ZDnet reports that the airline has received Federal Aviation Administration approval to use iPads during all phases of flight and will begin doing so Friday.

While other airlines have been using the iPad on the flight deck for some time now — United, for example — American will evidently be the first to use the device throughout all phases of flight.

Zynga, which is currently preparing to raise $1 billion in an IPO next week, acquired the popular mobile game about a year ago.

And while the social games company may have to keep mostly mute as part of its quiet period, Baldwin kept his fingers busy, updating the Twitterverse about the showdown between actor and flight attendant.

Flight attendant on American reamed me out 4 playing WORDS W FRIENDS while we sat at the gate, not moving.#nowonderamericaairisbankrupt

December 6, 2011 3:01 pm via Twitter for iPhoneReplyRetweetFavorite

@AlecBaldwin

Alec Baldwin

Baldwin, who said he was rebooked on a later flight after getting booted, garnered a lot of sympathy. American Airlines quickly tried to extinguish the flames by reaching out to him directly.

@AlecBaldwin Mr. Baldwin, we are looking into this. Please DM us contact information.

December 6, 2011 3:33 pm via webReplyRetweetFavorite

@AmericanAir

American Airlines

Zynga couldn’t turn down the free publicity, tweeting its words of encouragement and mocking up a quick photo of a game board declaring to “let Alec play.”

Hey @AmericanAir, don’t ground @AlecBaldwin for playing. A.B.S.U.R.D. is worth *at least* 11 points in @WordsWFriends #LetAlecPlay

December 6, 2011 4:11 pm via CoTweetReplyRetweetFavorite

@zynga

Zynga

Still Baldwin’s jibes continued to flow:

My words with friends user name is now #theresalwaysunited

December 6, 2011 4:32 pm via webReplyRetweetFavorite

@AlecBaldwin

Alec Baldwin

TMZ was on the scene, but Baldwin declined to comment on the circumstances, including why exactly he was kicked off the plane.

The U.K. carrier recently began a pilot program that will see some cabin crew members using the tablets to improve in-flight service and replace the paper clutter of the passenger manifests, seating charts and flight timetables they typically carry.

BA will initially outfit just 100 crew members with iPads. But if that initial deployment is successful, it plans to give them to 1,800 more in the coming months. And according to Bill Francis, British Airways’s head of in-flight customer experience, the airline is very pleased with the results of the program so far. “The iPad is already allowing us to offer a more personalized onboard service, but the possibilities for future development are endless,” he said. “We’re receiving great feedback from cabin crew and customers already.”

BA is the latest in a parade of airlines deploying iPads for use in flight operations. Last week, United Airlines announced plans to distribute iPads to some 11,000 pilots.

It’s one of the more massive deployments to date, and once it’s up and running, United expects its paperless flight-deck initiative will save nearly 16 million sheets of paper and an astonishing 326,000 gallons of jet fuel per year.

A recent spate of technology glitches at U.S. airlines has inconvenienced thousands of travelers, spawned long airport lines, delayed or canceled flights and led to a wave of negative publicity.

United Continental Holdings Inc.’s United Airlines unit suffered a meltdown June 17 that forced it to cancel 36 flights and delay another 100. US Airways Group Inc. was hit by separate glitches on June 10, 18 and 19.

Read the rest of this post on the original site »

BoomTown scrambled the All Things Digital jet (aka, United Airlines, Seat 7A) late last night to get up to Microsoft’s big event for its online advertising clients today.

Called “Imagine 2011: Marketing Leadership Summit” and held at its Redmond, Wa. HQ, the two-day gathering is designed to wow peeps by trotting out a spate of strategery concepts those who buy advertising on Microsoft’s various digital offerings from its Bing search service to MSN to Xbox to Windows Phone 7.

Some program topics: “Elsewhere USA,” “Teens Hanging Out, Messing Around, and Geeking Out” and “Audience Buying Goes Real-Time: True or False?”

Presumably the goal of all this heavy-duty thinkery is to get these marketers to buy more ads from Microsoft by warning them about being left behind on the platform as the train chugs inevitably off to the digital future.

And just in case that doesn’t work, there will be a free concert tonight featuring the hipster band Train for the Imagine 2011 attendees at Microsoft Co-founder Paul Allen’s Experience Music Project venue to open those ad wallets.

Hey, Geek Mister: Stop sending all those digital marketing bucks to Google and Facebook and give them to us!

Before a panoply of various social, design and anthropology experts pontificated, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer kicked off the day with his patented loud and lovable Ed McMahon act, complete with the booming catchphrases.

Hey-Yo!

“You have to move forward or die!” (About the Web.)

“If you wanna get big, you have to think big!” (About the Windows 7 Phone smartphone deal with Nokia.)

I love the U.S. government, I don’t want to give it a hard time.” (About its crappy Web site, not the antitrust conviction thing.)

Ballmer outlined some key trends, which are not new to anyone paying attention over the last five years: Location; social; pervasive displays; ubiquitous connectivity; computers everywhere; cloud; data; and natural user interaction

He also joked about how there were 10 fake Steve Ballmers on Facebook, all using Steve Ballmer photos. Imagine that!

You’d think Microsoft’s badillion-dollar investment in the social networking site would get you a verified account!

Status: Monkey boy mad!

Actually, pissed off is more related to the fact that the person who conceived and organized the Imagine 2011 event was former global ad sales head Carolyn Everson.

But, she left the company in mid-February after only six months, for essentially the same job at Microsoft partner Facebook.

Since then Microsoft and Facebook have been wrangling over the talent raid, including Microsoft even considering legal action to block the move.

Nonetheless, the show must go on and it did in a pretty classy way.

But not without another road bump in today’s action–the news that Microsoft’s own marketing head, longtime company veteran Mich Mathews, was leaving the software giant later this year.

The departure had the halls buzzing about what happened and who will be taking over the big job with a $1 billion marketing budget.

Maybe some external CMO sitting right there in the audience or perhaps some internal Microsoft candidate such as Yusuf Mehdi or Capossela?

I suppose it’s time for some strategery stat!

Until it is all figured out, here is the music video for Train’s hit song, “Hey, Soul Sister”:

A new feature called “Price Predictor” auto-suggests flights and prices right from the search box, according to a Bing blog post today.

As soon as you start typing “Seattle to JFK,” a menu drops down, telling you the best price, and if you should buy now because prices are going up, or if you can hold off for a better fare.

The menu drops down before you ever hit the enter key. The results are for the best flight price over the next 90 days.

Other key words that will trigger the menu include: “Fly to Chicago,” or even “Chicago Flights.” Bing will immediately recognize where you are and instantaneously display the “Price Predictor” based on your location.

To cull this price information, Bing uses ITA Software’s data.

Google is currently in the process of trying to acquire ITA for $700 million, a process that is now being reviewed by the Justice Department for its antitrust ramifications.

ITA Software maintains a database of flight information, including fare comparisons and flight schedules for many major U.S. airlines, including American and United Airlines. Companies such as Microsoft and Kayak.com, which use the data, are opposing the merger because they claim it will stifle competition.

Others, such as Expedia.com, are also opposed to the deal even though they do not rely on data from ITA. The American Antitrust Institute also recently spoke out against it, calling it a “unregulatable monopoly.”

There are two main issues. First, the companies that do rely on the data are concerned Google will not honor its contracts over the long-term, and second, they are afraid Google might become a competitor, even though it promises not to get into the business of selling tickets.

For now, Google is not even licensing data from ITA.

When conducting a similar search of “Seattle to JFK” on Google, there’s no helpful information in the drop down menu. When you hit enter, there’s a widget that lets you choose dates for your travel and where you want results from, such as Expedia, Travelocity, Priceline, Kayak and others.

But unlike Bing, there are no instant results on the best prices anywhere.

In a FAQ on Google’s site about the merger, it writes: “By combining ITA Software’s expertise with Google’s technology, we will be able to build new flight search tools for users that will make it easier for them to search for flights, compare flight options and prices, and get them quickly to sites where they can buy their tickets.”

ITA Software maintains a database of flight information, including fare comparison and flight schedules, for many major U.S. airlines, including American and United Airlines. Companies such as Kayak.com and Expedia.com are opposing the merger because they claim it will stifle competition.

Google maintains that it is only trying to improve travel-related search since it is among its highest-volume queries. Its goal will be to refer people quickly to a site where they can actually purchase flights–and it doesn’t have plans to sell flights itself, according to a site that answers questions about the deal.

But the American Antitrust Institute’s concerns are more complex than whether Google is buying ITA to compete with online travel agencies.

It says the merger warrants a deep look because a deal of this nature will strain the boundaries of antitrust analysis and raise First Amendment questions as the government participates in decisions about the prioritization of information reaching the public.

In a release today, the non-profit explains: “Maintaining competitive markets for both general and niche search may be the only alternative, ultimately, to an unregulatable monopoly. It is therefore appropriate for the Division, employing a statute intended to stop monopoly in its incipiency, to work within a public vision of longer-term developments and to place the present acquisition within such a context.”

It’s not the first group to come out against the deal. FairSearch.org has been particularly active, and Missouri Attorney General Chris Koster, who chairs the antitrust committee of the National Association of Attorneys General, questions whether the deal would hamper competition in the online travel market.

FairSearch.org produced this video to explain why a merger should not take place:

Google Buys ITA – A Travel Story from FairSearch.org on Vimeo.

And here’s a video from Google:

So, BoomTown was at the Design Center Concourse in San Francisco today for Facebook’s f8 developers conference.

There is a giant logo of an 8-Ball looming over it all, which suggested a questioning mood.

Not at all!

Lots of stuff was announced, including ventures with partners like Microsoft (MSFT). That particular one is called Docs.com, an in-the-cloud effort to smack Google (GOOG).

The staff of the social networking giant showed up in overwhelming force here, stuffing the press into the giant hall’s front rows as if we were prisoners on a United Airlines (UAUA) flight.

Free us, Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg!

But, wait! At events like this past, Zuckerberg’s awkward speaking style–a younger version of Microsoft’s Bill Gates–has been painful, so this was clearly an elaborate plot by COO Sheryl Sandberg to torture the media.

Well played, Sheryl (and PR mastermind Elliot Schrage)!

While we waited and were being pummeled with loud hip music like Al-Qaeda detainees at Guantanamo Bay, I might add that it was impressive to see all the folks here–mostly dudes–paying homage to the massive growth of Facebook.

Here we go:

10:07 am PT: Zuckerberg–dressed in jeans and a hoodie and sneakers–ambled onto the stage quite casually without a lot of fuss.

BoomTown was expecting some fanfare–perhaps a brass band.

Like the geek he is at heart, Zuckerberg launched into the details right away, after a cursory nod to his company’s huge surge in size and influence.

He began talking about “social plug-in” offerings, namely a “Like” button that lets you share content from many Web sites without a lot of friction.

It is essentially Facebook’s clever plot to take over the entire Web and its conversation. I am extremely wary.

Let’s all try to remember: Facebook is Google is Facebook is Google. And so on until they both control our every breathing moment on this planet.

Like a nerd version of “Invasion of the Body Snatchers.”

But, admittedly, it was cool and innovative.

10:25 am: Zuckerberg brought out Bret Taylor, the guy from FriendFeed, which was bought by Facebook last August for $50 million.

It seems worth the dough, since Taylor is a natural presenter with the easy charm that all Zuckerberg’s money will never be able to buy.

He ran through the stuff–social plug-ins, recommendation boxes and a toolbar.

Taylor called Zuckerberg “Zuck” several times. He’s friends with Zuck!

He also is channeling Zuck with the idea that Facebook should be at the center of all things. Either a black hole or a benevolent god, depending on your point of view.

Soon, he moved onto the “Open Graph Protocol,” which he called a “valuable real-time connection” between Facebook and Web sites.

“My identity is not just defined by things on Facebook, but on things all over the Web,” added Taylor.

Things the evil geniuses of Facebook will control!

10:40 am: Taylor moved on to search, always an issue on Facebook, which still feels like it is a giant library with all the books strewn on the floor.

Yet another smack at Google! And Twitter.

He also announced that Facebook is adopting that OAuth open-source standard for authentication.

More divide and conquer.

10:45 am: Zuckerberg returned to intro Docs.com with Microsoft.

Zuckerberg then closed rather awkwardly, although somewhat endearingly, saying okay-that’s-it-you-can-go-now quite abruptly.

Realizing the oddness of the moment, he pulled it back to relate an anecdote about his girlfriend, who is studying to be a doctor.

Although Zuckerberg did not quite land it, it was all about feelings and memories.

“The essence of this is that we have a lot of early memories that, man, the world can be a lot better and we can make it that way,” said Zuckerberg.

Then he made an inexplicable reference to being in heaven and how everything is exactly how we want it there.

Let’s build it, said Zuckerberg, a very mortal–but now a very, very powerful–digital god.

Next up: Press conference with Zuck and more info about his stairway to heaven!

Until Facebook gets us there, though, here’s a video of the Led Zeppelin classic, “Stairway to Heaven,” which always reminds me of slow-dancing in a school gym and forever makes me just a little bit sad for, as Zuckerberg said, feelings and memories long gone by.

Not that Facebook or any Silicon Valley Web company is ever going to be able to retrieve even a scrap of them for real, no matter how many billions of social plug-ins and Like buttons they toss all over the Web.

Still:

But while it’s technically possible to use that same technology to Skype with your friends or families or whomever, airlines won’t let you do it.

The reason should be self-evident, but not to Federated Media’s John Battelle. Who apparently does this all the time.

Except on a flight this week, when a United Airlines attendant told him that using Skype in flight is a security violation.

That’s not true. But with the help of the Web–and, apparently, State Department employee Katie J. Stanton–Battelle pieces it together: Airlines ban in-flight video chat because it’s incredibly annoying for everyone who’s not chatting.

Or in Federal Aviation Administration-speak, the airlines are “simply responding to the overwhelming majority of their customers, who prefer silent communications to the public nature of Voice-over-Internet-Protocol (VoIP) calls.”

Battelle insists his Skype chats provoke nothing but “amusement” from his seatmates. But my hunch is that it’s only dumb luck that has kept him from getting pummeled by a fellow passenger to date. That United attendant did him a real favor.

As reported last week by the travel research firm PhocusWright, United Airlines is forcing some travel agencies to absorb the 2 percent-3 percent credit-card fees for ticket bookings. The PhocusWright blog post asserts that if this approach were widely adopted by airlines and applied to the online travel agencies, “they would be forced to reinstate some sort of booking fee in order to cover the costs of paying credit-card merchant fees.” And that could give a pricing advantage to the airlines’ own Web sites.

Read the rest of this post on the original site

Is Google making us stupid?

The answer to that question, recently posed by Nick Carr in The Atlantic, is a resounding yes. At least in the case of Sun Sentinel publisher Tribune.

How else to explain the company’s claim that Google is largely to blame for the six-year-old news story that gutted the United Airlines share price this week?

In a statement issued Wednesday, Tribune (TXA) said that Google’s indexing of the article, “United Airlines Files for Bankruptcy,” on Google News made the story appear new, even though it was originally published on Dec. 10, 2002.

At 1:36:57 a.m. EDT, September 7, (10:36:57 p.m. PDT, September 6), our records show that the Google search agent–known as “Googlebot”–crawled the story on Sun Sentinel’s website. Our records also show that the Google search agent had previously crawled this same story numerous times, including as recently as last week. Shortly after Googlebot crawled the Sun Sentinel site this time, however, a link to the story appeared on Google News, with a date of Sept. 6, 2008, provided by Google. At 1:39:59 a.m. EDT, September 7 (10:39:59 p.m. PDT, September 6), our records show the story on the Sun Sentinel website received its first referral from Google News.

Apparently, sometime Monday morning, the story was made available to subscribers of Bloomberg News.

As we said yesterday, the December 10, 2002, story contains information that would clearly lead a reader to the conclusion that it was related to events in 2002. In addition, the comments posted along with the story are dated 2002. It appears that no one who passed this story along actually bothered to read the story itself.”

Apparently not. Certainly the Income Securities Advisors employee who published the story to the Bloomberg financial news service didn’t. Because if he did, he surely would have noticed the original publication date in the article’s dateline, right?

Wrong. Turns out the article did not have a dateline or an original publication date. There was, however, a date above the article at the top of the Web page on which it appeared: “September 7, 2008.” Add to this the fact that the article had been given eight different URLs and one of them was listed in the most-viewed section of the Sun Sentinel’s Web site and, well … clearly, this was all Google’s fault.

Please.

Publishing a news story at multiple URLs without a proper publication date in the era of search engine optimization, or SEO, seems just a bit irresponsible for a major news organization doesn’t it? Perhaps not as irresponsible as publishing that story to a financial newswire without reading it or, you know, confirming it–but irresponsible nonetheless.

The SEC is looking into the matter.

[Image Credit: blogstorm]