John says that there don’t seem to be FAA rules prohibiting video calls. Which sounds logical: Once a plane has Wi-Fi, I’m not sure if if there’s anything terrorists could do with video that they couldn’t do equally effectively with other communications means, such as IM. (Besides, they’d probably ignore any rules against video calling–hey, they’re terrorists.)

But there are at least two other plausible arguments against video calling in the air. One involves the people surrounding the folks doing the calling, who might find the call intruding on their personal space. (Probably depends in part on the courtesy of the person doing the calling, but I sometimes have a hard time dealing with gabby seatmates who are simply making phone calls before takeoff or after landing.)

The other issue is bandwidth: I don’t how much speed a service like Aircell’s Gogo has to share among everybody on a flight, but it’s not infinite–and consuming video might bog things down for everybody else. (Of course, video of any sort could do that–I wonder if Gogo does anything to block, say, Hulu?)

I have a hard time living without inflight Wi-Fi these days–I’m going to use it so much on Virgin America this month that I shelled out for a month-long pass–but I could tolerate with a ban on video. (Then again, if I was sitting next to John and noticed he was chatting with his family, I wouldn’t press the Flight Attendant button and squeal on him.)

Your take?

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The rules also seem to say that inflight entertainment and information services are now verboten, with the exception of canned movies and TV shows:

Disable aircraft-integrated passenger communications systems and services (phone, internet access services, live television programming, global positioning systems) prior to boarding and during all phases of flight.

Can someone explain to me (A) what we learned from the Christmas attack that we didn’t know beforehand that makes it appropriate to change the rules; and (B) why would-be terrorists won’t simply attempt their evil before the final hour of a flight?

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Why Amazon should buy Netflix.

Negative Kindle reviews: No problem?

Nook problem: delayed book downloads.

Apple patent: tactile multitouch keyboard.

Laptop Magazine reviews Ion netbooks.

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Blockbuster’s memory-card movie rentals.

Nvidia shows off tablet prototype.

How many Droids? Maybe 100,000.

LinkedIn talks to Twitter now.

Nokia starts shipping N900 handset.

A whole new Google coming?

Blu-Ray managed copy: looks awful!

A projector dock for iPhones.

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I presume that Google will get some promotional value out of the deal–maybe ads when you log in, with links to Google services–and am intrigued by the possibility that in-air Internet could go from a somewhat pricey paid service to a free, ad-supported one. Back on terra firma, Wi-Fi is increasingly complimentary (both Borders and Barnes and Noble now offer it gratis). Wouldn’t it be cool if that were true at ten thousand feet, too? May Google’s experiment be a success for everyone concerned, and therefore a widely imitated one…

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As Glen Fleishman is reporting at Wi-Fi Net News, Lufthansa is working with Panasonic to put satellite-based Internet (and cell-phone) service on 120 long-haul flights. Wi-Fi will cost $12 an hour or $22 per day–as Glen says, on the pricey side, although not unreasonable if you take a long flight and stay online for hours at a time.

Connexion wasn’t perfect, but its main problem was clearly that it was ahead of its time. I wonder if Boeing regrets having killed it?

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The New York Times has a story about the fact that there are now 15,000 flights a month on which use of cell phones is permitted–none of which are operated by U.S. airlines. The FCC still forbids them to let passengers use their phones, and as with many rules related to air travels, the reasons are somewhat murky. It’s only partially because phones might interfere with planes’ navigation equipment–wireless carriers are also worried that calls from 35,000 feet would screw up their roaming agreements. Widespread opposition by both the traveling public and flight attendants presumably doesn’t help the cause, either.

The Times quotes executives involved in in-air calling saying that fear of phoning is misplaced–the engine noise makes it hard to hear strangers’ calls, and it’s all supposedly a lot less obtrusive than you’d think. Maybe so. And while the Times story doesn’t make clear whether callers on international flights are paying a premium vs. calls they make from terra firma, I’d like to think that in-flight calling is costly enough to keep conversations brief and to the point. (I don’t remember being annoyed by my fellow travelers’ calls back during the golden age of Airfone, and even made an Airfone call or two myself in a pinch.)

Look, I’m willing to confront the possibility that I’m being an old fogy. The worst thing about calls made when a plane’s on the ground is their sheer obviousness to those who overhear them–how often have we all heard the words “Hi, we haven’t taken off yet” and “Hi, we just landed”? Maybe in-air calls would be less grating. I suspect that it’s inevitable that they’ll come to domestic flights, and I’m willing to wear industrial-strength noise-shielding headphones and to direct my attention to my laptop if need be, (My laptop will be online via in-flight Wi-Fi if it all possible–I told you I’m not a Luddite.)

Anyhow, let’s wrap this up with a T-Poll:

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Goby’s search field is actually three search fields: What would you like to do, Where, and When. Fill in the first two (and, optionally, the third) and Goby will come back with Web results, including photos, map locations, and a “What’s Nearby” button.

How is this better than using Google? Goby, unlike Google, understands the concept of a general area; if you search for hiking trails in San Francisco, it’ll alert you to ones in Marin, too. Unlike Google, it can figure out the dates in results–if you’re going to New York over a specific long weekend, you can search for gallery shows taking place then. And Goby does a good job of winnowing out Web pages that don’t relate to activities and events–in my tests, it never returned results out of left field.

Much of the time it works quite well, but this debut version of Goby is interesting as much for its potential as for its current state. It asks you “What would you like to do?”, which implies that it wants you to answer with a phrase like “ride a bike” or “see a concert.” but when I entered those phrases for San Francisco, I got zero results. (Entering the terser “bike” and “concert” worked well.) When you enter a date or date range, Goby doesn’t sort the results by date, which means that its first results may not be for the period you specified even when it has ones that are. And I found it sometimes returned dupes–multiple links to the same event or locale. (In some cases, these were for activities that occurred on multiple dates, but you’d think Goby could roll up all the results into one entry.)

Goby’s default geographical range for results was also sometimes way broader than I expected–when I searched for museums on Cape Cod, for example, many of the results were in Boston. Using the embedded Google Map to pinpoint the area I was interested in helped a lot.

Unlike sites such as Yelp and TripAdvisor, Goby isn’t primarily about helping you quickly judge the quality of places you might go–it’s more of a traditional search engine, aggregating links that take you off to other sites when you click them. The basic idea’s full of promise, and the company is full of plans to expand up on it (with versions for mobile phones, for instance). I’m sure I’ll check it out when I’m planning to travel–or just looking for ways to fill a quiet weekend around town.

[UPDATE: I just encountered another Goby limitation I didn't catch the first time around: It doesn't work in Safari. You get a message saying it's working to support all browsers, and a link to download Firefox. Certainly a major gotcha for Mac users...]

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While I’m a little late to this particular mile high club, I finally experienced the joy of in-flight WiFi last Friday. Unlike Boeing’s now defunct Connexion satellite solution, it appears that most domestic airlines are utilizing Aircell’s Gogo service – essentially 3G EVDO connectivity in the sky. On my cross country Virgin America flight, the prices for Internet access were more than reasonable: $13 for a laptop or $8 for a handheld. Although, as we discovered, we didn’t need to pay for each device, periodically swapping the connection between Macbook, iPhone, and Blackberry.

Not only were Gogo’s download speeds (and latency) perfectly suitable for typical web browsing, I also had no probs with SD YouTube video (above). In fact, after seeing how quickly the buffer filled, I gave HD a shot. Giving it a minute to build a buffer worked out fine as well. (In fact, I’m more stoked than ever about Call of Duty, Modern Warfare 2. Come November 10th, you can safely expect a period of blog silence.)

Officially, in-flight VoIP is restricted. Which is probably a good thing given how loudly most folks talk into their cell phones. However, when Melissa connected her 8900 Curve to check for email, T-Mobile’s UMA service automatically kicked in. I wouldn’t say it was very usable, with frequent audio drop outs, but the fact that she could check voicemail from 36,000 feet was inspiring.

(This post republished from Zatz Not Funny.)

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This morning, however, I’m on a Virgin America flight with Gogo service. It’s six bucks for my flight from San Francisco to Los Angeles, and is quite speedy–YouTube is playing back more smoothly than it sometimes does via my home network. Virgin is the first carrier with an all-Wi-Fl fleet; it’s instantly become my default carrier on any route it travels. 

I should probably segue here into a sober rumination on the virtues of being disconnected and the downside of living in a world in which spending even 59 minutes (our flight time) without Internet access is a hardship. I’ll probably write one eventually, but for now, I’m happy. And it’s going to feel weird when I hear the plane’s wheels touch ground at  ourdestination and I have no need to seize my phone, fire up e-mail, and try to catch up…

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