September 2005

Does the idea of watching your local home TV schedule from anywhere in the world interest you? With Sony’s latest rendition of their LocationFree™ TV (model #LF-PK1, $350), all you need is a broadband internet connection hooked up to the Sony base station, then you’re ready to stream video content such as live TV or your favorite movies and tv shows from your home entertainment center directly to your notebook PC almost anywhere in the world…..including airplanes equipped with broadband internet access such as the Connexion by Boeing service.
After remotely logging into the base station, you can change TV channels, and control additional A/V devices such as satellite systems or video disc players that are hooked up to the system. Sony is calling it ‘place-shifting’ your entertainment, similar to the time-shift allowed by video recorders–but this is certainly a BIG step further.

Read a recent review of the Sony LocationFree TV Base Station from PC World Magazine here.

I have a friend who told his kids he was taking them to Disneyland off season and that he’d book them a room at the Disneyland Hotel. Even though he timed the trip for October (supposedly one of the slowest times of the year) he discovered the hotel was booked solid! None of the many tours or packages he surveyed had any rooms at any price.

Through a rather unconventional method, he not only got a room–but also received a rate at less than half the standard room rate. How’d he do it? Simple. He went to the local Anaheim visitors and convention bureau website and saw what conferences were being held at the hotel at the same time he wanted to go. By simply mentioning the event, he was able to reserve a room at a discount price.

He also claims strategic searches in Google can yield events that match dates and times desired at booked venues. For example:

“disneyland hotel” “october 10,” 2005

While I suppose this technique can be effective in a pinch (and might actually help a meeting planner who is short on attendees), it’s not something I’d use everyday to find discount lodging…

A survey in London found that Londoners have little to no idea what blogging or podcasting is.

Our research not only shows that there is no buzz about blogging and podcasting outside of our media industry bubble, but also that people have no understanding of what the words mean,” Carter said. “It’s a real wake-up call.

The wake-up call is to remember that bloggers do talk to themselves too much. If you’d like to learn more about blogging, what it is, and what it can do for business, check the Blogging 101 Seminar. Stateside, blogs are much better known, but still not as much as we’d think, especially when it comes to business.

I am noticing many of my emails are coming with an option to receive it as a Podcast (or a link to download it). This is a nice time saving option….just download the Podcast onto your mp3 player for listening at a later time or even better pick it up as an RSS feed on your PDA. Check out this URL for RSS readers for your handheld.

Online smartphone and handheld software provider, Handango is now selling software for the emerging Tablet PC platform. Check out over 100 assorted titles on their newly updated website here.

Next month I’ll travel to Montreal . I plan on working on the book, hanging out, and reporting about the trip along the way. I’m interested in how Canadian business are blogging, being productive, and just being Canadian.

Marko Ahtisaari, currently the Director of Design Strategy at Nokia, offers an incisive narrative on where our future of mobility lies and the trials we face to preserve this enhanced mobile future we all embrace:

Blogging over Las Vegas

Seven Challenges to our Shared Mobile Future

I sit here connected, flying somewhere over Las Vegas. Wireless networks and satellite links combine to draw me online. Right now, finally always on, seems a fitting time to reflect on how we got here and where we should go next.

Introduction: Scale

Next year there will be more than 2 billion mobile phone users in the world. Over the last fifteen years the mobile industry has seen amazing growth. Much of this growth has been in the developed economies but increasingly the value is created in emerging markets.Just as it is difficult to perceive the speed of an airplane from within - blogging over Las Vegas - it is hard to fathom the scale of adoption of mobile technologies. We are numb to it.

How will we explain to our children that before, when you wanted to call someone, you needed to stand against a wall? Mobile phones today have become ubiquitous, embedded into the fabric of everyday life. They have become a mobile essential. If someone owns a mobile phone today it is likely to be one of the three things that she always carries with her, the other two being keys and some form of payment.

What made this growth possible? Where did this massive scale come from? What was the structure of the mobile industry that made reaching this two billion mark possible? Three features stand out:

1. An object with a social function tied to a service. The primary human benefit driving the growth of the mobile industry was that of social interaction, people connecting with each other. Initially this meant calling people - a familiar activity at the time - but with a new twist: the cord had been cut. Over time this began to also mean sending short text messages.

Read the rest here

Hello and thanks for visiting inFlightHQ. We built the blog, have been working hard on it, and are pleased that it’s been published and announced. This blog is for being productive at 30K ft when flying on business or vacation. We’ll post on tools, tips, and techniques and also trip reports from our travels.

inFlightHQ is sponsored by Connexion by Boeing. Earlier this year, Connexion by Boeing flew bloggers and media aboard Connexion One for a demo flight of their in-flight Internet access service. The event was called Blogging the Stratosphere and was an enormous success. After the event, Terrance Scott, a spokesman for Connexion by Boeing said, “blogs are, an important new way to communicate with the public.” One of the best ways to understand blogging is to start blogging and that’s how this blog was started.

Tell us what you’d like to read about, what you think, and how you stay productive when flying.

From the Wall Street Journal article (subscription required) Follow the Money, Frequent Fliers: It’s Time to Start Collecting Cash, Not Just Miles

Reporter Ron Leiber runs the numbers:

Most people redeem miles for domestic plane tickets in coach class. So, if you used 25,000 miles to book a ticket priced at $250 on the open market, you’d be getting only a penny per mile of value for that trip.

Only if you use your miles for free international seats in first or business class do you start to see more than a 5% return on your rewards. A first-class trip to Sydney on United requires 120,000 miles. A round-trip in January could cost over $16,000, valuing the miles above 13 cents each.

Similar logic applies to the Membership Rewards points from an American Express card. Turn those points into miles, and the same math applies. Trade them for merchandise and you rarely get more than a penny of value per point.

A good case is made that for many the better deal is a cash back card that offers up to 5 times the reward(!)

The Citi Dividend Platinum Select MasterCard and the new Chase Cash Plus Rewards Visa both give 5% cash back at gas stations, grocery and drug stores, and 1% everywhere else. Others deliver 3% back on restaurant purchases or 2% on all purchases as long as the refund goes into a college savings account.

Many travelers might want to consider ditching their frequent flyer charge cards for the ultimate point system that’s always redeemable for airplane tickets: Cash. No blackout dates either…

Part of the jiwire network, wififreespot.com concentrates just on the worldwide locations that provide free Wireless High Speed Internet Access–as every wifi location should be. Especially handy if you’re crisscrossing the country on a business trip and would prefer not to have to join and sign onto several different ‘for fee’ wifi providers like T-Mobile or Boingo. Wififreespot.com has a great interface that helps you get the address of the access point into Mapquest or Maps.com, aiding in your timely arrival to the hotspot. The site even provides information on how to start your own Wi-Fi-FreeSpot™.

Claiming to have over 2.7 million ‘unbiased reviews and opinions you can trust’ at your disposal, tripadvisor.com is the 7th largest online travel website offering global travel information and advice that it gathers from readers of the site. If you are the kind of traveler who values the opinions of fellow travelers and the opportunity to research destinations, hotels and airlines thru one portal, this site might be helpful when making your travel plans.

I applaud the idea behind tripadvisor and have used the site to confirm my opinion of a hotel I was planning to use, but I remind myself that these are just opinions.
Tripadvisor is part of Expedia, Inc.

Here’s a startling statistic: a laptop is stolen every 53 seconds and according to the FBI, 97% are never recovered. LoJack® for Laptops from Computrace® offers a recovery service that they claim has a 90% success rate. Essentially it is software that you install on your laptop that enables Computrace’s Recovery Team (all ex-cops) to track its location, joining up with local law enforcement to hopefully recover your laptop.
After reporting it stolen to Computrace the software silently contacts the monitoring center at Compuserve, identifying itself as a stolen computer. Then LoJack starts calling in every 15 minutes (if it ever goes back online), allowing the recovery team to track the laptop. Tracking is done by tracing its dial-up address or IP address and by another secret method that Computrace won’t disclose. Computrace says that most local law enforcement is supportive because of the potential of infiltrating larger theft rings.

Computrace claims that LoJack is ‘virtually tamperproof’ and can survive the entire stripping and reformatting of the hard disk. And in a recent sign of support, computer manufacturers, including Dell, IBM, HP and Gateway have just begun embedding a recovery chip on their system boards, allowing the computer to call the monitoring center even if the thief tries to replace the hard drive. Don’t worry, there is a procedure for ‘uninstalling’ the software…….and upon receiving your instructions to do so, Computrace can wipe the drive and securely erase all data and software on your computer if you report it stolen. No consumer version for Mac’s yet (promised by year end).

The latest offering from Archos provides ‘direct TV recording and the best of home cinema on the go’.
The 100GB AV 700 stores up to 400 (!) hours of video (or 250 movies) according to Archos.
Transfer TV programs, movies or home videos directly from your television, VCR, DVD player, cable box or satellite receiver (unlike Microsoft Portable Media Center devices) and using the TV docking pod, you can set up specific recording schedules as much as a month in advance.

Other unique features includes ‘PC Autosync’ which allows you to easily transfer your videos (Windows Media®, protected Windows Media® and MPEG-4 files), images and songs (MP3, WAV, and WMA files) from your PC, as well as grab videos and music from online services. With a claimed 4.5 hour (video) battery life ,approx. measurements of just 8″ x 4″ x 0.8″ and a 7-inch screen the $800 AV 700 should offer some great tray table video.

If you haven’t heard of Skype yet, you soon will. Just purchased by eBay for $2.6 Billion in cash and stock, this internet phone service startup is based in Luxembourg and employs only 200 people…….but has an estimated $30 million in sales and has the world’s telecom giants running scared. The software it sells allows anyone with a high-speed internet connection to make calls worldwide for free–unlike comparable services provided by Time Warner, Verizon and Vonage that require additional hardware and monthly subscriptions.

Similar to an instant messaging application, after downloading the free app. off the web, users work with a headset, telephone or microphone and speakers instead of typing a message……creating a high-quality voice call with anyone else running the Skype application. If you prefer, you can purchase ‘SkypeOut’ time (about 2 cents a minute) and make your call to someone outside the system on a regular phone line. The similar ‘SkypeIn’ service allows users to receive calls via a regular phone number.

Claiming the demise of traditional telephony, Skype says it’s just transferring data…….all without laying down one fiber-optic cable. With almost 54 million registered users, Skype will no doubt soon become a significant threat to traditional phone companies in the U.S.

If you are fortunate enough to be onboard an airliner with Internet access, give Skype a try……we look forward to your feedback.

Fall is always a great time to buy laptops…..especially this year.

The Wall Street Journal reports that ‘the average price of a laptop is now about $1000, down from $1,250 last year and $1,640 in 2001.’ Now that many of the more expensive components of computers, such as small disk drives and LCD screens are turning up in other mass produced devices such as iPods and TV’s (respectively), the downward trend in prices are fueled by economies of scale. It doesn’t hurt that 75% of college students intend to purchase a laptop this year, the majority with wireless capabilities.

Collage-bound laptop prices seem to be slowly filtering (up) to the professional lines as well. Check out this URL at CNET for some comparison pricing on Notebooks or Laptops.

The mobile software company, PalmSource announced it is being bought by Japanese software developer Access (maker of the popular NetFront mobile client suite) for $324 million in cash. PalmSource Inc., designers of the Palm operating system for handheld computers and cell phones, posted a wider-than expected third-quarter operating loss in June and announced plans to reduce it workforce by 16%, so this did not come as a surprise to many.

While the Palm OS powers more than 39 million mobile devices, many other technology companies have since entered the arena and PalmSource has had to fight off competition from Microsoft and Symbian, which has recently grabbed much of its market share.

If you are a Palm OS user as I am, lets hope Access does not dilute the product or its personnel and in turn provide the necessary R & D and capital to help the Palm OS compete with the Pocket PC’s of the world.

Tired of walking around with your laptop lid open scanning for a hotspot? Something I’m buying immediately for my travel bag is the Canary Digital Hotspotter. Although not the smallest of the portable wifi detectors (2.5” x 2.2” x 1”) it is unique in that it has a readout that shows whether or not the network is secured (requires an password).

Their called 3M Privacy Filters. Essentially a very thin, protective, ‘rigid-yet-flexible’ polymer film that blocks out side views while leaving the front view clear. So people without a need-to-know see only a black screen. Another benefit of this patented ‘microlouver’ technology is it’s ability to protect your screen from scratches and marks……and 3M claims it’s easy to attach and remove, while offering zero image distortion.