Long Live Airline Wi-Fi, Possibly

Airlines outfitting their jets with wi-fi, at a cost of at least $100,000 each, may not be making such a bad investment after all, Joe Sharkey suggests in the New York Times.

Last week Scott McCartney wrote in the Wall Street Journal’s Middle Seat column that airlines have been disappointed with the “take rate,” the percentage of passengers who shell out for a wireless Internet connection.

But Sharkey cites a recent survey that suggests business travelers may be more willing to pay for wi-fi than it appears. He points out that many factors could come into play, including the expanding use of hand-held devices equipped with wi-f and the question of providing power ports at every seat.

Passengers Not So Much With The Wi-Fi

Airlines are not getting the results they hoped for with on-board Wi-Fi, Scott McCartney reports in the Wall Street Journal’s Middle Seat column.

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A Portable Solution To Cramped Keyboards

OnBoard Travel Keyboard

As anyone who reads this blog knows, I love my little Acer Aspire One netbook. I’ve adjusted pretty well to the small screen, but I have to admit that sometimes typing a lot on the small keyboard cramps up my hands.

Enter the Atek onboard travel keyboard that I bought last month (for my husband, incidentally). It weighs less than a pound and attaches to the USB port of my netbook or my husband’s laptop.

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GPS Typo Sends Swedish Tourists 400 Miles Off Course

A Swedish couple entered Carpi instead of Capri into their GPS and ended up 400 miles from the Italian resort island they were looking for, Britain’s Telegraph reports. Carpi is an industrial city in northern Italy, where the couple reportedly asked the local tourism office how to get to the Blue Grotto. It’s not entirely clear whether the couple, who were not identified or interviewed, realized that Capri is an island.

Five Reasons Amtrak Should Have Wi-Fi

I had  another long Amtrak ride without wi-fi yesterday, and I have to wonder why. So I drew up my top 5 reasons Amtrak should install (free) wireless Internet:

1. Customer service. People want on-board wi-fi, and it will make them happy. Making customers happy may not be a “core value” in the transit business right now, but many other enterprises swear by it.

2. Public order. Passengers surfing the Internet may be doing bad things, like sending spam in which they claim to be Nigerian bank managers. But this keeps them too busy to do bad things in real life, which keeps things nice and quiet on the train. Just the way conductors like it.

3. Cell phone mitigation. People who can email won’t need to talk on the cell phone as much. We hope.

4. National pride. European trains are starting to roll out wireless Internet. Do we really want to give them something else to feel superior about?

5. Just plain pride. The $10 BoltBus has wi-fi. In fact, yesterday I briefly used a Greyhound wireless signal that I was able to pick up as I sat on the train. And that’s just pathetic.

Hurray For In-Flight Wi-Fi, Next Time

Last week I finally boarded a plane with on-board wi-fi but the magic moment sputtered out. I didn’t even fire up the netbook to try it out.

For one thing, I was whipped — groggy and cranky on the final leg of an 18-hour, four-airport, red-eye journey from Kauai to Hartford.  For another thing, it cost too much.

Delta charges $9.95 for a wi-fi connection on flights of less than three hours and $12.95 for longer flights. I was heading from Atlanta to Hartford, a flight that takes two and a half hours. But with the ban on using electronic devices during takeoff and landing, I’d get less than two hours of connection time. At more than $5 an hour, it just didn’t feel worth it.

I might have shelled out on the earlier flight from Honolulu to Atlanta, had wi-fi been available, but therein lies another issue. Delta’s Gogo Internet service from Aircell doesn’t work over the ocean because the signal comes from land-based towers.

So, anyway, I expected to be happier about this. Maybe next time.

Hey Driver, Please Hang Up

How often have you been a passenger in a taxi, bus or trolley when the driver has whipped out a cell phone and started yakking? I’ve seen it rather a lot lately.

The issue is getting some attention after 49 people suffered minor injuries when a trolley in Boston rear-ended another trolley. Police said the driver ran a red light while texting his girlfriend on his cell phone. The Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority now forbids drivers from even carrying cell phones on the job.

In another recent case, the Peter Pan Bus Lines suspended a driver after a passenger took video of him tearing tickets and talking on a cell phone while driving between Boston and New York. The video is posted on YouTube.

On my recent Peter Pan bus trip, the driver didn’t touch a cell phone. I was sitting right behind him, so I would have seen it. But I have seen drivers answer phones on other buses, and then carry on brief conversations. Taxis drivers have been worse, some of them driving aggressively with one hand on the wheel, one hand on the phone and the mind on who know’s what.

I wish all public transit drivers (and private transit drivers, for that matter) could be trusted to use a cell phone only on breaks, so that they could enjoy the convenience of a conversation with the family at lunchtime or a text message from a friend. But until we can be sure of  that, I think the MBTA has it right. No cell phones in the driver’s seat, at all.

A Frugal Cell Phone Strategy For Travel Abroad

The New York Times’ Frugal Traveler columnist, Matt Gross, had a very interesting piece Tuesday about a cheap way to keep in touch via cell phone while traveling abroad.

It involves Skype and forwarding and it’s all fairly complicated, but it sure seems worth the effort if you travel enough and talk enough. I have an unlocked cell phone and I’ve used local country chips, so I’m part of the way there. But I haven’t yet used the Skype-to-cellphone gateway that Gross employs.

I might first have a look first at Google Voice, which he believes may simplify things.

Either way, I’d like to give it a try although I admit I’m much better at computers than at phones. I often find myself unable to locate my phone when it rings, unable to keep it adequately charged and unable to remember the number.

Maybe that’s why I prefer email. I spent 18 days in Costa Rica without talking to my husband or daughter by phone, but we exchanged emails almost every day and used Gchat several times. Still, a cheap way to use the cell phone would have been nice …

Frommer’s Getting With Kindle

It’s now possible to buy 12 Frommer’s city guides — which would cost more than $200 in book form — for $40 in digital form for a Kindle electronic book, the Associated Press reports.

This is all very interesting. Lonely Planet took a very different approach to going digital, offering individual chapters of its books for download in PDF format, for printing or reading on a laptop computer.

In the long run,Frommer’s probably has the right technology. I think the Kindle is taking off.

Still, I wonder whether Lonely Planet has a good idea in terms of the sales strategy. A bundle of city guides will appeal to a business traveler, but individual chapters are all a leisure traveler may want. And selling by the chapter could bring in more money per book.

Anyway, it will take a while for the technology, the audience and the economy to work the whole thing out.

The Netbook Solution For Travel

I found myself recently in need of a new laptop, and I wanted something lightweight for travel. But when I was done shopping around, I ended up with something that isn’t quite a laptop: a netbook.

The model I chose, an Acer Aspire One, weighs 2.8 pounds and cost about $360. It has no CD or DVD drive and its screen and keyboard are smaller than even the smallest laptop’s. Yet it’s runs Windows XP and is wi-fi enabled. I use it for email, Web surfing, blogging, word processing, light photo editing and a few other applications.

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