Emirates Airlines announced yesterday that passengers will no longer have to switch off their mobile phones and will be allowed to make calls and text people during their journey on-board.

The first flight with authorized mobile phone calls was made on 20th of March between Dubai and Casablanca on-board of an Emirates Airbus A340-300 fitted with AeroMobile system, which ensures mobile telephones operate at minimum power during flights and make sure mobile phone signal does not interfere with aircraft navigation equipments.

A second aircraft equipped with the same AeroMobile system will be in service shortly.

Rates were not published, but in 2007, cost per minute was estimated between 2.50 and 3.50 USD.

Source: Arabnews via Wi-Fi Networking 

Saw yesterday night on TV. 

Last Saturday, during powerful storm Emma,  39 years-old Lufthansa pilot attempted to land his Airbus A320 with 131 passengers in Hamburg’s Fuhlsbüttel airport.

Facing winds up to 90 km/h at the moment of the landing,  the left wing grazed the runway for a moment, but the pilot was able to stabilise the aircraft and take off.

The plane landed safely 15 minutes later on its second attempt.

All passengers and crew were unharmed and the aircraft was only slightly damaged. After having its wing tip replaced the A320 was expected to be back in service on Monday. 

Well Done Captain !  

The WNDW team has released its second edition of the book "Wireless Networking in the Developing World". The 425 page book includes lots of new material, including new chapters on solar power and economic planning, several new case studies.

The book is released for free under a Creative Commons license and is available in several languages (including Spanish, French, Italian, and soon Arabic and Portuguese). and it is free to download, print, update, or redistribute it.

The Wireless Networking in the Developing World book is just one part of the WNDW project. Community forums, training workshops, and additional material are also available on their website, http://wndw.net/.

via : Lunch over IP 

We all know about the most famous Chinese mode of transportation, the bicycle. Indeed with the situation is changing and the bicycle leaves more and more its place to cars & motorbikes. 

I arrived 2 days ago in Kunming, the capital of the Yunnan province. The city is growing and its 6 millions inhabitants add 200 cars on the road every single day. However in a city where a liter of petrol costs 0.50 USD and the monthly salary is less than 100 USD I wonder what is the average yearly mileage of this multitude of vehicle.

What surprised me here is that most scooters in town are electric and this idea should inspire Europe. However I have not seen how they recharge them and if the battery can easily be remove and be charged at home. I'll try to have a deeper look in the coming days .

Specifications are the following

Dimension: 1700*555*1170
N weight/ G weight: 115/136KGS
Max speed: <60Km/h
Battery: 48V/38AH Silicone
Motor Power: 1500W
Load capacity: >85Kg
Brake: Disk brak FR, drum brake RR
Mileage for one charge: 80Km
More info here

Who said that in China there are no efforts made to reduce carbon emissions ? 

I haven't review in details all news from the CES 2008 that closed its doors on Thursday but it seems the Global Energy problem contributes to have better ideas regarding the way we can power our IT stuff.

One company, Green Plug, has identified a significant contributor to the high cost of battery-powered consumer electronics products, wasted energy and unnecessary toxic waste. A typical home or office has a dozen or more power transformers that convert between 90V and 254V wall power to device-specific DC power. Every adapter is physically unique and therefore is thrown away every time a device is replaced.

Green Plug comes with a better idea.

Creating a standardize power supply which can be used by all Green Plug^TM compliant devices utilize uniform cables and connectors; so, you never have to worry about finding the right adapter for your laptop, DV camera, cell phone or power tool.

Let's hope they will be able to convinced enough partners to have a real impact on the market and we'll have soon all our electronic devices using a single and unique type of power supply.

Passengers will no longer be able to pack loose lithium batteries in checked luggage beginning January 1, 2008 as new federal safety rules take effect. The new regulation, designed to reduce the risk of lithium battery fires, will continue to allow lithium batteries in checked baggage if they are installed in electronic devices, or in carry-on baggage if stored in plastic bags.

Common consumer electronics such as travel cameras, cell phones, and most laptop computers are still allowed in carry-on and checked luggage.  However, the rule limits individuals to bringing only two extended-life spare rechargeable lithium batteries, such as laptop and professional audio/video/camera equipment lithium batteries in carry-on baggage

The following quantity limits apply to both your spare and installed batteries. The limits are expressed in grams of “equivalent lithium content.” 8 grams of equivalent lithium content is approximately 100 watt-hours. 25 grams is approximately 300 watt-hours:

• Under the new rules, you can bring batteries with up to 8-gram equivalent lithium content. All lithium ion batteries in cell phones are below 8 gram equivalent lithium content. Nearly all laptop computers also are below this quantity threshold.

• You can also bring up to two spare batteries with an aggregate equivalent lithium content of up to 25 grams, in addition to any batteries that fall below the 8-gram threshold. Examples of two types of lithium ion batteries with equivalent lithium content over 8 grams but below 25 are shown below.
• For a lithium metal battery, whether installed in a device or carried as a spare, the limit on lithium content is 2 grams of lithium metal per battery.
• Almost all consumer-type lithium metal batteries are below 2 grams of lithium metal. But if you are unsure, contact the manufacturer!

Indeed this regulation will first be applicable on US registered aircrafts but as usual we may see this new regulation applicable on all International flights. 

Usually all electrical devices, including batteries, are subject to safety certification so either their are considered to be safe or manufacturer has to review quality and safety of its products. 

I really wonder on which basis these new rules are made from. Did anyone saw any incident statistics, reports etc.. (apart Sony made laptop batteries) or is it just one additional constraints air travel passengers will have to deal with.

After lighters and matches in 06, liquids in 07, 08 will add batteries to the restriction list.

All details are here as well as the complete list of items with air travel restrictions

Toshiba will soon start production of 2 new interesting products which may find their way into future mobile/portable devices.

First are the new SATA SSD (Solid State Drive) drives on 1.8' and 2.5' formats. According Engadget 32, 64 and 128 GB will be available. Speed announced is read 100 MB/s while reading and 40 MB/sec writting.

With such capacity, traditional mechanical hard disk will slowly disappear from portable devices. With no moving parts, a solid state drive largely eliminates seek time, latency and other electro-mechanical delays and failures associated with a conventional hard disk drive.

The second interesting product announced by Toshiba is the so called "Super Charge ion Battery" (SCiB) which is at this stage not intended for portable devices but for industrial systems and electric vehicles.

SCiB Major Characteristics

• Safety : SCiB adopts a new negative-electrode material that offers a high level of thermal stability and a high flash point electrolyte. Its structure is resistant to internal short circuiting and thermal runaway

• Long-life cycle : Capacity loss after 3,000 cycles of rapid charge and discharge is less than 10%. SCiB batteries are able to repeat the charge-discharge cycle over 5,000 times which is equivalent to more than 10 years with a once-a-day recharge-discharge cycle.
• Rapidly rechargeable : Safety characteristics of SCiB allow recharge with a current as large as 50 amperes (A), allowing the SCiB Cell and SCiB Standard Module to recharge to 90% of full capacity in only five minutes.
• High power (practical capacity) : The SCiB has an input-output performance equivalent to that of an electric double layer capacitor.
• Temperature : Extreme temperatures supported with sufficient discharge at temperatures as low as -30°C.

SCiB batteries will first be available on the market in March 2008 with the following specifications:

• Nominal voltage  : 24VDC
• Nominal capacity : 4.2 Ah
• Size : 10x30x5 cm
• Weight : 2 kg

Perhaps these batteries will also find other field of application,  but for portable devices they will need to become lighter and slimmer..but batteries that get charges in  five minutes are definitively very attractive for mobile users. 

What do you think ?  

Sources: Engadget Toshiba 

TGV tests Wi-Fi + satellite link in three TGV trains on its Eastern network. If the experiment proves successful the new service should be generalized, from 2009, to all 52 oars network East.

With combines effort of satellite link and wireless network, in locations, such tunnels and train stations, where the satellite link cannot be established, the wi-fi network takes over to maintain the access to the Web without interruption.

French railways company SNCF previously conducted unsuccessful test using GPRS data network before launching a 2 years research and preparation program to implement this dual solution. Among technical difficulties to overcome are these related to 320 km/h TGV trains speed which causes instability and vibrations. 

The project is done in a partnership with Orange(France Telecom mobile operator), Capgemini, Alstom Transport and Eutelsat.

SNCF will put on board of its TGV a dedicated Web portal providing information about destinations, weather forecast, News, traffic information as well as a real time tracking service. From a technical point of view, TGV trains are fitted with a server where all portal content is loaded prior the journey in order to minimize bandwidth consumption due to its high cost. The tested system has been designed to provide simultaneous web connection for 14 per cent (50 users) of the total capacity of each TGV train (350).

The business plan is not defined yet, but the widespread of the system on TGV Eastern Europe network would represent an investment of 120 millions USD over 4 years. First price estimation given by SNCF Passenger service would be a flat 4-5 USD to access the Web portal during the whole journey and a 4-5 USD per hour to access the Internet.

A very interesting project and definitively a real challenge to maintain permanent web connectivity during a train journey at more than 300 km/h where the 16'000 volt power line running over the train may also create some electro-magnetic interferences and without mentioning all micro interruptions of the satellite link each time the train pass under a bridge or when dense foliage is found within the satellite's line of sight.

Any reader who already had the chance to test the reliability of the service ?

More infos (in French): Journal du Net, CNet France.

British secret services MI5 warned UK businesses about Chinese hackers.

MI5 director-general wrote to 300 UK firms including Banks and law firms to warn them about "electronic espionage attacks" conducted by "Chinese state organizations".

IT Security company Sophos reports that 30 per cent of malware are "made in China". Trojan horses are designed to rob login credentials of anything including email and games. 

China's People's Liberation Army (PLA) was already blamed in September 2007 for attacking governments computers of France, Germany, New Zealand, Australia and United States, including Pentagon systems.

Trojan horses often target computers with unpatched vulnerabilities and without proper level of security deployed.  

The Chinese government has denied any involvement in the attacks and pointed its finger to unidentified hackers.

The question is now to discover if malware "made in China" are really powerful and smart of if attacked computers were the result of a serious lack of security and preventive protection measures.

Source: The Register 

Adobe has just released the latest versions of Lightroom and Camera Raw.

Lightroom 1.3 comes with the following improvements:

New file formats supported in the 1.3 release are:

• Canon 1Ds Mark III
• Canon PowerShot G9
• Nikon D3
• Nikon D300
• Olympus E-3
• Olympus SP-560 UZ
• Panasonic DMC-L10

Following issues have been correct:

• Performance issue on writing XMP metadata
• Printing with the native resolution option enabled no longer sets the wrong dimension for portrait oriented images
• Bayer demosaic and luminance noise reductions algorithms
• Canon & Fuji compressed Raw formats supported.

New enhancements:   

• The import dialog now offers the option to render 1:1 previews   
• Export dialog layout has been enhanced
• Lightroom Preview Export SDK is available for developers to create and distribute Export Plug-ins.

This update also brings OS X 10.5.x compatibility with Apple’s new Leopard OS.

Windows version is here
Mac OS version is here

Camera Raw 4.3 has also been released.

Windows version update is here
Mac OS version is here