Boredom and lost productivity in the air will soon be a thing of the past with the introduction of Internet access on aircraft.

TechCrunch said on Thursday that American airline, JetBlue had announced that it would provide services restricted to Yahoo! Mail, Messenger and Wi-Fi enabled BlackBerries to access BB mail and messenger.

However, it has recently came out that American Airlines will start offering complete web-access onboard followed shortly by Virgin America. There is again likely to be a catch; this time not with what you can access but with the cost-of-use. Both airlines, American and Virgin are likely to charge $10 per flight for the privilege to access the Internet in-flight. Personally, I’d pay it, but…

TechCrunch says “…it could be worth a lot more to them to offer it for free, and use it to build brand loyalty”. I agree, especially for airlines trying to win business clientele.

I haven’t heard any news of the Australian airlines - Qantas, Virgin Blue and Qantas-owned JetStar - planning to offer onboard net access. I think it would be a great move for Virgin Blue, seeing they’re increasingly attacking the business segment, to offer it.

This advert irritates me. Liberal are again using a scare campaign to attract uneducated voters. The advert certainly tries to paint interest rates under labor in a negative light.

Firstly, we see a peak when Hawke was in control which declines 5% under Keating. Then the Liberals took over and have taken the credit for it which may well be deserved.

But prior to Whitlam who was treasurer and how high were the interests rates? Howard and 21.39%.

Also, does the advert reveal the various external influences at the time that were affecting the rates? Of course not.

Long has there been a romance of going to the bottle shop; picking out a bottle of wine with some fancifully designed label; consuming its content; and putting out the bottle with the recycling or worse, straight into the trash. These aesthetically pleasing glass bottles were recently challenged by the cleanskin brigade, great, because they do away with all the unnecessary labels and marketing expenditure and carry over a lower price to the consumer.

Other innovations in the wine industry include, of course, the invention of screw-top bottles and synthetic corks. All of this considered, we are still drinking from the bottle. Heavy glass bottles that sure, can be recycled but still require a lot of energy in their production and recycling. There has to be a better, more environmentally friendly way, right?

Tetrapak, the same Swedish company that revolutionised the fruit juice market, have done just that. They have invented a design called tetraprisma which is a multi-layer carton with a screw cap.

An early-adopter of this technology in the Australian wine industry is Andrew Pease Wines which reported the following to SMH about the logistical efficiency of the tetraprisma design:

“A standard six-metre container holds 1176 cases of wine, including 10,584kg of wine and weighing 18,816kg overall. With tetraprisma that same container holds 1575 twelve packs holding 18,900kg of wine for a total overall weight of 19,530k”. “That is substantially more wine for virtually the same weight,” Andrew Peace said to SMH.

To read the entire article, check out this link.

BA (British Airways) have been flying phantom flights containing only pilots and freight between the UK and USA.

According to SMH “BA has been flying airliners from Britain to North America this month without a single passenger aboard because of a cabin crew shortage”.

Naturally environmental groups are enraged at this incident.

Fox reports that “the airline (BA) has been promoting its green-friendly policies and has even begun levying an increase on fuel surcharges to passengers”. And now they do this: emit huge amounts of pollution into the atmosphere all to send some cargo across The Pond and to retain their valuable slots at Heathrow and Gatwick.

This is slightly old news but it is the first I have heard about it. Accounting software firm, 2Clix that attempted to sue ISP discussion forum Whirlpool has gone into administration.

As they say, ‘what goes around, comes around’.

According to ITWire “after receiving a barrage of criticism on Whirlpool in posts from disaffected users, 2Clix, also known as Platinum One business solutions, lodged a $150,000 lawsuit against Simon Wright, founder of Whirlpool, in September. The lawsuit was subsequently withdrawn after an outcry from many quarters including online watchdog Electronic Frontiers Australia”.

Apparently wages have gone unpaid and 2Clix have appointed accounting firm (ironic) Worrells to manage the administration.

A work colleague was talking today of a pair of jeans he has ordered from a French online clothing store. The jeans are being freighted to Australia by FedEx, the American logistics/supply-chain behemoths.

Our conversation moved to FedEx’s acquisition of new aircraft to service the increasing demands for airfreight.

FedEx have recently cancelled their order for 10 Airbus A380-800F. Apparently this was due to long-delays with Airbus churning out the popular A380. It’s interesting how airlines are still ordering the A380 even with the long-delays.

Obviously Airbus are operating at full-employment and demand is still increasing. This is a great opportunity for Boeing to capture even more market share. This is exactly what they’ve done with FedEx who now have an order in for 15 Boeing 777’s and an option to take a further 10.

Source: BBC

It’s interesting –well I think so– how I came to write this blog. I was talking to some random person via MSN who said they went to the drive-in and saw Saw 4 last night. I said how I am not a fan of the genre and he asked what sort of movies I am interested in. I told him that I am a fan of mostly “Art House” stuff and mentioned a few films I have seen and enjoyed: Friends with Money, An Inconvenient Truth, Jindabyne. I then decided to see what Wikipedia had to say about these films and the following excerpt is from the entry on An Inconvenient Truth:

“In September 2006, Gore traveled to Sydney, Australia to promote the film. Australian Prime Minister, John Howard said he would not meet with Gore or agree to Kyoto because of the movie: “I don’t take policy advice from films.” Former Opposition Leader Kim Beazley joined Gore for a viewing and other MPs attended a special screening at Parliament House earlier in the week”.

So, little Johnny doesn’t take policy advice from films? So does he maybe think this film is the first to mention the content? Or is he afraid that Gore is making the facts on Climate Change more accessible to the masses, so is dismissing it?

I think it’s interesting how Howard positions himself relative to anyone slightly to his left. He makes them out to be completely irrelevant. What would be do if Gore was President of the USA? Would be still upkeep an alliance of similar strength to what it is today? So many questions to pose, too hypothetical to answer.

PJGO

When Steve Jobs takes the stage Monday at Apple’s programmers conference, he’s likely to give the world a glimpse of an upgraded Mac operating system that could herald the biggest changes to the machine’s interface in 30 years.

At the annual Worldwide Developers Conference in San Francisco, Jobs will probably show off Leopard, a Mac OS X update due in October that he has promised contains “top secret” features. But perhaps the most important feature is one that has been overlooked by many Apple fans: a new set of tools for building program interfaces called Core Animation.

I won’t continue the whole article here, but read the rest of this article on the interesting new features of Leopard at Wired.

Pajago

EDIA company Destra Corporation has done a deal with businessman Lachlan Murdoch to increase its stake in online film subscription outfit, Quickflix to almost one-fifth.

Under the arrangement, Mr Murdoch’s firm, Illyria, will swap 6,260,587 shares in Quickflix in exchange for 4,173,725 new Destra Corporation shares.

The deal means Destra will own 19.9 per cent of Quickflix and Mr Murdoch’s Illyria will own a 2.8 per cent stake in Destra.

Destra has three divisions, dealing in CD and DVD publishing in Australia, online communities including the scene.com.au and online media representation.

The company has a current market capitalisation of about $71 million.

Quickflix is Australia’s largest independent online film subscription company, with a catalogue of 25,000 films.

It has a market capitalisation of about $10 million.

At 10.48am (AEST), Quickflix shares (qfx.ASX:Quote,News) were up one cent to 19.5 cents and Destra (des.ASX:Quote,News) was down 0.5 cents to 32.5 cents.

Source: News.com.au

James Packer’s Publishing and Broadcasting Ltd (PBL) has sold a further 25 per cent stake in PBL Media Holdings - which owns the Nine Network and magazine businesses - to its joint venture partner, CVC, for $515 million.

Read more at SMH.