As someone who flies quiet a bit for both business and pleasure and is likely going to see that increase over the coming months, having to disconnect from my laptop / phone for the hour or two that I am in the air is a major hassle. Sure, I could read offline content or watch a tv show / movie, but that’s not really what I want to be doing. If I had the ability to continue to work, or communicate via Twitter / chat or stay updated with the news, it would make a massive difference.

Ask anyone who has flown across the US recently about the benefits of inflight WiFi and you will find almost everyone a fan. It’s also a service that people are more than happy to pay for and I too would be one of those. Given the current state of the airline industry globally, you would think that any revenue stream would be most welcome.

However, it would appear that neither of the big two Australian airlines Qantas or Virgin Blue have any concrete plans in place to provide inflight WiFi at any stage soon. I spoke to a friend of mine who is a Qantas engineer about this very topic last night and he confirmed that Qantas have looked at it using pico-cell technology and have even run a tial, but currently it is not on the priority list to deliver. His thoughts are that even when they do come to look into it, it’s likely to be on international flights before it hits the domestic market. This doesn’t make sense to me, surely the high volume domestic business traffic would be the best return on investment for the airlines?

Whilst the fact that they are looking into it is welcoming, the fact that they are investigating using pico-cell technology is disheartening. This is likely to lead to a slow and expensive sattelite based solution that is going to make media rich, content heavy use impossible. There are much better alternatives available, utilising existing mobile phone technology which is far more cost friendly and faster and in fact, it is this type of technology that is powering most of the US based inflight WiFi services.

There is a more indepth review of the airlines plans dating back to March this year in this article from The Australian.

I would be interested in hearing from anyone who has experience of the airlines plans, their thoughts and when we might expect to hear something.

I eagerly downloaded Firefox 3 this morning. I had stayed away from all the beta and RC releases of it, which is the first time that I had stayed away from a FF beta, and I have to say now that I’m glad. The difference in speed of rendering pages between FF2 and FF3 is stunning. The new version is so, so much snappier. So far I’ve only installed it on my Vista laptop in work, but I really can’t wait to get home and try it out on my mac. If you’re a Firefox user, this is one upgrade that I really, really urge you make right now! And if you don’t already use Firefox, now is the moment to change.

Also, if you’re a photographer, of an avid viewer of photos on the web, aside from the speed boost that you notice, probably the most exciting feature of FF3 is the ability to recognise ICC colour profiles. Assuming you have your monitor correctly setup, this should make viewing photos far better, as the profiles will leave you viewing exactly what the photographer intended colour wise, as opposed to what Firefox thought was the best fit. Unfortunately, ICC profiling is not enabled by default in FF3, and you do have to change the config, but, if you follow the steps over on Rob Galbraith’s post you will see it’s really pretty trivial.

I have a thing about the latest craze in social networks. It’s a long standing thing. I ignore them for ages, then, just as all the cool kids are moving on from the latest and greatest craze of the day, I decide to give it a try, get sucked in for about a week, then get bored. I imagine this would be the same with Twitter if I were to start getting involved. Yeah, it looks pretty cool, and by the looks of it, most people that I know are obsessed, but, do I really need to get involved? I’m thinking no, but, I’m interested to hear if anyone out there wants to try and sway me…

You may remember back to last year, when Estonia, one of the most internet savvy, connected countries in the world, came under a widespread and well documented cyber attack, originating for the most part in Russia, and in response to some political moves that were being made in the country at the time.

I’ve just read an interesting paper, written in non-technical terms on the background and implications of the event, both on Estonia, and also on the wider world as we face into a new era of potential cyber warfare. If this sounds of interest to you, I suggest that you take a read.