The story serves a purpose: When flights run into delays, Mr. Spivey reminds passengers of the lesson of his story and to not get bothered by inconveniences.
After 30 years as a firefighter in Manhattan, Mr. Spivey is most concerned about safety. On a New York to San Diego flight recently, a mother had belted her infant into an empty seat. He asked how old the child was in a friendly, grandfatherly tone and then delivered stern safety instructions about how to position the 21-month-old girl on a parent's lap, belted in for takeoff.
"It sounds like a great idea,'' the child's father, Brian Summers of Chappaqua, N.Y., said, after learning of Mr. Spivey's background.
Mr. Spivey, who is No. 1 on jetBlue's seniority list for flight attendants, lives in Florida and works out of New York, spending nights with his grown children in the New York area when he needs to. He says he misses the camaraderie of the fire department.
He applied to jetBlue because he likes to travel and realized he needed a job after too many unsuccessful visits to horse-racing tracks in retirement.
The everyday duties of a flight attendant—serving coffee and soft drinks, picking up trash in the cabin—weren't a difficult adjustment because fire fighters have to clean the firehouse, make coffee, do dishes, clean tools on trucks, and make beds all the time, he says.
"This is not as stressful as running into a burning building where smoke is down to the floor and you are trying to find people," Mr. Spivey says.
Write to Scott McCartney at middleseat@wsj.com
http://atwonline.com/sites/atwonline.com/files/misc/ATW%20World%20Airline%20Report%202010_0.pdf
Top 50 Airports 2009 vs. 2008
TOP AIRPORTS BY PASSENGERs
Rank - Airport - 2009 Passengers
1 - Atlanta, GA - 88,032,086
2 - London, UK - 66,037,578
3 - Beijing, China - 65,372,012
4 - Chicago, IL - 64,158,343
5 - Tokyo, Japan - 61,903,656
6 - Paris, France - 57,906,866
7 - Los Angeles, CA - 56,520,843
8 - Dallas/Ft. Worth, TX - 56,030,457
9 - Frankfurt, Germany - 50,932,840
10 - Denver, CO - 50,167,485
...
TOP AIRPORTS BY MOVEMENTS
Rank - Arport - 2009 Movements
1 - Atlanta, GA - 970,235
2 - Chicago, IL - 827,899
3 - Dallas/Ft. Worth, TX - 638,782
4 - Los Angeles, CA - 634,383
5 - Denver, CO - 607,019
6 - Houston, TX - 538,168
7 - Paris, France - 525,314
8 - Las Vegas, NV - 511,064
9 - Charlotte, NC - 509,448
10 - Beijing, China - 488,505
... Complete list see here: http://atwonline.com/sites/atwonline.com/files/misc/ATW%20World%20Airline%20Report%202010_0.pdf
http://www.newsfactor.com/story.xhtml?story_id=103003D2K3TQ&nl=2 FAA Computers Are Vulnerable to Cyberattack
By Lolita C. Baldor August 19, 2010 9:36AM
Federal Aviation Administration computer systems remain vulnerable to cyber attacks despite improvements at a number of key radar facilities in the past year, according to a new U.S. government review.
The Department of Transportation's inspector general said while the FAA has taken steps to install more sophisticated systems to detect cyber intrusions in some air traffic control facilities, most sites have not been upgraded. And there is no timetable yet to complete the project, the IG said.
FAA spokeswoman Laura Brown said the agency is working on a timetable and will notify the IG with that information soon. The FAA also said that upgrades to critical air traffic control systems have taken precedence over the intrusion detection improvements at a number of facilities.
Without the detection abilities, the FAA cannot effectively monitor air traffic control for possible cyber attacks or take action to stop them, the inspector general said in a letter obtained by The Associated Press.
The findings echo broad U.S. government worries about gaps in critical U.S. computer systems and networks that leave them vulnerable to cyber attacks by criminals, terrorists or nation states.
U.S. networks are persistently probed and attacked by hackers and criminals looking to steal money or information, get access to classified documents or military technologies, or disrupt networks that control vital utilities and services.
Last year, a government audit found that air traffic control systems were vulnerable to cyber attacks, and that some support systems had been breached, allowing hackers access to personnel records and network servers.
The computer systems used to control air traffic are often in the same building as ones used for administrative functions, but they are not connected.
Cyber experts repeatedly warn, however, that in some cases software glitches and other gaps can be exploited by hackers to move between computer systems at critical infrastructure facilities.
In the report last year, the IG warned that although most of the attacks disrupted only support systems, they could spread to the operational systems that control communications, surveillance and flight information used to separate aircraft.
Since then, the FAA has taken a number of steps to shore up the vulnerabilities in its computer networks.
In a letter to FAA Administrator Randy Babbitt, two senior members of Congress said they are concerned about the vulnerabilities. Rep. John Mica, who is the ranking Republican on the House Transportation panel, and Rep. Thomas Petri, also a Republican, urged Babbitt in a letter last week to take any necessary steps to immediately address the security issue.
Mica and Petri requested the initial inspector general's investigation into the matter last year.
http://www.mobile-tech-today.com/story.xhtml?story_id=133004NBZ7DC&nl=8
What's Up with Today's Airline Wi-Fi?
August 31, 2010 9:41AM
A few months back, none of Alaska Airlines' 116 aircraft was wired for wireless Internet access. Now half are. By the end of the year, the airline plans to have its entire fleet wired. After a tentative start, it's no exaggeration to say that Internet access at 30,000 feet is growing daily.
Like most U.S. airlines, Alaska is being wired by Aircell, which entered the market two years ago by wiring a handful of American Airlines planes; today it offers wireless Internet service on nearly 1,000 planes on eight airlines.
But will it stick? Michael Planey, an airline-industry consultant who tracks in-flight passenger technologies, said at least another year will pass before consumers have ruled whether the airlines' -- and Aircell's -- gamble pays off. Cost is an issue, he said: Aircell charges $4.95 to $12.95 for access during a single flight, depending on length.
Here is a breakdown of wired domestic carriers.
AirTran was among the earliest to wire its planes, making all 138 in its fleet Wi-Fi capable last year.
American has Wi-Fi capability on 167 planes. Customers can learn whether theirs will be among them 24 hours before departure at aa.com/wifiwidget. An American spokeswoman said the company will continue outfitting its 737 aircraft through 2010 and 2011.
None of Continental's 337 planes is wired. A spokeswoman said that adding Wi-Fi is among the issues being examined as it merges with United Airlines.
Delta has installed Wi-Fi on almost all of its 500-plus fleet. The airline also updates its capabilities at blog.delta.com/category/Wi-Fi.
Frontier is planning to install Wi-Fi on 32 of its planes.
JetBlue offers free access to e-mail, instant messaging and Amazon.com on one airplane, nicknamed BetaBlue. The company is deciding whether to expand that offering or install Wi-Fi on its 153 planes but has no timetable, a spokeswoman said.
One Southwest plane is Wi-Fi equipped, but the company plans to start installation by the end of the summer on all of its 541 planes at a rate of about 15 per month. Southwest is one of the few airlines not to use Aircell; it uses competitor Row 44. Southwest charges a flat $5 access fee per ride but hasn't said whether that price will change.
United offers Wi-Fi only on flights between New York's John F. Kennedy International Airport and Los Angeles and San Francisco, a total of 13 planes in its massive fleet. It plans to expand the service but has no firm details, a spokeswoman said.
On June 1 US Airways finished wiring all 51 planes it uses for domestic long-haul service.
All Virgin America planes are wired.
The Major Wi-Fi Providers
The two primary domestic providers of airplane Wi-Fi access are Aircell, which holds the majority of the market, and Row 44. Aircell relays its signal by a network of ground towers across the lower 48 states and, soon, Alaska. The company says that never leaves a plane without coverage (Hawaii will be an exception). Row 44 uses satellites.
http://www.newsfactor.com/story.xhtml?story_id=012000SSHND0&nl=2&full_skip=1
Airlines Go on Guard Against Cyberfraud
By Charisse Jones October 6, 2010 9:34AM
The Internet, a convenience to travelers looking to quickly book a trip, is also a gateway to fraud, costing the airline industry tens of millions of dollars a year.
Now, some carriers are stepping up their efforts to fight back. They're boosting the staff that tracks crimes and tapping into new technology that can help detect it. But as large airlines tackle the problem, there is growing concern that fraudsters are moving onto smaller carriers whose defenses are not yet in place.
"The fact is that any airline that hasn't upgraded their fraud-protection system in the last couple years is a sitting duck," says Jeff Liesendahl, CEO of Accertify, which provides fraud-prevention technology and services to airlines and other e-commerce companies.
Throughout the airline industry, online fraud is on the rise. A Deloitte UK survey taken in 2009 found that 48 percent of more than 50 responding U.S. and global carriers said online fraud had increased in the past year, and each airline's losses averaged more than $2.4 million annually.
Other fraud experts say the amount is far greater. An industry poll released last year by CyberSource, an electronic payment security-management company, and aviation conference firm Airline Information estimated total losses at $1.4 billion in 2008.
"The general feedback from everybody ... is that they see it getting worse," says Graham Pickett, partner in charge of aviation services for Deloitte UK, which conducted its survey for the International Association of Airline Internal Auditors. "The main driver has been ... the Internet, and in particular credit card type bookings."
American Airlines and Virgin America have noticed an uptick. "We have seen an increase over the past year that is significant," says Virgin America spokeswoman Abby Lunardini. Virgin officials "assume it's a combination of the overall rise in online purchasing and the growing sophistication of those who engage in credit card fraud."
In July, the U.S. Attorney for the Western District of Missouri, Beth Phillips, announced indictments of 38 people allegedly involved in a nationwide ring that used stolen credit and debit card information to buy airline tickets. The tickets were resold and led to estimated losses of more than $20 million for several U.S. airlines, banks, card holders and other businesses.
Airlines have ramped up prevention efforts in the last two years, hiring experts from the financial services industry, expanding anti-fraud teams and incorporating new computer systems that are more skillful at pinpointing suspicious transactions.
It's primarily larger carriers that have taken steps against fraud, Liesendahl says. As a result, smaller airlines, or those that have been online for a shorter time, are drawing the attention of criminals.
"The fraudster is going to go to the places where there's the least amount of fraud protection," Liesendahl says.
Secret Fraud-Prevention Efforts
Airlines are reluctant to reveal details of their fraud-prevention efforts.
"Common sense on this issue limits a discussion of what we do to track, prevent and seek prosecution of such occurrences," says Tim Smith, a spokesman for American Airlines. "We're just not interested in providing a 'how to' lesson on the subject."
Still, Smith says, "I can tell you, in a very broad sense, that we have seen some increase in fraud and attempted fraud the last couple years." The airline's corporate security team deals with credit card fraud, he says, and often works with financial services companies and law enforcement when making inquiries.
In the travel sector, companies such as Orbitz were hit first and hardest by fraudsters, resulting in millions of dollars in lost revenue a month.
After those companies took action to plug their holes, criminals took aim at airlines.
"The Web is where businesses go to accelerate growth but also (it's where they) have the most risk," says David Britton, vice president of airline fraud solutions at 41st Parameter, which provides fraud-detection solutions to various industries. "Unfortunately, (airlines) have had to learn along the way."
Credit card abuse, with someone entering a stolen card number on a Web site, is the primary type of online fraud, experts say. But criminals are also increasingly tapping into fliers' airline loyalty accounts and then using the passengers' miles or points for travel.
Although first-class and business-section seats typically booked by business passengers have been popular -- both for fraudsters wanting to take a trip and those looking to sell a ticket -- criminals are now booking seats throughout the plane, and further in advance, to make their scams harder to detect, some fraud experts say.
A Full-Time Anti-Fraud Department
AirTran set up a fraud-prevention department in 2003 that began with one staffer. It has since grown to six people that work full time keeping a lookout for such crimes. And in the last several months, the carrier has been upgrading its anti-fraud program with advanced technology that is "much more automated, less dependent on manual work," says spokesman Christopher White. As a result, he says, the airline's losses to fraud amount to less than 1 percent of revenue. The airline took in $2.3 billion in revenue in 2009.
"We continue to learn," White says. "It's a 24/7 game of cat and mouse. It's just like malware, spyware: You plug one hole (and) a thief is going to try to find another way."
Southwest began using a technology platform from Accertify in August 2008 that takes into account all that is known about a passenger, from where they usually travel, to the phone number being used, to flag suspect purchases. Those can then be referred to an agent who gives it a closer look, and may even call the customer to make sure the transaction is valid.
Southwest's fraud dropped 73 percent in the first year, Liesendahl says.
With airlines generating billions in revenue a year, the loss of a few million dollars to fraud may not seem particularly alarming. But "it's a crime," says AirTran's White. And "this is probably the most competitive industry in America. Every dollar counts, and every passenger counts. So we're going to do all we can to protect both."
http://www.newsfactor.com/story.xhtml?story_id=10300A4NVJYJ&nl=2
Verizon To Expand Its 4G Wi-Fi To Over 60 Airports
By Roger Yu October 19, 2010 9:39AM
More than 60 U.S. airports will get faster wireless data networks installed by Verizon Wireless by the end of the year, the carrier says.
The company has been working on deploying its latest network, dubbed 4G Long Term Evolution, to 38 metropolitan areas. For airports, Verizon Wireless will install additional equipment to enhance wireless coverage indoors, spokesman Jeffrey Nelson says. "Airport buildings are built differently, with lots of underground space. Many require in-building systems."
Most of the airports overlap with Verizon Wireless' selected cities. But some, such as Honolulu International and Salt Lake City International, will get their own coverage.
The new network will transmit data faster than Verizon Wireless' current 3G network, Nelson says. "Anything you can do on a wired (connection) today can be wirelessly operated with (4G)."
Verizon Wireless is focusing on enhancing airport coverage to attract business travelers, a high-paying base of customers who are also more demanding in their technology expectations. It has yet to release pricing for the faster network, but wireless carriers have been increasingly moving to "tiered pricing," in which heavy data users pay more if they exceed a capped usage amount.
Given the likelihood of more expensive pricing, many travelers will continue to opt for Wi-Fi service at airports, especially if they're free or if they already pay for a fixed monthly Wi-Fi subscription plan, says Christian Gunning of Wi-Fi provider Boingo Wireless. Boingo charges subscribers $7.95 a month for Wi-Fi connections at 685 airports worldwide, and also offers daily and hourly passes.
http://www.mobile-tech-today.com/story.xhtml?story_id=13200GDL4HTO&nl=8&full_skip=1 Tech Gadgets for Frequent Travelers
By Dana Wollman November 28, 2010 10:23AM
If you have people on your gift list who travel a lot, you may want to think about giving them something to keep them comfortable and entertained while on the go, even if they're not as nomadic as George Clooney's road warrior character in the movie "Up in the Air."
We can't do anything about delays, cramped seating, jetlag, traffic jams and noisy passengers, but these gadgets could make it easier to tune them out:
Livescribe Echo Smartpen (4GB: $170; 8GB: $200)
Pros: Livescribe makes pens that record audio and match it up with what you're writing. So people taking notes during a presentation can get away with jotting down keywords and then going back and listening to the conversation , cued up to different words on the page. Users can download free software to their PC or Mac that pulls in their notes, along with the audio, whenever they plug the pen into their computer 's USB port. Livescribe claims the pen lasts five to six hours when it's recording audio, and it charges using the USB cable.
Cons: The pen works only with paper that's pre-printed with a special pattern. It comes in notebooks of different sizes ($8-$25), but each has the same icons lining the bottom of every page. Tap on the controls to stop, start and pause audio recordings, as well as do things such as adjust the volume of the pen's speaking voice.
Microsoft Arc Touch Mouse ($50)
Pros: This mouse lies flat when you're not using it, but, with one satisfying click, can be bent into a curved shape, making it look more like a standard mouse. Light and low maintenance, it turns off automatically whenever you press the mouse into a flat shape. It promises up to six months of battery life before travelers have to recharge it. It's designed to be usable on any surface, so there's no need to pack a mouse pad. A small dongle plugs into a Windows PC or Mac to create the wireless connection.
Cons: The scroll wheel is simulated by a touch-sensitive strip that lacks the feel of a real wheel.
Apple iPad (Wi-Fi only: $499-$699; 3G: $629-$829)
Pros: Although ads for the iPad often depict someone relaxing with the tablet, legs propped up, it is an ideal companion for people on the go as well. True, you can surf the Web and watch movies on a phone or laptop , but the iPad's 9.7-inch display makes for easier viewing. It looks better than most laptop screens. Because the iPad turns on instantly and lasts up to 10 hours unplugged, using it is less of a hassle than booting up your PC and hoping that you can finish the movie before the battery runs out. The fact that the Transportation Security Administration doesn't require travelers to remove iPads from bags during airport security checks is the icing on the cake.
Cons: With a starting price of $499, the iPad is one pricey toy. And that's not counting the cost of applications and a protective case. (We like Apple's $39 offering because it doesn't add bulk and also has a stand, making hands-free movie-watching easier.) At 1.8 pounds, it won't weigh down a carry-on, but it's more cumbersome to whip out than a phone.
Klipsch Image S4 headphones ($80)
Pros: For some people, the iPod's standard-issue white ear buds get uncomfortable when worn in long stretches. Travelers will find comfort in the S4's small, tapered ear buds, which come with soft tips in different sizes. I found them more comfortable than iPod buds. They're sturdier, and they block out some ambient noise. When I wore them on my subway commute, I could still hear announcements over the loudspeaker, but not other people's conversations or the rattle of the tracks. As a bonus, the buds come with a metal carrying case and a tool to clean off earwax.
Cons: The cable tangles easily and is awfully thin, although the ear buds are covered by a generous two-year warranty should they break. Over-the-ear headphones with active noise cancellation, such as Audio-Technica's ATH-ANC1 QuietPoint headphones ($80), are better at muffling the roar of jet engines.
iGo Laptop Travel Charger ($100)
Pros: Every laptop comes with a power brick, but this one, made by iGo, is easier to take on the road and works with a variety of Windows-based laptops, thanks to a bevy of "tips," or adapters, that fit into differing power jacks. Someone who travels with two or more laptops could find it a god-send. Weighing 13.5 ounces and measuring 0.7 inches thick, the charger is lighter and thinner than most AC adapters for full-size laptops. It comes standard with a cigarette-lighter adapter.
Cons: Not compatible with Macs. Works with international wall current, but you still need a separate adapter to plug it into the wall in most countries.
http://www.mobile-tech-today.com/story.xhtml?story_id=132003A1TEY0&nl=8&full_skip=1 Digital Camera Prices Down Even with Cool New Tricks
By Jefferson Graham November 28, 2010 10:17AM
If you're looking for great deals on digital cameras, check out the latest Black Friday pricing stunts.
Kmart will have a Kodak C143 with 3X zoom and a free 4-gigabyte memory card for $69.99. A year ago, the camera was $125 to $150, with $25 or so more for the card. Target has an ultra zoom Canon for $129 that once sold for $300.
"Canon wouldn't have ever considered selling it so low back then," says Chris Chute, an analyst at IDC. "But they can do it now, because the competition is so intense."
At a time when more photos are now taken by smartphone cameras, manufacturers are under pressure to keep selling cameras at any cost.
More cameras will sell this year than last -- 35.9 million in the U.S., up from 35.3 million in 2009, says technology research firm IDC, as consumers respond to post-recession deals and new features.
Besides lower prices, some cool add-ons are new this year for point-and-shoot cameras:
*Shoot in 3-D. Sony's $299 WX5 has 3D Sweep: Press the shutter button and capture 10 images at once while moving the camera from left to right. The camera then takes the 10 frames, with separate left-eye and right-eye images, and melds them into one big panoramic image. Watch them on a Sony 3-D TV (only Sony, not competitors' models) and your 2-D camera images become 3-D.
*Self-timers that pop only if you're smiling. Nikon's Coolpix S80 has the Smile Timer, which, when activated, will take the picture only once you say, "Cheese." The camera also promises to be "blink proof." It takes two shots in a row, when activated, and saves the one that has eyes wide open.
*GPS. Casio's $349 EX-H20G has built-in hybrid GPS that "remembers where you've been ... even when you don't," according to the company. How it works: It tracks your position when shooting, using map data stored in internal memory.
*Super zooms in a compact body. In years past, cameras that took you really, really close to the action had huge zooms that made for a bulky camera that wouldn't fit in your pocket or purse. No more. Canon's $349 PowerShot SD4500 IS has a 10X zoom (the average point-and-shoot has a 3X zoom) in the same subcompact body that adorns most PowerShot cameras.
*1080p full HD video . When video was first added to point-and-shoots, clips were silent. Then they were in standard definition, followed by 720p high-definition. Now, many point-and-shoots take video in full 1080p high-definition, including the Canon PowerShot SD4500, Sony's $349 TX9 and Nikon's $299 Coolpix S8100.
Camera manufacturers can afford to add the new features and lower prices for point-and-shoots because they make up for it with digital SLRs, which usually go for about $1,000 and provide the bulk of the profits, says Chute.
Beyond point-and-shoots, a new category of camera has emerged: the mirrorless SLR, a smaller SLR with interchangeable lenses as seen with Sony's NEX line, Panasonic 's G and Olympus' Pen cameras. There's a tradeoff with these cameras: either no optical viewfinder or a video viewfinder that doesn't offer the same clarity as cameras with optical viewfinders. But they're easier to tote and offer superior image quality to point-and-shoots.
Chute predicts 2011 will be "the year of mirrorless." Nikon and Canon are expected to join the fray and bring this type of camera to the masses.
"Consumers will start to understand the value of the lighter, smaller design. And it will start to really penetrate the price points of SLRs."
For consumers, that's good news indeed.
http://www.mobile-tech-today.com/story.xhtml?story_id=013000GCTIH0&nl=8&full_skip=1 In-Flight Cell Phone Use: The Fable Exposed
December 5, 2010 8:24AM
If you've noticed more people leaving their cell phones on during flights -- and apparently not in the so-called airplane mode -- so have I.
While slightly disconcerting, it also might be fine. Several non-U.S. airlines allow in-flight cell phone use for voice calls, including Emirates and Malaysia airlines and, within the next year, Cathay Pacific Airways and, on a trial basis, Virgin Atlantic.
Could such allowances be made in the United States? Certainly, said Michael Planey, a consultant on in-flight passenger technologies. But bans would need to be lifted by the Federal Communications Commission and the Federal Aviation Administration.
The FCC ban has nothing to do with air safety; it is to prevent cell phone towers from being overwhelmed by thousands of quickly moving phones searching for signals on the ground. In late 2004, the agency considered overturning the ban but relented in the face of public opposition. The FAA ban is in place to prevent possible interference with airplane functions.
It's easy to find experts to take opposite sides on whether cell phones present a risk to aviation controls. Planey argued that cell phones present little risk, and the overseas experience seems to bear that out. The primary hurdle, he said, is convincing the public that voice calls wouldn't drive them crazy.
"Everyone assumes they'll be stuck next to a teenager yapping away on their phone for a six-hour flight," Planey said.
The key, Planey said, is making people pay handsomely for the service -- as much as $2 to $4 a minute (though Virgin Atlantic said callers on its flights will be charged by their mobile operator on their normal monthly bill, so the matter of charging clearly remains a work in progress).
In theory, no one could benefit more than the business traveler; just imagine getting work done while charging an employer for the cost. But the National Business Travel Association has supported House legislation that would ban voice communications on airplanes.
"Business travelers welcome the opportunity to work quietly in-flight while utilizing technologies such as e-mail , texting and instant-messaging ," the association's director of public policy, Shane Downey, said by e-mail. "However, phone conversations can be disruptive in such an environment when so many require the few hours of peace between meetings."
Rick Seaney, co-founder of FareCompare.com, said surveys show that about 85 percent of people oppose in-flight cell calling, which means a battle looms.
"Airlines will push for it at some point," Seaney said. "The question is whether enough people want it for the airlines to invest in the infrastructure costs."
He agreed that calling from the skies should be an expensive prospect but said there is no certainty that people would be willing to pay. And that makes sense. After all, how often did you see people calling the ground on those phones built into airplane seatbacks for so many years?
http://www.mobile-tech-today.com/story.xhtml?story_id=013000FXC9WO&nl=8&full_skip=1 Russian GPS Satellite Launch Fails
December 6, 2010 1:40PM
Russian news reports say a rocket and its payload of three communications satellites has fallen into the Pacific Ocean after failing to reach orbit, the latest setback to that country's attempts to develop a system to rival the U.S. Global Positioning System.
The state news agency RIA Novosti cited an unidentified aerospace industry source as saying the rocket and satellites went into the sea Sunday about 1,500 kilometers (900 miles) northwest of Honolulu, Hawaii.
Similar reports on other agencies also were based on an unidentified source, and it was not clear if all were the same person.
The Russian space agency Roscosmos declined to comment to The Associated Press.
Coast Guard Petty Officer Michael de Nyse in Hawaii said Sunday his agency knew about the fallen satellites but was not responding to the scene. He did not know whether the U.S. military or any other agencies were devoting resources.
Messages left with the U.S. Pacific Command were not returned, and the Pentagon referred questions to Russian authorities.
The Proton rocket blasted off Sunday from the Russian launch facility in Baikonur, Kazakhstan. It was carrying three satellites for Russia's Global Navigation Satellite System, or GLONASS.
The system -- which seeks to be the equivalent of the U.S. Global Positioning System, or GPS -- was developed during the Soviet era and serves both military and civilian purposes.
The government had hoped to make GLONASS fully operational by the beginning of 2008, but it was delayed by equipment flaws and other technical problems.
http://www.newsfactor.com/story.xhtml?story_id=012001D18FAO&nl=2&full_skip=1 Faster, Bigger Memory Cards for Photos Planned
By Jennifer LeClaire November 30, 2010 1:50PM
Taking and sharing digital photos has reached the mainstream, and it's causing old-school companies to think about the next decade. The goal is faster and bigger storage cards.
That's just what SanDisk, Nikon and Sony are setting out to offer. The companies have collaborated to develop a set of specifications with the future demands of photographers and videographers in mind.
Digital photography and HD video have changed the industry -- but to get to the next phase, professional photography and high-definition video applications need a new generation of memory cards that can process much larger files much more quickly.
Friendly Competition
SanDisk, Nikon and Sony have proposed their specs to the CompactFlash Association (CFA). The companies hope to standardize the format and lead the charge in the next wave of professional imaging products.
The competition so far seems to be friendly as the international organization that sets the standards is made up of leading manufacturers with a common cause. Once CFA -- led by a Canon executive -- approves the new spec, hardware manufacturers can drive innovation in the photography and video markets.
"This ultra-high-speed media format will enable further evolution of hardware and imaging applications and widen the memory-card options available to CompactFlash users such as professional photographers," said Canon's Shigeto Kanda, chairman of the board at CFA. "This next-generation format is expected to be widely adapted to various products, including those other than high-end DSLRs."
Need for Speed
Here's the technical side of the story: The proposed specifications would create products with data -transfer rates of up to 500 megabytes per second. Those faster speeds would make possible imaging and video applications that cannot be accomplished with the current specs. CF6.0, released this month, only offers maximum performance of up to 167 megabytes per second.
With the faster speeds, photographers and videographers can take continuous shots and store massive raw images. Users can also more quickly transfer storage-intensive high-resolution photos and videos from a card to a computer. The specifications combine high-speed data transfer with low power consumption via a power-scaling system to extend battery life.
"The capacity of memory cards today only tells part of the story. It's not only important how large my card is, but also how fast my card responds. It's the same way that a hard drive in a computer spins faster to launch applications faster," said Michael Gartenberg, an analyst at Gartner.
"That's becoming an issue with memory cards when you are talking about devices that can do mega-megapixel images and high-definition video. New storage devices have to be fast enough to keep up with that; otherwise consumers get very impatient waiting for files to move or copy or forward. This looks like the right group to kick things to the next level."
The Future of Photography
In addition to industry-leading performance capabilities, the group's new memory-card specifications also meet the future capacity and durability requirements of professional imaging applications.
For example, the proposed new format has the potential to extend maximum storage capacities beyond two terabytes. That would make cards designed to the spec especially useful for high-resolution images and HD video applications.
http://www.forbes.com/feeds/ap/2010/12/13/science-eu-russia-space-soyuz_8199305.html Associated Press
Russia's Soyuz soon to be only lifeline to space
By PETER LEONARD , 12.13.10, 07:10 AM EST
BAIKONUR, Kazakhstan -- As a Soyuz spacecraft slowly rolls to its launchpad on the icy cold steppes of Kazakhstan, even the most seasoned space fan cannot help but be spellbound by the sight.
With NASA finally retiring the shuttle program next year, the venerable Russian workhorse is now set to become the world's only lifeline to the International Space Station. That predicament is provoking mixed feelings of concern over excess reliance on Russia's space program and enduring admiration for the hardiness of the Soviet-designed Soyuz.
The vehicle is a rugged 'one trick pony,' no frills or luxuries, and can take any licking and keep on ticking," said James Oberg, a veteran of NASA Space Shuttle Mission Control in Houston.
The next Soyuz mission begins Thursday, when NASA astronaut Catherine Coleman, Russian cosmonaut Dmitry Kondratyev and European Space Agency's Paolo Nespoli of Italy lift off from the Baikonur cosmodrome in southern Kazakhstan.
In a procedure polished over more than four decades of Soyuz launches, the carrier rocket was horizontally rolled out of its hangar on a flatbed train at 7 a.m. local time Monday and carefully carried to the blastoff site in the winter darkness.
In contrast to NASA's distinctive winged shuttle, which is reusable albeit exorbitantly expensive to operate, the Soyuz can only be used once. It is a relatively streamlined craft consisting of a tiny capsule sitting atop powerful booster rockets.
The name, which comes from the Russian word for "union," was both a tribute to its Soviet design and a reference to the Soyuz's ability to dock with other modules. That detail was an absolute must even to begin thinking about long-term space missions or possible travel beyond the Earth's orbit.
Whereas the shuttle's viability has been hamstrung by countless delays, the last time a Soyuz launch was postponed was as far back as 1971.
Yet for all its trustworthiness, the first Soyuz launch in April 1967 ended in tragedy when Col. Vladimir Komarov, the sole cosmonaut onboard, died on re-entry.
Soviet authorities had grown alarmed at U.S. strides in the space race and had pushed for hasty deployment of the Soyuz before the United States could get its Apollo rocket off the ground.
That Soyuz disaster led to an immediate postponement of manned flights and injected a new spirit of caution into the Soviet space program. A minute attention to detail, most evident in Russian space officials' obsession with running operations on a timetable counted in seconds, has earned the Soyuz a well-deserved reputation for safety.
"My biggest dream in life has always been to fly in orbit someday, but I can tell you that I would feel a hell of a lot more at ease in a Soyuz than in a shuttle," space historian Bert Vis said.
Despite such oft-heard endorsements, a clutch of incidents in recent years has aroused concern. Most notably, problems with the Soyuz capsule's service module during a landing in April 2008 caused a perilously steep re-entry trajectory, which placed crushing gravitational pressure on its three-person crew.
Ahead of watching the Soyuz being winched into place at the launchpad Monday, NASA astronaut Peggy Whitson, who traveled onboard that capsule, said the luxuries afforded by the shuttle would indeed be missed.
"The Soyuz is kind of a gentler launch, but I'd much rather land in a shuttle, because it's much more civilized," Whitson said.
Critics also complain that by leaving themselves so heavily reliant on the Soyuz, the United States could fall victim to costly price gouging at the hands of Russian space authorities.
"Moscow already uses it for leverage and has raised the price to NASA repeatedly over the years, to $50 million now," said Brian Harvey, an expert on the history of the Russian space program. "But a shuttle launch costs $550 million a go, so it's still good value."
And while the Russian space program is set to enjoy almost a complete monopoly on ferrying people to space for the next few years, things might change. The successful test launch last week of a privately developed rocket from Cape Canaveral is a clear example of how the market could breed viable space competitors.
"If new, commercially developed space transportation systems in the West leapfrog the tried-and-true Russian booster stable in the next decade, Russia will be left with no significant capability of interest to foreign customers," Oberg said.
The politics and economics of space travel is usually far from astronauts' minds, however, and while in Baikonur, most relish the pleasure of witnessing the ingenuity that goes into assembling the rockets.
"It was Michelangelo that said the sculpture was always inside the rock, I just have to take away the unnecessary pieces. The Soyuz is one of those sculptures," said Canadian astronaut Chris Hadfield, who plans to fly to the International Space Station onboard a Soyuz spacecraft in 2012.
http://www.wired.com/autopia/2011/02/construction-begins-on-1000-mph-rocket-car/ Construction Begins on 1,000-MPH Rocket Car
By Chuck Squatriglia February 7, 2011
After three years of planning, a missile on wheels designed to top 1,000 mph is finally under construction.
The team behind Bloodhound SSC hope to shatter the current land-speed record of 763.035 mph when it sends Royal Air Force pilot Andy Green streaking across a dry lake bed in South Africa within two years. The team is one of three hoping to exceed 800 mph.
Of the vehicles, the Bloodhound SSC is perhaps the most radical — which is saying something. The car, if it can be called that, features a jet engine and a rocket that produce 47,000 pounds of thrust. To put that in perspective, each of the Concorde’s four engines produced roughly 38,000 pounds at takeoff.
The British engineers designing the Bloodhound have signed off on the steel lattice chassis that will hold the wild ride’s drivetrain. Aerospace manufacturer Hampson Industries will build it.
“It’s a fantastic feeling to be handing over the drawings to the people who will now build the car,” chief engineer Mark Chapman told BBC. “It’s a ‘progressive definition release,’ which means as soon as we finish a design, it goes out the door. The first metal parts should start coming back to our design house in Bristol by Easter.”
Team leader Richard Noble announced this crazy idea more than two years ago. He and his crew unveiled a full-size mock-up of Bloodhound last summer at the Farnborough International Air Show near London.
Noble, who set a land speed record of his own in 1983, and his team are no strangers to this madness. He and Green set the current land speed record of 763.035 mph in 1997.
They continue a British tradition for speed that dates to the 1920s and ’30s, when Sir Malcolm Campbell set several records on land and sea. Britain has held the land speed record for 58 of the 112 years since Count Gaston de Chasseloup-Laubat reached a blistering 39 mph outside Paris.
Traveling faster than a bullet is no easy feat. To do it, Bloodhound will use a Eurojet 2200 engine and a Falcon hybrid rocket. The idea is to use the jet to reach 350 mph and the rocket to go the rest of the way to 1,000 mph. Noble figures it should take 42 seconds to reach that velocity.
Bloodhound also will use an 800-horsepower V12 developed by Cosworth to start the jet, pump high-test peroxide into the rocket and power the hydraulic systems. (You can get the full technical rundown of the vehicle here.)
Aerodynamics are paramount at those speeds. Noble and chief aerodynamicist Ron Ayres spent three years designing the 42-foot–long vehicle. It will weigh 14,158 pounds fully fueled and ride on aluminum alloy wheels almost 3 feet in diameter. Lockheed Martin helped design them.
The team hopes to begin low-speed testing early next year before shipping Bloodhound to South Africa for flat-out runs in late 2012 or early 2013.
More than bragging rights are at stake here. Noble and Lord Drayson, Britain’s minister of state for science and innovation, hope the project will inspire children to pursue careers in engineering, mathematics and science. More than 4,000 schools throughout Britain are following the project through the Bloodhound Education Programme.
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http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2011/02/russia-space-plane/ Russia Working on Mysterious Space Plane of Its Own
By David Axe February 3, 2011
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It’s official: the space race is on again.
54 years after the Soviet Union launched its Sputnik I satellite, sparking the original space race — and 20 years after the USSR’s collapse left America as the sole space superpower — the Russians are back on track. The Kremlin’s military space chief Oleg Ostapenko just announced that Russia is developing a small, maneuverable, reusable space plane to match the U.S. Air Force’s mysterious X-37B Orbital Test Vehicle.
Russian industry has already outlined the craft’s design, Ostapenko said. “As to whether we will use it, only time will tell,” he added coyly.
But it seems unlikely Russia would forgo the opportunity to match the U.S. Air Force’s accomplishment with the X-37B. That craft, a quarter-scale unmanned Space Shuttle first launched in April last year, represents one of the biggest leaps forward in space since, well, Sputnik.
The X-37 can carry anything that will fit in its pickup-truck-bed-size bay. “You can put sensors in there, satellites in there,” said Eric Sterner, from The Marshall Institute. “You could stick munitions in there, provided they exist.” The X-37 can also help repair U.S. satellites or sneak up on and disable enemy sats. Plus, it can stay in orbit for nine months, land like an airplane, then return to orbit just a few weeks later.
The initial X-37 test flight ended in December, flawlessly except for a blown tire. While “OTV 1″ is being prepped for its second flight late in 2011, its twin “OTV 2″ will boost into orbit on March 4, atop a rocket launched from Florida’s Kennedy Space Center.
It should come as no surprise that Russia wants its own “X-37ski.” With Sputnik, Moscow beat America into space. But with every major space capability since in recent decades, Washington has led its eastern rival. The U.S. fielded the manned Space Shuttle in 1981. Russia built its own, similar space vehicle, the Buran, but it flew only once, in 1988.
A decade later, America built the Global Positioning Satellite system, allowing precise navigation on Earth. Today, Russia is still struggling to construct its own version of GPS, the so-called “GLONASS.” The last attempt to reinforce the GLONASS constellation failed, when a rocket failed on launch in December, destroying three of the pricey satellites.
Not coincidentally, an X-37ski could help Russia put satellites like the GLONASS craft into orbit more reliably.
It’ll probably be a few years before the Russian X-37 clone takes flight. After all, this is super-cutting-edge technology. By then, the race for nimble military spacecraft could be a three-way competition. Just last week, there were rumors — highly, highly questionable ones — that China is working on an X-37-type vehicle, too.
http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2011/02/why-the-russian-space-plane-wont-fly/ Why the Russian Space Plane Won’t Fly
By David Axe February 9, 2011
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Call it space-bot envy. Two months after the U.S. Air Force’s mysterious and unmanned X-37B space plane wrapped up a history-making 225-day flight, the Russians announced they were working on a cheap, fast, reusable space plane of their own. “Something has been done along these lines, but as to whether we will use it, only time will tell,” Oleg Ostapenko, head of the Russian space force, said last week.
Ostapenko’s veiled comment sparked a wildfire of press speculation — our own included. Only now are cooler heads joining the conversation. Their consensus: that there’s no technical reason Russia can’t match America’s robot space plane. But a lack of political will, supporting infrastructure and cash make a Russian “X-37ski” an unlikely prospect.
The basic technology for a reusable space plane is half a century old, according to space expert Jim Oberg. “The Russians have experimented with lifting body spacecraft since the 1960s and have even flown orbital prototypes.”
At the hardware level, “there are no obvious roadblocks,” Oberg said. But that’s not the only level.
Oberg pointed out that the Dreamchaser, one of the many in-development U.S. space planes meant to eventually join the X-37 in low orbit, might in fact be indirectly based on the Russian MiG-105 from the 1970s. (Pictured.)
Moreover, as recently as the late 1980s, the Russians were working on a space plane called MAKS that could be launched from the back of a six-engine Antonov airlifter. Some observers believe Ostapenko was referring to a revived MAKS in his oblique commentary last week.
Even if it got built and reached orbit, the new Russian space plane could find itself flying blind, Oberg warned. “Their [the Russians'] worldwide tracking net has dramatically shrunk and their space-based relay satellites broke down in the 1990s and haven’t been replaced, so real-time in-flight monitoring/control can be a problem.”
Plus, space planes are probably too expensive for the rickety Russian economy, Oberg added. “The most recent time that their government was conned into copying a winged spaceship ‘because the Americans have one,’ they bankrupted their space budget on a pointless dead end — the magnificent, maleficent ‘Buran.’” That’s the Soviet’s answer to our Space Shuttle. It flew exactly once.
Never mind the control and cost issues. According to Stanford-affiliated analyst Pavel Podvig, the major reason Moscow probably won’t go ahead with a new space plane is conceptual.
Space planes like the X-37B are highly versatile and their operational concepts necessarily a bit vague at this point. “You can put sensors in there, satellites in there,” Eric Sterner, from The Marshall Institute, said of the X-37. “You could stick munitions in there, provided they exist.” The Air Force is likely to discover more and more uses for the X-37 as it steadily increases the bot’s flying rate, from just one sortie last year to at least two in 2011.
For the Russian military, which doesn’t enjoy a $50-billion “black” budget like America does, that kind of ambiguity represents a political liability. “My understanding is that the [Russian] space industry has better luck getting support and financing for projects that have a more or less clearly defined goals,” Podvig said.
All the same, until Ostapenko or another official gives us more information on Russia’s orbital intentions, even Oberg and Podvig can only guess. One thing is clear: space planes will probably play a big role in future conflicts. The only question is: whose space planes?
http://www.eaa.org/news/2011/2011-01-27_mig29.asp Another Privately Owned MiG-29 Flies
January 27, 2011 —Another front-line Eastern Bloc fighter - a 1989 MiG-29 Fulcrum - flew for the first time in the United States on January 23 at Snohomish County Airport in Everett, Washington. It’s the second privately held MiG-29 flying in the U.S., closely following Don Kirlin’s aircraft that flew last month in Quincy, Illinois.
This latest Soviet fighter, N29UB, belongs to the Historic Flight Foundation, based at Paine Field in Mukilteo, which specializes in vintage airplanes built from 1927-57. Among its collection are a Waco UPF-7, P-51B Mustang, Spitfire Mk. IXE, T-33, Grumman Bearcat, and B-25D Mitchell. However, when HFF founder John Sessions learned about the MiG becoming available in 2005, he decided to acquire it and verify that a complex high-performance aircraft could be restored by following the same rules and guidelines as a vintage airplane.
The result is one of the most pristine examples of the MiG-29 anywhere in the world.
It wasn’t easy to get the Mach 2.2/60,000 feet aircraft to the States. The company hired to transport it to the U.S. split it into two shipments to deter hijackers - one, containing the wing and engine, shipped across the Atlantic Ocean and the other, with the fuselage, heading across the Pacific. Things got complicated, however, when the fuselage was being off-loaded to another ship in Hong Kong; the shipper had neglected to obtain a local import license and it was seized as military contraband on April 4, 2006.
Over the next two years Sessions traveled to Hong Kong a number of times in an effort to extricate the MiG from the bureaucratic red tape. A judge finally ruled in 2008 that the aircraft had been properly demilitarized before arriving in Hong Kong and should be returned to the Historic Flight Foundation. In 2008, the fuselage finally joined the rest of the aircraft at Arlington Municipal Airport in the hangar of Morgan Aircraft Restorations, the company that performed the restoration.
Morgan fully disassembled the aircraft to inspect all the parts for damage. Some parts that didn’t make it to the U.S. had to be fabricated from scratch, or duplicated by making a mirror copy from the other side of the aircraft. Components showing unusual wear or any sort of corrosion or damage were replaced, including both Klimov RD-33 afterburning turbofan engines specially manufactured by the Klimov factory in Russia. Morgan also utilized experienced MiG-29 mechanics with decades of front line MiG-29 service, flown in from Slovakia.
While the aircraft was being restored, two crashes of Russian Air Force MiG-29s occurred, later found to be caused by the vertical tails separating from the fuselage due to corrosion. HFF redesigned all of the attachment components entirely out of aluminum to prevent that from occurring. Also, since the airplane had been parked outside in the Ukraine through many long winters plus sat on a Hong Kong dock for two years, some of the sheet metal needed replacement. The entire plane also had to be stripped and repainted, but the markings were kept as close to original as possible - from the pattern of the camouflage to the black panther on the nose.
The restoration was completed in December 2010 - except for the explosive charges for the ejection seats, which had been removed as part of its demilitarization in the Ukraine. Acquiring replacements and importing them into the U.S. was another challenge, but they were finally installed earlier this month and the aircraft was ready to fly again.
Sessions and Doug Russell, former F-15 pilot with MiG-29 time in Europe, flew the January 23 ferry flight of the newly christened N29UB from Arlington to Snohomish County. Sessions characterized the flight as “solid.”
“In a slow turn, when you start to ‘feel the hammers,’ they bring to mind the felt tips of a Steinway,” Sessions described. “No jackhammers. Add a little power and the hammers go away.”
The only movement in the seat was caused by cessation of the afterburner, he said. “Made me lurch forward. It was a happy experience.” The flight experienced no unexpected drips or streaks, “which is tribute to Morgan Aircraft Restorations,” Sessions added.
The MiG-29 is scheduled to undergo a 5-hour flight test program soon, flying to altitudes of 60,000 feet at speeds of Mach 0.97, along with high-g aerobatic maneuvers.
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http://www.newsfactor.com/story.xhtml?story_id=02100000YXSO&nl=2&full_skip=1 Space Shuttle Discovery Lands, Ends Flying Career
By Marcia Dunn March 9, 2011 9:44AM
Discovery ended its career as the world's most flown spaceship Wednesday, returning from orbit for the last time and taking off in a new direction as a museum piece.
NASA's oldest shuttle swooped through a mostly clear noontime sky to a touchdown at its home base.
"To the ship that has led the way time and time again, we say, 'Farewell Discovery,'" radioed the Mission Control commentator.
Florida's spaceport was packed with shuttle program workers, journalists and even some schoolchildren eager to see history in the making.
The six astronauts on board went through their landing checklists with the bittersweet realization no one would ever ride Discovery again. They said during their 13-day space station delivery mission that they expected that to hit them hard when the shuttle came to a stop on the runway.
At three minutes before noon Eastern Time -- Discovery landed and ceased being a reusable rocketship.
"For the final time: wheels stop," Discovery's commander Steven Lindsey called out as the shuttle rolled to a stop.
Even after shuttles Endeavour and Atlantis make their final voyages in the coming months, Discovery will still hold the all-time record with 39 missions, 148 million miles, 5,830 orbits of Earth, and 365 days spent in space. All that was achieved in under 27 years.
Discovery now leads the way to retirement as NASA winds down the 30-year shuttle program in favor of interplanetary travel.
NASA estimates it will take several months of work -- removing the three main engines and draining all hazardous fuels -- before Discovery is ready to head to the Smithsonian Institution. It will make the 750-mile journey strapped to the top of a jumbo jet.
Throughout the flight, Lindsey and his crew marveled at how well Discovery was performing. They noted that the spacecraft was going into retirement still "at the top of her game."
"A dream machine," observed Lindsey's co-pilot, Eric Boe, on the eve of landing.
Discovery's last mission ended up being flawless despite a four-month grounding for fuel tank repairs.
Perhaps more than any other shuttle, Discovery consistently delivered.
It made its debut in 1984 following shuttles Columbia and Challenger, dispatched the Hubble Space Telescope in 1990, flew the first shuttle rendezvous to Russia's Mir space station and carried the first female shuttle pilot in 1995, and gave another ride into space to John Glenn, the first American to orbit the Earth, in 1998.
It got NASA flying again, in 1988 and 2005, following the Challenger and Columbia disasters. And it flew 13 times to the International Space Station, more than any other craft. On its last trip, it delivered a new storage compartment packed with supplies and a humanoid robot.
NASA's boss, Charles Bolden, a former shuttle commander, led the welcoming party. He'll announce the final homes for Endeavour and Atlantis on April 12 -- 30 years to the day that Columbia soared on the first shuttle flight.
NASA planned to move Endeavour out to the launch pad Wednesday night for its April 19 liftoff, but delayed the move until Thursday because bad weather was expected. The mission will be commanded by the husband of wounded Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, Mark Kelly. His identical twin brother Scott is currently the skipper of the space station; he returns to Earth next week on a Russian Soyuz spacecraft.
Atlantis is slated to make its last trip at the end of June.
NASA is under presidential direction to spread its wings beyond low-Earth orbit. The goal is to send astronauts to an asteroid and then Mars in the decades ahead. There is not enough money for NASA to achieve that and maintain the shuttle program at the same time. As a result, the shuttles will stop flying this summer after 30 years.
American astronauts will keep hitching rides to the space station on Russian capsules, until private companies are able to provide taxi service to and from orbit. NASA expects to get another nine years out of the space station.
http://www.mobile-tech-today.com/story.xhtml?story_id=0330015IPVQL&nl=8 Solar Flares Could Affect GPS, Satellites, Power
By Adam Dickter February 17, 2011 2:32PM
If your GPS system 's performance is a little spotty on Friday, don't call tech support. Blame the sun. Three waves of charged particles that erupted from its corona Sunday, Monday and Tuesday will hit the Earth in the next few days in what scientists are calling the biggest solar event since December 2006.
It won't be as bad as a 2003 flare-up that is the biggest solar eruption ever recorded by instruments, but planes are being directed further south than usual to avoid the North Pole, where the impact will be most severe. Northern areas may also be treated to a light show Thursday and Friday nights.
Sunny, with a Chance of Coronal Mass
The National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration reported Thursday on its daily space weather site that solar activity Thursday would be moderate, but over the next three days there could be "an increase to unsettled to active conditions, with a chance for minor storm periods expected late on day one into day two (18 February) because of the arrival of the coronal mass eruption." The forecast for day three, Feb. 19, is "quiet to active."
The warning of G1 or G2, out of a range through G5, is mild, said Joseph B. Gurman, project scientist for NASA's Solar Terrestrial Relations Observatory. However, it could impact some radio frequencies, he said.
"Flares have excess high energy radiation -- EUV, soft and hard X-ray, even gamma rays -- that can affect ionization and heating in the Earth outermost atmosphere, the thermosphere," Gurman told us. "That, in turn, affects the heights at which shortwave radio frequency signals are reflected, and sometimes that means disrupting RF communications, particularly near the geomagnetic poles."
Some disruptions were reported in China. Unlike the coronal mass that takes hours to travel the 95 million miles to Earth, electromagnetic radiation gets here in just eight minutes. It then takes the earth's atmosphere several hours to "relax" after the impact and return to normal.
Since satellite technology takes these routine events -- they average 175 per 11-year solar cycle -- into account, the impact on communication should be minimal.
"Typically you prepare to shift traffic to terrestrial resources and away from satellites," said Rob Enderle, principal technology analyst at the Enderle Group. "Generally it is the sun-facing satellites that are the most affected, but, in most cases, with a performance impact, the traffic can be shifted to better-shielded resources."
Danger To Power Cables
Gurman said the flares are the result of catastrophic changes in magnetic field in the sun's outer atmosphere.
"If they're ejected fast enough, CME's can drive shocks through the solar wind, and those shocks, threaded with twisted magnetic fields, provide efficient charged-particle acceleration --- enough to get particles going at speeds of half the speed of light or more," the scientist said.
In extreme cases, that energy can cause electric currents in our atmosphere and trapped energy that could interfere with or even damage satellites.
"The ring currents can also induce electric currents in the Earth and the oceans, particularly at high geomagnetic latitudes, that can damage copper cabling and interfere with electric power transmission if the generating facilities do not have adequate warning to allow them slowly to adjust the ground phase of their large transformers," Gurman said.
In 1989, solar flares are believed to have caused a nine-hour power disruption in Quebec.
The Los Angeles Times reported that NASA's Advanced Composition Explorer satellite can give researchers and industries a 30-minute warning before coronal mass ejections strike.
We may be in for a worse storm in 2013, when the sun's 11-year cycle of activity is due to crest.
http://www.newsfactor.com/story.xhtml?story_id=023000R1B51Y&nl=2 Could High-Speed Wireless Render GPS Useless?
By Alan Levin March 11, 2011 9:27AM
A new high-speed wireless network given initial approval for installation across the nation could cause severe disruptions to GPS signals, rendering everything from car-navigation systems to jet-flight controls useless, industry groups and government agencies charge.
A trade group called The Coalition to Save Our GPS is announcing its formation today, and on Friday a representative for the Global Positioning System industry will testify on the issue before the House Commerce Appropriations Subcommittee.
The Federal Communications Commission wants the LightSquared network to begin serving 100 million customers by the end of next year. Several government agencies, including the Federal Aviation Administration and the Commerce Department, have raised concerns that the technology could cause conflicts with GPS systems.
Industry groups predict the new towers will create vast zones where motorists can't find GPS directions, smartphones will lose functionality, and 911 emergency systems will be confounded.
"It will overwhelm the signal from the GPS," says Jim Kirkland, general counsel of Trimble Navigation, a leading manufacturer of GPS systems. "If a commercial airliner is coming in on approach and it loses its GPS signal, then they abort the landing. Think what (interference from a wireless transmitter) would do to BWI or LaGuardia (airports)."
LightSquared, a Virginia company, plans to install 40,000 cell locations across the country, in an area that would jeopardize GPS signals in as much as 1 million square miles, the industry contends.
The system also could undercut the government's plan to modernize the air-traffic system to use GPS signals over the next decade.
The conflict pits two of the most popular consumer technologies against each other: the growing wireless networks that power iPads and smartphones, vs. the network of GPS satellites that enable much of the same technology.
The FCC on Jan. 26 granted LightSquared a waiver to build its network because it will increase competition for broadband services and create tens of thousands of new jobs, but the company will not be allowed to proceed if it interferes with GPS signals, spokesman Robert Kenny says.
A committee including LightSquared and GPS industry officials will conduct tests and respond by June, the agency ordered.
LightSquared says it has filters that prevent its signal from interfering with GPS devices, says Jeff Carlisle, LightSquared's executive vice president for regulatory affairs. The company has no interest in harming GPS because it is essential to the very smartphones on its networks, Carlisle says.
GPS leaders, such as Garmin, contend that the FCC shouldn't have given LightSquared permission to move forward before tests were done.
http://www.thenewstribune.com/2011/03/17/1589016/radiation-on-planes-from-japan.html Radiation on planes from Japan to Sea-Tac not cause for concern, customs officials say
Routine radiation monitoring of air travelers, their luggage and cargo arriving at Sea-Tac Airport from Japan has uncovered no harmful levels of radiation, Sea-Tac officials and Customs and Border Protection spokeswomen said Thursday.
JOHN GILLIE; Staff wruter
Published: 03/18/11 4:32 am | Updated: 03/18/11 6:45 am
Routine radiation monitoring of air travelers, their luggage and cargo arriving at Sea-Tac Airport from Japan has uncovered no harmful levels of radiation, Sea-Tac officials and a Customs and Border Protection spokeswoman said late Thursday afternoon.
“No aircraft entering the United States has tested positive for radiation at harmful levels,” Customs and Border Protection said in a prepared statement in response to specific inquiries about radiation screening of incoming flights at Sea-Tac.
At the airport, spokesman Perry Cooper said Sea-Tac officials have not been notified of any unusual radiation levels on passengers or cargo arriving from Japan, where several damaged nuclear reactors are emitting radioactive plumes.
“Our fire department would have been notified if there was any unusual radiation level,” he said. “They’re the ones who would handle that.”
Some news reports said that radiation had been detected in cargo arriving by plane in Chicago, Dallas and Seattle. Customs and Border Protection spokeswoman Stephanie Malin said the agency is trying to track down the origin of those reports. No harmful levels of radiation have been detected at those three airports or anywhere in the country, she said.
All arriving international passengers, their baggage and cargo are routinely screened for radiation at all ports of entry.
Cooper said it’s not uncommon to detect some slight level of radiation among some international travelers who may have received medical radiation treatments. Those passengers are questioned and screened further and are allowed to enter the country.
Sea-Tac hosts three daily flights to and from Japan. One Delta and one United Airlines flight connect Sea-Tac with Tokyo’s Narita airport. One Delta flight connects Sea-Tac to Osaka.
Delta announced Thursday it will discontinue flights from Detroit and Los Angeles to Tokyo’s Haneda Airport next week. A Delta spokesman said the airline has no plans to cut its flights to its Narita hub. From there, Delta flights fan out across Asia.
http://www.newsfactor.com/story.xhtml?story_id=0020006M8RL4&nl=2
World IPv6 Day Will Test New Internet Protocol
By Barry Levine June 2, 2011 11:36AM
Mark your calendars: Wednesday, June 8, is World IPv6 Day. On that date, the Internet Society will oversee the first global trial for the new Internet protocol.
The society said it will be joined by a variety of web sites and Internet service providers, including Facebook, Google, Yahoo, Akamai and Limelight Networks. In all, more than 225 organizations will use IPv6 on their main services for a full 24 hours to test the technology and motivate other organizations to prepare for the handoff from the current IPv4, which is rapidly running out of addresses.
'An Important Step'
Leslie Daigle, chief Internet technology officer for the society, said the test flight is "an important step toward ensuring the global Internet can continue to grow and evolve so that it can connect billions of new users and devices."
The goals of the test drive include exposing potential issues, but doing so under controlled conditions. The society estimates 99.95 percent of users will experience no problems connecting to the web on World IPv6 Day.
Businesses and Internet providers are encouraged to review their plans for the transition. Steps include providers making IPv6 connectivity available to all users, web sites offering their wares over IPv6, software updates for older operating systems, and firmware updates by home gateway manufacturers. An open-source IPv6 test-drive site, created by Jason Fesler, is available at test-ipv6.com, with summary results about the visitor's readiness.
On Feb. 3, the end for IPv4 was announced. In a public ceremony, the last blocks of addresses based on the current Internet Protocol were assigned to regional Internet registries (RIR). Those addresses are projected to be given out by the RIRs by September, at which point the future expansion of the Internet will depend on a successful transition to IPv6.
Each block contains 16 million addresses, and one block went to each of the five regional organizations covering Africa, the Asia Pacific region, America, Europe and the Middle East, and the Latin American and Caribbean region. The handoff was conducted at a public ceremony in Miami by four international nonprofit groups that collaboratively administer the Internet addressing system.
'A Matter of Time'
Raúl Echeberría, chairman of the RIR umbrella organization, the Number Resource Organization, said in February that "it's only a matter of time before the RIRs and Internet service providers must start denying requests for IPv4 address space." He added that "deploying IPv6 is now a requirement, not an option."
Three main factors are behind the now-in-sight depletion of IPv4 addresses. One is the explosion in web access from multiple devices for each user, primarily in developed countries. Each of those smartphones, laptops, tablets, desktops and other devices that access the web require a different IP, or Internet Protocol, address. And the demand for device addresses is increasing rapidly with TVs, game consoles, even automobiles beginning to offer web-browsing capabilities.
A second factor is a rapidly growing user base in developing countries such as Brazil, India and China. Many users in those countries access the web through mobile devices, which means the device-per-user ratio is also likely to rapidly increase.
And, third, the Internet is becoming the communications network for non-user-based equipment, such as smart electricity grids, sensors, RFIDs and smart houses.
IPv4 dates back to 1980 and a time when its 4.5 billion addresses seemed like a lot. The new IPv6 utilizes 128-bit addresses, instead of IPv4's 32-bit, and the new IP could offer -- if needed -- a vast number of addresses that should keep humanity happy until the sun burns out.
Some experts say IPv6 could provide four billion addresses for each person on Earth. But Dave Evans, Cisco's chief technologist in its Internet business solutions group, has said the actual number is closer to "50 thousand trillion trillion addresses per person."
In addition to zillions of new addresses, IPv6 also brings improvements in routing, network autoconfiguration, better handling of 3G mobile networks, and other advantages.
http://www.newsfactor.com/story.xhtml?story_id=0320011M6ZVKNew Galaxy Tab To Be Promoted on Long Airline Flights
By Mark Long June 14, 2011 11:29AM
Samsung Mobile has struck a deal with American Airlines for premium passengers on selected transcontinental and transoceanic flights to use Samsung's newest Galaxy Tab as their in-flight entertainment hub. American plans to deploy 6,000 of the Samsung tablets on selected international flights and domestic U.S transcontinental flights beginning later this year.
The deal will help American enhance the in-flight experience for premium passengers. For Samsung, the agreement will boost its quest to familiarize traveling business executives with the entertainment and enterprise -ready capabilities of the new Galaxy Tab, which sports a 10.1-inch touchscreen.
Time is precious to an executive, so Samsung's deal is a natural fit for a captive audience like this, noted Gartner Vice President David Willis. "It's a good way to get their devices in the hands of both high-value customers and corporate influencers," he said.
A Good Marketing Technique
Samsung is trying to use the 'front-of-the-airplane' bias to its advantage, noted Forrester Research analyst Sarah Rotman Epps. "Executives who ride at the front of planes get a skewed perception of technology adoption," she explained. "First-class fliers see everyone with iPads and think everyone has one, but still less than five percent of U.S. consumers do."
She thinks Samsung's deal is a good marketing technique that gets outside the bottleneck of Best Buy, where there's lots of competition for consumers' attention. "But ultimately the product will need to speak for itself, and no Android tablet measures up to the iPad so far," she added.
Though American Airlines didn't say exactly when the Samsung tablet will be available to passengers, U.S. consumers will be able to purchase Samsung's new device beginning Friday. For Samsung Mobile, the new offering with a larger touchscreen is an opportunity to grow market share.
According to IDC, Samsung held 17 percent of the media tablet market during the fourth quarter of 2010, when the company's seven-inch Galaxy Tab was the only brand-name alternative to Apple's iPad. However, it will be tough for Samsung to retain the same level of market share this year due to the launch of the iPad 2 as well as a large number of rival offerings.
Enterprise Aims
According to Gartner, some companies have already issued media tablets to business and IT leaders in the spirit of exploration, and some IT organizations have found new places where tablets can deliver information and media in new ways. "Businesses are finding that tablets are a favorite tool of some of their best people," Willis said.
Moving forward, the opportunities for tablet deployments in the enterprise space are huge, Willis observed. "Sales leaders are clamoring to adopt media tablets with their sales teams as a more engaging way to share sales collateral and promotional materials," he explained. "And it won't stop there."
Next to come will be customer relationship management systems, as well as order entry and sales-configuration applications, Willis predicted. "For sales managers, media tablets will be a natural platform for business analytics and performance dashboards," he said. "In other settings, the intimacy of using a media tablet supports more personal interactions."
One big problem Samsung faces is the skepticism that businesses still have about Google 's Android platform and the Android Market, Willis noted. "Until somebody gains the trust of the enterprise, we'll see business customers staying with RIM or Apple," Willis said.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/yblog_thelookout/20110620/us_yblog_thelookout/airbus-superjumbo-jet-clips-building-at-air-show
Mon Jun 20, 12:41 pm ET
Airbus’ superjumbo jet clips building at air show
By Liz Goodwin
The European airplane maker Airbus was left red in the face this weekend, when on on-ground accident forced it to withdraw an A380 superjumbo from the Paris Air Show.
The enormous plane--with a wingspan of 80 yards--scraped a building at the show, clipping its wing. Korean Air flew one of its superjumbo jets to the show to come to Airbus' rescue, The Wall Street Journal reported. The damaged
plane sat with its wing covered over the weekend.
http://in.reuters.com/resources/r/?m=02&d=20110620&t=2&i=442765779&w=460&fh=&fw=&ll=&pl=&r=img-2011-06-20T194905Z_01_NOOTR_RTRMDNC_0_India-578001-1
The mishap wasn't the only embarrassment for Airbus at the biennial air show. The company also had to pull a military transport carrier A400M from a flight demonstration after problems were found in its gear box, the Journal reports. Airbus officials then brought in another aircraft to do a flyover pass to impress visiting foreign dignitaries who attended the show.
Meanwhile, rival Boeing's distinctive 747-8 superjumbo upstaged Airbus. The company said it had received $5.4 billion in orders for the new aircraft.
Despite the PR setbacks, Airbus pulled in billions of dollars worth of orders for its narrow-body A320 jet--especially from Middle East and Asia-based companies, according to Reuters. The narrow planes save 15 percent in fuel costs.
Earlier this year, a double-decker A380 operated by Air France clipped a smaller jet while it was taxiing, sending it into a spin. http://www.washingtonpost.com/rf/image_296w/WashingtonPost/Content/Blogs/blogpost/201106/Images/a380.JPG?uuid=qs-drptIEeC_scmKTOYtnA
http://boston.cbslocal.com/2011/07/14/planes-collide-on-runway-at-logan-airport/
Planes Collide On Taxiway At Logan Airport
BOSTON (CBS) – An investigation was underway after two jets collided on a taxiway at Logan Airport around 7:30 on Thursday night.
The wing of a Delta jet clipped the tail of an aircraft that provides regional air service for the carrier while both planes were on the taxiway awaiting their instructions for takeoff.
A Massport spokesman says flight 266 to Raleigh-Durham was sitting in front of flight 266 Boston to Amsterdam when the collission occurred, the left wing of the 767 hitting the tail of the much smaller plane.
One female passenger complaining of neck pain was transported to the hospital as a precaution. The rest of the passengers were bussed to the terminal while Delta helped them make arrangements for other flights.
http://cbsboston.files.wordpress.com/2011/07/logantail.jpg?w=300 http://cbsboston.files.wordpress.com/2011/07/loganwing.jpg?w=200&h=150
No other flights were disrupted as planes were moved to other taxiways. There were 204 passengers on the flight to Amsterdam, and 74 on the flight to Raleigh.
The passengers that were headed to Raleigh were being put up in hotels for the night.
The FAA and the NTSB will now investigate, interviewing the Delta crews, passengers, and listening to the audiotapes.
Delta released the following statement about the incident:
“While taxiing out for departure, the wing from Flight 266 from Boston to Amsterdam made contact with the vertical stabilizer of ASA Flight 4904, also on departure from Boston to Raleigh-Durham. Flight 266 returned to the gate and passengers deplaned without incident. Passengers on ASA Flight 4904 deplaned and were transported by bus to the terminal. Both aircraft have been removed from service for inspections and passengers are currently being reacommodated on other aircraft.”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OFPxyTEcJXU
http://abc.go.com/shows/pan-am about Pan Am
Passion, adventure and espionage... They do it all—and they do it at 30,000 feet. The style of the 1960s, the energy and excitement of the Jet Age and a drama full of sexy entanglements deliciously mesh in a thrilling and highly original new series, Pan Am, premiering SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 25, on the ABC Television Network.
Welcome to the Jet Age. It's 1963. WWII and Korea are history. A new kind of war, a Cold War, is underway. The world is poised on the brink of a cultural revolution, and everywhere change is in the air.
[more]In this modern world, air travel represents the height of luxury, and Pan Am is the biggest name in the business. The planes are sleek and glamorous, the pilots are rock stars, and the stewardesses are the most desirable women in the world. Not only are these flyboys and girls young and good looking, but to represent Pan Am they also have to be educated, cultured and refined. They're trained to handle everything from in-air emergencies to unwanted advances—all without rumpling their pristine uniforms or mussing their hair. These pre-feminist women form a powerful sisterhood, as they enjoy the rare opportunity to travel outside the country—something most women in this age can only aspire to—and one of the few career options that offers them empowerment and respect.
At Pan Am there's Dean (Mike Vogel), a cocky, charismatic and ambitious new pilot—the first of a new breed not trained in war. A farm boy from a small rural town, Dean finds himself thrust into a leadership position at Pan Am far too young, but is eager to prove himself as the new face of the airline. On the sly, he's dating Bridget (guest star Annabelle Wallis), a motherly beauty with a mysterious past. Co-pilot Ted (Michael Mosley) comes from wealth and privilege, but his powerful family is a blessing and a curse, and he has his own dark secrets. A rebellious bohemian, Maggie (Christina Ricci) turns into a buttoned up professional for work in order to see the world, trying to balance her hunger for life with her undefined ambitions. Also on this crew is flirtatious Colette (Karine Vanasse), who is the empathetic caretaker of the group, though she herself has a penchant for unavailable men. And finally there are the sisters, the spirited Kate (Kelli Garner) and her beauty queen younger sister, Laura (Margot Robbie), a runaway bride who recently fled a life of domestic boredom to take to the skies.
In their individual quests for adventure, the Pan Am crew face both opportunity and peril, as they juggle their lives, their loves, their hopes and dreams while flying around the world to glamorous international cities like Paris, Berlin, Jakarta and Monte Carlo. Welcome aboard, and fasten your seat belts... Adventure awaits!
Pan Am stars Christina Ricci (Penelope) as Maggie, Margot Robbie (Neighbours) as Laura, Michael Mosley (Justified) as Ted, Karine Vanasse (Polytechnique) as Colette, Mike Vogel (The Help, Blue Valentine) as Dean and Kelli Garner (Going the Distance) as Kate.
Series creator Jack Orman (ER, Men of a Certain Age,), Thomas Schlamme (The West Wing, Parenthood, Mr. Sunshine) and Nancy Hult Ganis (Akeelah and the Bee) are executive producers. Orman also wrote the pilot, with Schlamme directing. Pan Am is produced by Jack Orman Productions, Out of the Blue Entertainment and Shoe Money Productions in association with Sony Pictures Television.
Twitter
Follow @PanAmABC to get the latest news, pics and behind-the-scenes info!
#PanAm
#SDCC
starring:
Christina Ricci as Maggie
Michael Mosley as Ted
Mike Vogel as Dean
Margot Robbie as Laura
Karine Vanasse as Colette
Kelli Garner as Kate
http://www.newsfactor.com/story.xhtml?story_id=033003171MY9&nl=2 Google Launches Flight Search
By Barry Levine September 15, 2011 10:36AM
Add air travel to the growing number of markets that Google now plays in. The search giant has launched its new Flight Search feature on its popular search engine.
When a user enters a query into the search engine that relates to flight information, such as "flights from New York to Los Angeles," a Flights link appears on the left side of the screen. That leads to Flight Search, which also can be reached directly at google.com/flights.
ITA Technology
Google is touting several advantages to Flight Search over conventional travel-agency sites, such as very fast results. There is also a simple, easy-to-scan results list of potential flights, on which the user can then drill down for more details. Clicking on a flight shows return options, and there's a booking button next to results.
Travel dates can be scanned quickly by clicking arrows to change depart and return dates, length of stay, and price. Columns for takeoff time, flight duration, arrival, airline, route, and round-trip price can be sorted by clicking on the column heading. Filters are automatically set to focus on price and duration, but they can be modified to expand the options.
Engineering Director Kourosh Gharachorloo noted on the official Google Search blog that this search capability allows a user to readily "use the map and filters to see where you can go from San Francisco within three hours for less than $300."
Online Travel Sites
Google said the flight results are not related to any paid relationships the company has with any airlines, and that the search points directly to the airline websites only.
Laura DiDio, an analyst with industry research firm Information Technology Intelligence Corp,, said that online travel agencies such as Orbis or Travelocity have reason to be worried, but not to be panicked.
"It's now up to them to come up with new features that add value to their sites," she said.
The technology behind Flight Search is built on travel tools Google acquired when it bought ITA Software for $700 million last year.
Many of the travel agencies use the same data from ITA Software, which is one of the reasons the U.S. Justice Department looked into Google's acquisition of the company. The settlement, agreed upon in April of this year, requires Google to sequester ITA data from its other company databases, and to continue allowing the use of ITA technology on "fair, reasonable, and non-discriminatory terms" by the travel agencies, but only through 2016.
But the settlement did not address whether Google's domination of the search-engine market meant that it had an unfair advantage over the travel agency sites, since users who otherwise would use Google to find a travel agency might now go directly from Google to an airline for flight purchases.
http://www.newsfactor.com/story.xhtml?story_id=0330038U3VWC&nl=2 Airlines To Stream Video and Audio for Personal Devices
By Roger Yu and Jon Swartz September 15, 2011 9:43AM
In-flight entertainment is going BYOM: bring your own monitor. Virgin America announced Tuesday a feature coming late next year to its Red in-flight entertainment system that will allow customers to download video and audio files via Wi-Fi to their smartphones, laptops or tablet computers.
Row 44, an in-flight Internet provider, will offer a video streaming service later this year on some aircraft flown by its largest client, Southwest Airlines.
American Airlines, which introduced video streaming in May on 15 Boeing 767s, said Tuesday that it will expand the service to about 400 planes by the end of 2012.
Those forays by airlines into the more personalized format is an acknowledgment that passengers increasingly prefer using their own mobile devices for entertainment now that nearly all major domestic airlines offer in-flight Wi-Fi. Airlines see such services as a way to generate more revenue.
Virgin America will charge $5 to $7 for a movie and about $2 for a TV show. Those who are unable to finish the movie that they paid for can take it to go, airline spokeswoman Abby Lunardini says.
The service will be introduced initially on 10 percent of Virgin's 160 daily flights and added to more in the next few years. Virgin America will continue to use its seat-back monitors, which are currently installed on all 40 planes.
It also envisions enhancing the tool so that passengers can view entertainment offerings, pre-purchase and create their movie/song lists prior to boarding, Lunardini says.
"If you're standing still in this place, you're going backward," adds Virgin America CEO David Cush.
Southwest customers will be able to select from a lineup of movies and TV shows from Disney, Universal, 20th Century Fox and Warner Bros. Among the video content to be available are live Major League Baseball games and broadcasts from CNBC, Fox News Channel and Versus, as well as episodes of Glee, Modern Family and The Three Stooges.
"Passengers already bring their own Wi-Fi devices on board. The growth in that market has been staggering," says Howard Lefkowitz, Row 44's chief commercial officer.
American said video streaming will be available on about 90 MD-80 aircraft by year's end, and it will introduce the service on Boeing 737s and 757s starting first-quarter 2012.
Fliers will pay $3 to $5 for a movie and $1 to $3 for a TV episode and don't have to pay separately for Internet access.
http://news.yahoo.com/official-plane-problems-may-caused-nv-crash-025851048.html
Official: Plane problems may have caused NV crash
by MARTIN GRIFFITH - Associated Press,SCOTT SONNER - Associated Press
http://l.yimg.com/bt/api/res/1.2/ZDOi2XVdFAncmc_RPxxcCA--/YXBwaWQ9eW5ld3M7Y2g9MTE1NTtjcj0xO2N3PTIwMDA7ZHg9MD tkeT0wO2ZpPXVsY3JvcDtoPTM2NDtxPTg1O3c9NjMw/http://l.yimg.com/os/152/2011/09/17/crash2_031646.jpg
RENO, Nev. (AP) — A vintage World War II-era fighter plane plunged into the grandstands Friday during a popular annual air show, killing at least three people, injuring more than 50 spectators and creating a horrific scene strewn with body parts and smoking debris.
The cause of the crash wasn't immediately known, but an official with the event said there were indications that mechanical problems were at play.
The plane, flown by a renowned 74-year-old air racer and movie stunt pilot, spiraled suddenly out of control and appeared to disintegrate upon impact. Bloodied bodies were spread across the area as people tended to the victims and ambulances rushed to the scene.
Maureen Higgins of Alabama, who has been coming to the show for 16 years, said the pilot was on his third lap when he lost control.
She was sitting about 30 yards away from the crash and watched in horror as the man in front of her started bleeding after a piece of debris hit him in the head.
"I saw body parts and gore like you wouldn't believe it. I'm talking an arm, a leg," Higgins said "The alive people were missing body parts. I am not kidding you. It was gore. Unbelievable gore."
Among the dead was pilot Jimmy Leeward, 74, of Ocala, Fla., a veteran airman and stunt pilot who named his P-51 Mustang fighter plane the "Galloping Ghost," according to Mike Houghton, president and CEO of Reno Air Races. Officials earlier said Leeward was 80.
Renown Regional Medical Center spokeswoman Kathy Carter confirmed that two others died, but did not provide their identities.
Stephanie Kruse, a spokeswoman for the Regional Emergency Medical Service Authority, told The Associated Press that emergency crews took a total of 56 injury victims to three hospitals. She said they also observed a number of people being transported by private vehicle, which they are not including in their count.
Kruse said of the total 56, at the time of transport, 15 were considered in critical condition, 13 were serious condition with potentially life-threatening injuries and 28 were non-serious or non-life threatening.
"This is a very large incident, probably one of the largest this community has seen in decades," Kruse told The Associated Press. "The community is pulling together to try to deal with the scope of it. The hospitals have certainly geared up and staffed up to deal with it."
The P-51 Mustang crashed into a box-seat area in front of the grandstand at about 4:30 p.m., race spokesman Mike Draper said. Houghton said Leeward appeared to have "lost control of the aircraft," though details on why that happened weren't immediately known.
Houghton said at a news conference hours after the crash that there appeared to be a "problem with the aircraft that caused it to go out of control." He did not elaborate.
He said the rest of the races have been canceled as the NTSB investigates.
KRNV-TV weatherman Jeff Martinez, who was just outside the air race grounds at the time, said the plane veered to the right and then "it just augered straight into the ground."
"You saw pieces and parts going everywhere," he said. "Everyone is in disbelief."
Tanya Breining, off Hayward, Calif., told KTVU-TV in San Francisco: "It was absolute carnage. ... It looked like more than a bomb exploded."
Another witness, Ronald Sargis, said he was sitting in the box seat area near the finish line. The box seat area holds 300 to 400 people, while the main grandstands area holds several thousand.
"We could see the plane coming around the far turn — it was in trouble," Sargis told KCRA-TV in Sacramento. "About six or seven boxes down from us, it impacted into the front row."
He said the pilot appeared to do all he could to avoid crashing into the crowd. Response teams immediately went to work, Sargis said. After the crash Sargis went up a few rows into the grandstand to view the downed plane.
"It appeared to be just pulverized," he said.
Leeward, the owner of the Leeward Air Ranch Racing Team, was a well-known racing pilot. His website says he has flown more than 120 races and served as a stunt pilot for numerous movies, including "Amelia" and "Cloud Dancer."
In an interview with the Ocala (Fla.) Star-Banner last year, he described how he has flown 250 types of planes and has a particular fondness for the P-51, which came into the war relatively late and was used as a long-range bomber escort over Europe. Among the famous pilots of the hot new fighter was WWII double ace Chuck Yeager.
"They're more fun. More speed, more challenge. Speed, speed and more speed," Leeward said.
Houghton described Leeward as "a good friend. Everybody knows him. It's a tight knit family. He's been here for a long, long time," Houghton said.
The National Championship Air Races draws thousands of people to Reno every year in September to watch various military and civilian planes race. They also have attracted scrutiny in the past over safety concerns, including four pilots killed in 2007 and 2008. It was such a concern that local school officials once considered whether they should not allow student field trips at the event.
The competition is like a car race in the sky, with planes flying wingtip-to-wingtip as low as 50 feet off the sagebrush at speeds sometimes surpassing 500 mph. Pilots follow an oval path around pylons, with distances and speeds depending on the class of aircraft.
The FAA and air race organizers spend months preparing for air races as they develop a plan involving pilot qualification, training and testing along with a layout for the course. The FAA inspects pilots' practice runs and brief pilots on the route maneuvers and emergency procedures.
Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., issued a statement saying he was "deeply saddened" about the crash.
"My thoughts are with the families of those who have lost their lives and with those who were wounded in this horrific tragedy," he said. "I am so grateful to our first responders for their swift action and will continue to monitor this situation as it develops."
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http://news.yahoo.com/feds-us-man-planned-blow-pentagon-210116487.html Feds: US man planned to blow up Pentagon
By JAY LINDSAY - Associated Press | AP – 2 hrs 50 mins ago
BOSTON (AP) — A man was arrested Wednesday and accused of plotting an assault on the Pentagon and U.S. Capitol using remote-controlled aircraft armed with explosives — the latest of several terrorism cases to spring from federal sting operations.
Rezwan Ferdaus was arrested in Framingham, Massachusetts, after undercover federal agents delivered materials he had allegedly requested, including grenades, six machine guns and what he believed was 24 pounds of C-4 explosive. Federal officials said the public was never in danger from the explosives, which it said were always under control and closely monitored.
Wednesday's arrest was similar to other cases in which reputed would-be terrorists were caught in sting operations that revolved around fictional plots against various targets, such as Dallas skyscapers or a Chicago nightclub. In this case, though, authorities say Ferdaus planned the scheme.
According to a federal affidavit, Ferdaus, 26, of Ashland, became convinced America was evil through jihadi websites and videos, and began planning "jihad" against the U.S. in early 2010. He contacted a federal informant that December and months later, allegedly began meeting to discuss the plot with undercover federal agents he believed were members of al-Qaida.
Ferdaus said he wanted to deal a psychological blow to the "enemies of Allah" by hitting the Pentagon, which he called "head and heart of the snake," according to the affidavit.
"Allah has given us the privilege," he allegedly told the informant. "... He punishes them by our hand. We're the ones."
Ferdaus, a U.S. citizen who graduated from Northeastern University with a bachelor's degree in physics, made a brief initial appearance Wednesday in federal court on charges of attempting to destroy federal buildings and providing support to a foreign terrorist organization, in this case al-Qaida. A detention hearing was scheduled for Monday.
Telephone messages were left at the office of his attorney, Catherine Byrne, and at the address listed for Ferdaus in the affidavit.
Several alleged domestic plots have been thwarted since the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, including in Lackawanna, New York; Portland, Oregon; and Virginia.
Terrorism arrests involving federal stings have often been followed by claims of entrapment, but none of the cases brought since Sept. 11 has been thrown out by a court on such grounds.
U.S. Rep. William Keating of Massachusetts, a member of the Homeland Security Committee, said lawmakers have been warned for months of an emerging threat from homegrown extremists. He said al- Qaida is casting a wide net to radicalize individuals or small groups already in the country because of the significant advantages.
"They're already here, so they don't have the hurdles of getting into the country, they know the country better. ... They know how to move around," Keating said. "The testimony we heard, things like this (the Ferdaus arrest) were inevitable."
Ferdaus is accused of planning to use three remote control airplanes measuring up to 80 inches (200 centimeters) in length. Ferdaus allegedly planned to pack five pounds (2.27 kilograms) of explosives in each plane, while saving some of it to blow up bridges near the Pentagon.
The planes, guided by GPS and capable of speeds greater than 100 mph (160 kph), would hit the Pentagon and blow the Capitol dome to "smithereens," according to Ferdaus' plan, detailed in the affidavit. Ferdaus then planned a follow-up automatic weapons attack with six people divided into two teams, according to the affidavit.
At one point, according to recorded conversation detailed in the affidavit, Ferdaus told undercover agents that his desire to attack the United States was so strong, "I just can't stop. There is no other choice for me."
According to the affidavit, Ferdaus traveled to Washington in June to do surveillance, and drew up a 15-phase attack plan. He also allegedly rented storage space to work on the planes in Framingham, telling the manager he planned to use the space for music.
Asked at one point about possibly killing women and children, Ferdaus allegedly said all unbelievers of Islam were his enemies.
Prosecutors also accuse Ferdaus of supplying the undercover agents with mobile phone devices he said could be used to remotely detonate explosives. When the undercover agents falsely told him the devices had been used to kill three U.S. soldiers in Iraq, he allegedly became visibly excited and said he felt "incredible. ... We're changing the world."
Rezwan is unmarried and has no children, the affidavit said.
He had at least one previous brush with the law. In 2003, The Boston Globe reported that he and two other Ashland High School seniors were accused in a vandalism spree at the school.
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AP researcher Barbara Sambriski contributed to this report.
http://www.eaa.org/news/2011/2011-03-10_up2.asp Cluster House Goes Up
March 10, 2011 —An aviation event occurred over the weekend in the Southern California High Desert that had previously only taken place fictionally. A cluster balloon lifted a house into the sky, flew for about an hour, then landed 10 miles to the east on Saturday, March 5. Jonathan Trappe, who flew his cluster balloon at AirVenture last year, reprised the role of Carl from Pixar’s Up when he piloted the flying structure for a National Geographic TV show called How Hard Can it Be?, scheduled to begin airing in the fall.
To answer the question of the show’s title: pretty hard. Lift needed to raise the prefabricated 16-foot by 16-foot structure required assembly of the world’s largest balloon cluster to date (which Trappe said he verified). There were 283 8-foot cells (balloons), each requiring an entire tank of helium (291 cubic feet each) to fill, for a grand total of 82,353 cubic feet (2,300 cubic meters) of the lighter-than-air gas.
Those who witnessed Trappe float over the AirVenture grounds last summer will recall his 50-cell cluster balloon, which he flew for nearly 12 hours before coming to rest in Lower Michigan. The cluster house, however, was nearly six times larger – weighing in at about 2 1/2 tons. Volunteers spent 13 hours inflating the 283 cells. Both clusters shared the registration number N878UP.
Trappe estimated the amount of helium used in the cluster house could have taken him to Florida , but the proof-of-concept, made-for-TV flight lasted a little over an hour and reached 10,500 MSL (about 7,000 feet AGL). He took off from the desert airstrip Brian Ranch Airport (CL13), traveled due east about 10 miles, and landed.
“We weren’t really trying to go anywhere,” Trappe explained. “Our main focus was on making a flight that was one, safe; two, legal; and three, reflected well on our flying community. Those were my goals, as an EAA member and certificated pilot.”
The flight was scheduled for a 6 a.m. liftoff. At that time, however, the system was not providing sufficient lift. As the sun rose higher it warmed and expanded the gas, thus creating increased lift. Trappe also jettisoned 3,200 of the 5,000 pounds ballast, and by 7 a.m. the house began flying.
“It is clearly the strangest thing I have ever flown,” Trappe said. “But more than that, it may be one of the strangest things to have ever flown.”
One of the last things he did before lifting off was affix the “EXPERIMENTAL” placard, just below the N number.
“A little more experimental than most,” he joked.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=esiUcTsif5I
http://www.newsfactor.com/story.xhtml?story_id=01100000IYU9&nl=2&full_skip=1 Airline Industry Seeks Less Hassle for Customers
By Toby Sterling October 5, 2011 9:30AM
The airline industry presented a model of its vision for the future of check-in security on Tuesday, including high-tech color-coded scanning corridors and what they said was the use of risk assessment techniques to ease the burden of airport security for the common traveler.
Airline passengers will get to keep their shoes on and their bags in their hand -- toothpaste, nail clippers, laptops and all -- as they pass through the "checkpoint of the future."
"We spend too much time on the 99.9999999 percent who mean us no harm, when threat detection surely should be focused on those with greater potential to do damage," International Air Transport Association chief Tony Tyler said at a conference in Amsterdam.
"By making our checkpoints smarter, and using 'known traveler' programs, we can give everybody a baseline level of security ... and in the end get everybody through security much faster," he said.
The concept faces technical and financial hurdles, and likely will be opposed by people who object to profiling or believe passing through body scanners violates their privacy. But it indicates the direction the industry hopes to go, Tyler said. He added that many elements of the plan are already in place, and others on the way.
He argued the "risk-based approach" is not the same as profiling, since it doesn't use ethnic or religious data . It relies partly on preflight information submitted by passengers, partly on biometric scans and data stored in passports, and partly on human observers who would have the discretion to choose a more rigorous scan for someone acting suspiciously.
Under a mock-up checkpoint on display at the Aviation Security World Conference, passengers are guided into one of three corridors upon presenting their passports: blue for frequent travelers, purple for normal passengers and orange for those deemed to require enhanced vetting.
People don't have to empty their pockets, remove any of their clothing or subject themselves to pat-downs before walking through a 20-foot tunnel that scans metals, liquids, laptops and other potential dangers one by one.
Security guards don't need to waste any time on small children or wheelchair-bound grandmothers unless they trigger an alarm.
U.S. Transport Security Authority chief John Pistole said the checkpoint of the future idea parallels the TSA's own new emphasis on "risk-based security."
"It's an idea clearly worth consideration as technology develops," said TSA chief John Pistole. "Segmenting the passenger population for different levels of security screening is exactly what we're pursuing."
He cited an ongoing TSA trial where frequent fliers "who are willing to voluntarily share information with us before they travel" are allowed to pass security more swiftly at Dallas/Ft. Worth and Miami International airports, as well as domestic airports in Atlanta and Detroit.
Peter Hartman, CEO of Dutch airline KLM, a subsidiary of Air France, said he didn't think profiling on some grounds was objectionable. Separately, he called on governments to contribute to costs for rolling out the technology used in new checkpoints. He said at present airlines pay around $7.4 billion per year for security, which they pass on to customers, while security costs for events such as football matches are often borne by the police.
Tyler said elements of the 'checkpoint of the future' plan will be introduced first on most highly traveled routes, and will gradually expand to smaller airports over a period of three to seven years.
http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2011-07-13/business/ct-biz-0713-euro-routes-20110713_1_air-france-klm-klm-and-northwest-airlines-trans-atlantic-capacity
Alitalia, Air France-KLM to suspend direct Chicago flights in winter
Delta poised to pick up Paris route
July 13, 2011|By Robert Channick, Tribune reporter
Terminal 5 at O'Hare International Airport will have a little less of an international flavor this winter. Two major European carriers, Alitalia and Air France-KLM, will temporarily suspend direct service out of Chicago in response to high fuel prices and sagging seasonal demand.
Alitalia will ground its daily Chicago-to-Rome route in December, with plans to resume service in April. And Air France-KLM will halt its daily Chicago-to-Paris flight from October to March, with Delta Air Lines taking over the route in the interim.
"Air France saw where they could use that aircraft more profitably somewhere else," said Trebor Banstetter, a Delta spokesman. "Because Delta has actually cut back on a number of trans-Atlantic winter routes, we had that plane available."
The three, along with KLM, the Dutch airline that merged with Air France in 2004, are part of a venture to share capacity, bookings and profits on service between North America and Europe. The cutbacks are an effort to reduce trans-Atlantic capacity by about 10 percent this winter in the face of rising fuel costs, which have grown 51 percent in the last year, according to the International Air Transport Association.
"Jet fuel prices have gone up incredibly this year, and these flights are very costly to operate from a fuel basis," Banstetter said. "We've brought down our capacity somewhat during the winter season because that's when demand for flying drops quite a bit."
Launched in 1997 by KLM and Northwest Airlines, which merged with Delta in 2008, the venture took full flight in 2009 with the coordinated service between Air France-KLM and Delta. Alitalia joined last year, giving the venture 26 percent of the airline industry's trans-Atlantic capacity.
http://www.smallcapnetwork.com/Like-Southwest-Spirit-Airlines-can-Gain-from-woes-of-Republic-Airways-LUV-AMR-LCC/s/via/3420/article/view/p/mid/1/id/390/ Like Southwest, Spirit Airlines can Gain from woes of Republic Airways (LUV, AMR & LCC)
Republic AIrways will have to sell Frontier Airlines Cheap
By Jonathan Yates
Published: November 16, 2011 5:34:55 AM PST
Spirit Airlines (NASDAQ: SAVE) is a small cap discount carrier whose stock price has avoided the fates of American Airlines (NYSE: AMR), US Airways (NYSE: LCC) and Republic Airways Holdings (NASDAQ: RJET). This puts Spirit Airlines in a position to benefit from the woes of Republic Airways.
Republic AIrways recently announced that it would be selling Frontier Airlines. Frontier Airlines was acquired by Republic Airways in 2009, besting Southwest Airlines (NYSE: LUV) for the bankrupt carrier. Two years later, Republic Airways is trying to unload Frontier Airlines, which is ample evidence of how well the acquisition fared.
This is a terrible time to be selling an airlines. American Airlines has been trying to find a buyer for American Eagle, its regional carrier. So far, it has not found any takers. Republic Airways is likely to find the same problem with the sale of Frontier Airlines. Higher fuel costs have been devestating for the industry.
Spirit Airlines should consider the flight path taken by Southwest Airlines. In becoming the largest domestic air carrier, Southwest Airlines mastered the art of the deal in picking up competitors at bargain prices. This was detailed on www.smallcapnetwork.com in the article, "Southwest Airlines is Ascending through Shrewd Acquistions like Warren Buffett for Berkshire Hathaway." That Southwest Airlines made a bid for Frontier Airlines shows the value of the assets. The price now for Frontier Airlines will be less than the $1.1 billion cost for Republic Airways Holdings in 2009.
It has been a good first year of being publicly traded for Spirit Airlines, as reviewed in the article, "Spirit Airlines continues Soaring Higher," on www.smallcapnetwork.com. The stock is up more than 12% for the month and over 38% for the quarter. For 2011, the share price of Spirit Airlines has risen more than 44%. Starting to acquire assets at deep discounts will help Spirit Airlines expand profitably like Southwest Airline.
http://www.newsfactor.com/story.xhtml?story_id=11000005CXVE&nl=2 Former Trailblazer Kodak Files for Chapter 11
By Ben Dobbin January 20, 2012 9:53AM
Kodak's moment has come and gone. The glory days when Eastman Kodak Co. ruled the world of film photography lasted for over a century. Then came a stunning reversal of fortune: cutthroat competition from Japanese firms in the 1980s and a seismic shift to the digital technology it pioneered but couldn't capitalize on. Now comes a wistful worry that this icon of American business is edging toward extinction.
Kodak filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection on Thursday, raising the specter that the 132-year-old trailblazer could become the most storied casualty of a digital age.
Already a shadow of its former self, cash-poor Kodak will now reorganize in bankruptcy court, as it seeks to boost its cash position and stay in business. The Rochester, N.Y.-based company is pinning its hopes on peddling a trove of photo patents and morphing into a new-look powerhouse built around printers and ink. Even if it succeeds, it seems unlikely to ever again resemble what its red-on-yellow K logo long stood for -- a signature brand synonymous in every corner of the planet with capturing, collecting and sharing images.
"Kodak played a role in pretty much everyone's life in the 20th century because it was the company we entrusted our most treasured possession to -- our memories," said Robert Burley, a photography professor at Ryerson University in Toronto.
Its yellow boxes of film, point-and-shoot Brownie and Instamatic cameras, and those hand-sized prints that made it possible for countless millions to freeze-frame their world "were the products used to remember -- and really define -- what that entire century looked like," Burley said.
"One of the interesting parts of this bankruptcy story is everyone's saddened by it," he continued. "There's a kind of emotional connection to Kodak for many people. You could find that name inside every American household and, in the last five years, it's disappeared."
Kodak has notched just one profitable year since 2004. At the end of a four-year digital makeover during which it dynamited aged factories, chopped and changed businesses and eliminated tens of thousands of jobs, it closed 2007 on a high note with net income of $676 million.
It soon ran smack into the recession -- and its momentum reversed.
Years of investor worries over whether Kodak might seek protection from its creditors intensified in September when it hired major restructuring law firm Jones Day as an adviser. Its stock, which topped $94 in 1997, skidded below $1 a share for the first time and, by Jan. 6, hit an all-time closing low of 37 cents.
Three board members recently resigned, and last week, the company announced that it realigned and simplified its business structure in an effort to cut costs, create shareholder value and accelerate its long-drawn-out digital transformation.
The human toll reaches back to the 1980s, when Tokyo-based Fuji, an emerging archrival, began to eat into Kodak's fat profits with novel offerings like single-use film cameras. Beset by excessive caution and strategic stumbles, Kodak was finally forced to cut costs. Its long slide had begun.
Mass layoffs came every few years, unraveling a cozy relationship of company and community that was perhaps unequaled in the annals of American business. Kodak has sliced its global payroll to 18,800 from a peak of 145,300 in 1988, and its hometown rolls to 7,100 from 60,400 in 1982.
Veteran employees who dodged the well-worn ax are not alone in fearing what comes next. Some 25,000 Kodak retirees in this medium-sized city on Lake Ontario's southern shore worry that their diminished health coverage could be clawed back further, if not disappear, in bankruptcy court.
It's a long cry from George Eastman's paternalistic heyday.
Founded by Eastman in 1880, Kodak marketed the world's first flexible roll film in 1888 and turned photography into an overnight craze with a $1 Brownie camera in 1900. Innovation and mass production were about to put the world into cars and airplanes, the American Century was unfolding, and Kodak was ready to record it.
"It's one of the few companies that wiggled its way into the fabric of American life and the American family," said Bob Volpe, 69, a 32-year employee who retired in 1998. "As someone at Kodak once said, `We put chemicals in one end so our customers can get memories out the other.'"
Intent on keeping his work force happy -- they never organized a union -- Eastman helped pioneer profit-sharing and, in 1912, began dispensing a generous wage dividend. Going to work for Kodak -- "taking the life sentence," as it was called -- became a bountiful rite of passage for generations.
"Most of the people who worked at Kodak had a middle-class life without a college education," Volpe said. "Those jobs paid so well, they could buy a boat, two cars, a summer place, and send their kids to college."
Propelled by Eastman's marketing genius, the "Great Yellow Father" held a virtual monopoly of the U.S. photographic industry by 1927. But long after Eastman was stricken with a degenerative spinal disorder and took his own life in 1932, Kodak retained its mighty perch with a succession of innovations.
Foremost was Kodachrome, a slide and motion-picture film extolled for 74 years until its demise in 2009 for its sharpness, archival durability and vibrant hues. In the 1960s, easy-load Instamatic 126 became one of the most popular cameras ever, practically replacing old box cameras. In 1975, engineer Steven Sasson created the first digital camera, a toaster-size prototype capturing black-and-white images at a resolution of 0.1 megapixels.
Through the 1990s, Kodak splurged $4 billion on developing the photo technology inside most of today's cellphones and digital devices. But a reluctance to ease its heavy reliance on film allowed rivals like Canon Inc. and Sony Corp. to rush largely unhindered into the fast-emerging digital arena. The immensely lucrative analog business Kodak worried about undermining too soon was virtually erased in a decade by the filmless photography it invented.
"If you're not willing to cannibalize yourself, others will do it for you," said Mark Zupan, dean of the University of Rochester's business school. "Technology is changing ever more rapidly, the world's becoming more globalized, so to stay at the top of your game is getting increasingly harder."
In November, Kodak warned it could run out of cash in a year if it didn't sell 1,100 digital-imaging patents it's been shopping around since July. Analysts estimate they could fetch at least $2 billion.
In the meantime, Kodak has focused its future on new lines of inkjet printers that it says are on the verge of turning a profit. It expects printers, software and packaging to produce more than twice as much revenue by 2013 and account by then for 25 percent of the company's total revenue, or nearly $2 billion.
CEO Antonio Perez said in a statement Thursday that the bankruptcy filing is "a necessary step and the right thing to do for the future of Kodak." The company has secured $950 million in financing from Citigroup Inc., and expects to be able to operate its business during bankruptcy reorganization and pay employees.
On its Web site, Kodak assured customers that the nearly $1 billion in debtor-in-possession financing would be sufficient to pay vendors, suppliers and other business partners in full for goods and services going forward. The bankruptcy filing in the Southern District of New York does not involve Kodak's international operations.
"To be able to hop from stone to stone across the stream takes great agility and foresight and passion for excellence, and Kodak is capable of that. They have some killer stuff in inkjet printing. It's becoming a profitable product line but what they need is the runway to allow it to take off," Zupan said. "As the saying goes, `the best way to anticipate the future is to invent it.'"
The company and its board are being advised by Lazard, FTI Consulting Inc. and Sullivan & Cromwell LLP. Dominic DiNapoli, vice chairman of FTI Consulting, will serve as chief restructuring officer. Kodak expects to complete its U.S.-based restructuring during 2013.
http://www.newsfactor.com/story.xhtml?story_id=003000AMDM1R&nl=2 International In-Flight Wi-Fi Remains a Rarity
By Josh Noel April 3, 2012 9:37AM
Technology couldn't be more pervasive. It is always at our fingertips, meeting every need at every moment, providing constant communication. Right?
Judging by how quickly people fire up their phones after the plane lands, not quite.
One of the last significant hurdles for wireless communication is the airplane. Though Wi-Fi is increasingly available on domestic flights, it remains expensive and relatively little-used, according to most analyses. On international flights, where it can be argued that it is most needed, Wi-Fi remains a rarity.
Australian airline Qantas inched the world closer to international in-flight Wi-Fi in March by launching an eight-week trial with the service on flights between Australia and Los Angeles, allowing passengers in first and business classes to access the Internet on laptops, phones and tablets. They join airlines that include Lufthansa, and, later this year, United.
This is revolutionary in 2012? For airplanes crossing oceans, yes.
Michael Planey, an airline industry consultant who tracks in-flight technologies, said there are several reasons for the slow move to Wi-Fi on international flights. Most of it, predictably, comes down to money.
Most Wi-Fi signals on domestic flights are provided by a series of ground towers. Qantas' experiment, like all flights over water, uses satellite connections. The satellite connections are far more expensive propositions for airlines. That cost is increased by what appears to be moderate user interest at current pricing levels.
"Airlines have not been able to find a business model they like that doesn't cost them money to provide the service," Planey said. "And people are making do without it."
Planey isn't sure that in-flight Wi-Fi has demonstrated itself as a product worth buying. Sure, there's enough bandwidth to send emails, texts and tweak the Facebook and Twitter accounts. But when it comes to streaming video or downloading music -- the things we now take for granted while waiting for the bus -- the execution isn't always as clean at 38,000 feet.
His idea: Airlines should invest in the infrastructure, use the Wi-Fi for its own purposes, then give a small amount free to passengers, whose expectations will drop -- because it's free -- to the point that not being able to stream YouTube videos will barely matter. They'll just be glad to update their Facebook status.
"Once people start paying for it," he said, "they expect a premium service."
One day Wi-Fi on airplanes will have seemed inevitable. Consider that Aircell, the company behind Gogo, the Wi-Fi service for most domestic flights, recently announced that it is working on a satellite system that will enable international service by 2015.
"Honestly, I thought going into 2012 we'd have a more settled business model," Planey said.
Qantas' small step shows how far we have to go.
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