The Wall Street Journal reported Colorado-based aeronautical communications company, AirCell, will be able to bring WiFi access to airplanes soon. The service will be carried over the frequency once used for air-phone service, which the company bought last year for $31.3 million at FCC auction. The connection will provide internet bandwidth equivalent to WiFi on the ground for devices including laptops and cell phones for no more than $10 a day, but will block VOIP services like Skype. Airlines have tried this before. Boeing launched their own in-flight internet service, Connexion, only to have it go belly up last year. Michael Arrington over at TechCrunch had tried out the service in July 2005 during a flight to Europe. Connexion was different from what AirCell has planned. It cost $30 for transcontinental service, allowed VOIP, and tranmitted data via satellite. AirCell is taking a terrestrial approach, transmitting data from a plane to a collection of 80 towers (expanding to 100). AirCell’s required 100 pounds of electronics can be installed overnight for about $100,000. Airlines will recoup costs through revenue sharing with AirCell. → Read More
We were contacted today by the founder of the soon to launch social network for gay men BigJock.com. It lead us to take a look around the gay male online social networking space and write the following overview of some of the current market leaders. Niche social networks are likely a viable business because they allow specialized functionality and a subjective community feel as opposed to general interest sites that defer to either the lowest common denominator or the 15-25 year old demographic. Many people want to participate in social networks, but many people prefer networks set up for people they can relate to. That makes sense to me. From the proudly professional to the happily hedonistic, there may be something on this list for everyone – or at least everyone who’s a gay man. As you can see by the following short profiles, these sites targeting a demographic with two traits in common (gay men) are all very different. Just as there’s a wide diversity of gay men in the world, there may well be ample room for a variety of gay male social networking sites – presuming they are able to build sufficient critical mass for monetization and financial viability. I won’t pretend to speak for gay men and I’m sure there are some sites I’m missing, but these appear to be the most talked about gay male social networking sites online. You can take or leave my reviews of them. Maybe they’ll be a look inside a niche market for some of our readers and maybe they’ll be links of love for others. I tried to note the ones where the guys were particularly hot. Jake Jake calls itself the world’s largest gay professional community. It’s very British. The company reports almost 30,000 members sending two million messages to each other over the past year and attending exclusive real world events together. Unlike others that discourage independent commercial activity, this site encourages users to advertise their own businesses and directly monetize their involvement with the site. There’s a professional but stylish look and feel to Jake. Users are encouraged to use their real names and free accounts offer only two photos – one for yourself and one for your company’s logo for example. Paid accounts are £10 per month. Paid members can access the dating section of the site, get more storage in their internal mailboxes, get → Read More
Citing financial problems with the program, Boeing announced today that it would be discontinuing its Connexion broadband service. Company chief Jim McNerney said, “Regrettably, the market for this service has not materialized as had been expected. We believe this decision best balances the long-term interests of all parties with a stake in Connexion by Boeing.” Regrettably indeed. There will surely be greater demand for this in the immediate future. It seems like if they could just ride it out for a bit longer, they’d turn a profit. Plus, it strikes me as a little odd that there would be so little demand, since other carriers like JetBlue have recently announced plans to offer similar services. Disconnected [via Engadget] → Read More
Company: Connexion by Boeing What is it? It’s high speed internet access in the sky. I just posted a profile of a new skype tool and did it all sitting here on an SAS flight from Seattle to Copenhagen (heading to the ICANN conference in Luxembourg next week). The technology for this has been around for a few years, but this is my first experience using it. I’m skype-outing at $0.02 per minute, gizmo’ing, IMing with people, uploading and downloading like crazy, and generally making a nuisance of myself to everyone around me. Pricing is $30 for the entire trip. What a wonderful productivity tool for long flights while we research, use and write about new web2.0 services! Screen Shots and Pictures: Links: Stratoblog Blog Business Summit Skype Air Heads Flickr tag: connexion Chris Pirillo uses the Service (from the parking lot at first ) Tags: boeing, connexion, techcrunch, web2.0, VOIP → Read More
