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Hey dufus, put your hands down. Why are you celebrating all of this aeroplane Wi-Fi internet access? Oh, right. Now I remember. You're my boss. And now I must do your bidding from anywhere in the world at any time. Thanks a lot, airlines! I'll never be able to dodge work again.
I'm live from Virgin America's Beta run of their Wi-Fi service, over San Francisco, and there are a few things you should know about how its going to work when most airlines go live in 2009. And yes, I am posting this live from 15k feet over the Pacific Ocean.
Posted by Nick Broughall at 11:30 AM on November 10, 2008
Poor Optus. It seems they can't go a full week without getting slammed for the shoddy state of their 3G network. The latest blow comes from Dan Warne at APC, who's reporting that Virgin Broadband (which uses Optus' 3G network) has had to pull their wireless home internet service from retail shelves due to the sheer volume of complaints they were getting about the quality of the service.
The product is still available to purchase from their website, which enables them to be a lot more thorough when checking coverage areas for potential customers.
Hopefully Optus will sort their network out before Virgin's broadband solution disappears completely - it's a good idea for people who don't really need a lot of bandwidth or speed from their internet.
[APCMag]
At long last, Virgin America is finally bringing in-flight wireless internet access to its flights. On November 22, a beta flight above San Francisco will be the first to test the service, with it then rolling out to more flights after that at a rate of one per week. The plan is to have Wi-Fi available throughout the entire fleet by early next year, making it the first US carrier to do so. There's no word on whether or not the service will be filtered for porn. [Virgin America via PSFK]
Virgin Galactic's White Knight aircraft is pretty exciting. And here's a video that BoingBoingTV made of the aircraft's launch event, that has some interesting words on the craft and space travel from Sir Richard Branson, Scaled Composite's Burt Rutan and genuine spaceman and moonwalker, Buzz Aldrin himself. The best line? One that very few people in the world could say: "I wanted to go into space when I saw the moon landing. I've never had that opportunity, so I've had to build my own spacecraft!"—that's Branson. [BBTV]
Posted by Nick Broughall at 9:15 AM on August 1, 2008
WhiteKnightTwo is beautiful in stills, but it's nicer in video. Especially when put to The Conchords playing Bowie, which you should all buy. [Bowie on Amazon, WhiteKnightTwo on Giz]
Rich Dancaster has flown commercial jets for a long time. He's got 16,000 flight hours under his belt, which is more than some of us have in cars. When Virgin America and Galactic announced a plan to work together, he figured it was sheer marketing. Then he got the call that he'd be going through an intense training program to pilot a spaceship. You'd never believe a man who looks like a cross between Chuck Yeager and Clint Eastwood and who dresses like Johnny Cash would ever experience something like giddiness, but that's what I detected when interviewing him at today's WhiteKnightTwo unveiling.
WhiteKnightTwo, which will shuttle SpaceShipTwo into suborbital space, is about to be unveiled in the Mojave desert. I believe that's SpaceShipTwo under the veil. Update: Photos of WhiteKnightTwo below.
Walt just tested GoGo, the in-flight Wi-Fi service, on a bunch of laptops and smartphones during a flight from San Francisco to Denver. The service distributes, via Wi-Fi, a high speed mobile phone data signal pointed at airplanes, which Mossy rated at around 600kbps down and 250kbps up. This was quick enough for Walt to browse the web, send emails with iPhone rumour attachments, and talk on IM to his ladies, but it couldn't keep up with streaming video on Xtube Hulu. Also, VoIP is blocked, and mobile calls aren't possible either. Still, Mossy thought it did well enough for someone who can't stay off the grid for a few hours. GoGo costs US$10 for flights under three hours, and US$13 for longer ones. It'll begin rolling out in the next few weeks on American Airlines, with Virgin soon to follow. [AllThingsD]
WhiteKnightTwo is beautiful 