In-Flight Email Now Available

Fasten your seatbelts. Passengers aboard JetBlue can now expect to get in-flight email service. Starting next week, JetBlue will be the first US airline to provide in-flight internet access. It will begin offering free email access on one of its airplanes - the BetaBlue, which is equipped with wireless Internet antennae in the ceiling and a computer server that relays signals to mobile telephone towers on the ground. Passengers will be able to connect to Yahoo Mail and instant messaging services via wireless internet connections on laptops or with wi-fi enabled BlackBerry handheld devices. Fees are currently undisclosed.

Rival airlines American, Virgin America, and Alaska Air are said to be working on giving passengers online connectivity beginning next year. American and Virgin are reportedly working on allowing passengers to access e-mail, the internet, or office networks using laptops, iPhones, BlackBerrys and other portable gadgets with Wi-Fi connectivity.

Google AdSense for Your Mobile Sites

You can now place ads on your mobile websites using Google AdSense. It's an internet marketer's dream. AdSense has traditionally been used on the desktop platform only allowing site owners to display related advertising on their site using a PPC model. The mobile edition is a limited availability beta release. It's no secret that the mobile market is hot with increasingly more people owning cell phones and an ever growing number of mobile websites being created to support this sales opportunity. AdSense is paving the way for the monetization of this new marketing channel by covering the bases on another of the much touted three screen views.

On the user experience side, this can equally be a designer and user's worst nightmare. Although screen sizes are increasing in size, there is still a very limited amount of screen real estate to work within and now with more content, albeit ads-y content, which may or may not be welcome by users. It's an interesting challenge both in the decision to serve ads and the usability implications. The placement of the ads are unlikely to fall in the right column as is traditionally the case on the desktop platform; they are more likely to fall towards the bottom of the page above the site footer with some differentiation between the main site content and what are essentially ads. There are apparently character and line limitations.

In terms of development, website requirements are that "webpages must be written in a mobile markup language and developed with a server-side scripting language such as PHP; AdSense for mobile ad code will only display ads on mobile-compliant webpages. Mobile Webpage Markup Languages: wml (WAP 1.x.), xhtml (WAP 2.0), chtml (imode, etc.)". (Source: https://www.google.com/adsense/support/bin/answer.py?answer=71600&ctx=sibling)

Three Screen View

Being able to access your content seamlessly between your desktop, mobile device, and TV is way cool. The idea of creating once and publishing everywhere has long been talked about and is more so a reality today - thanks to media specific stylesheets and tools that mobify your site by stripping the markup for mobile usability. It lends itself to the notion of universal and contextual design - that is, designs that are relevant to the context of use or access point. Access a site from your PC and you are served up the desktop version; access the same site from your mobile device and you are served up the mobile edition. And clearly, there is a growing reverse access trend to have your TV content accessible from your PC and mobile device.