ARINC, the transportation communications and systems engineering company, and telecom group Telenor are soon to market a technology to allow airline passengers to use their GSM mobile phones aboard commercial flights.

From DM Europe. Press Release.
Related story: Mobile phone on flight.

Cable company Comcast Corp. has paired up with Hurrydate, a dating service, to offer video dating profiles to its customers.

Hurrydate will host three socials at which singles can make three- to five-minute videos that will be offered locally to video-on-demand subscribers.

"Dating on Demand" should fill theComcast's need for content and attract younger customers to its video-on-demand service.
It will be tested in Philadelphia in the next few weeks.

From The Associated Press, via The Social Software Weblog.

As cities are installing wireless broadband networks solely for use by public, safety employees are getting increasingly paranoid about sharing their own data with the public, that's why Spokane (near Washington) will officially launch on June 23 a dual-use city-wide Wi-Fi network.

The network has two domains:
- (1) the city's private domain to use for public safety, automated parking enforcement, mobile workforce (who will get access to the city’s computing resources and database information, such as building floor plans, fire inspection reports, mug shot database, or equipment repair manuals), etc.

- (2) the public domain, SpokaneHotzone, for residents, businesses and visitors to the city. They will get the first two hours of access per day for free. By the fourth quarter of 2004, the ISP hopes to make additional hours available through the purchase of a day pass or a monthly subscription.

Details in Muniwireless.

Mobipay payment system via mobile phone will be extended to Spanish public transport before the end of 2004.
Users will be able to pay for their bus, metro or tram ticket via their handset, a confirmation message will be displayed on their screen and serve as e-ticket.

The m-payment system is already accepted on several taxi networks or fastfoods, cinemas and bookshops. Gijon (in gorgeous Asturias) will implement the system to parking meters, by 2005.

Via Liderdigital.

NTT DoCoMo announced today the July launch of the FeliCa Service for mobile wallet applications. The contactless technology can be used for a variety of functions, including train pass, debit card (electronic money), credit card and personal identification card. The device has to be brought within about 10 centimeters of a sensor and the transaction is completed by radio.

NTT DoCoMo, which had tested the system for 6 month beginning last December, reportedly hopes to sell 10 million FeliCa-enabled handsets in a year and a half.

Infrared interfaces and the QR code, a 2D barcode reading system, which are being included in mobile phones, are just the beginning of the next stage of the mobile phone business.

Read Press Release.

Endless Echoes is a new way to send a personalized message through space and time. Just imagine, your own voice, your own words, broadcast out into the cosmos for all eternity.... and for $25.

The Pennsylvania company, which began operation formally this month, allows people to dial a phone number and record a one-minute voice message to be dispatched into space via a radio wave transmitted from Germantown, Md., and theoretically travels forever at 186,000 miles per second.

There's even the Endless Echoes distance calculator to find the distance your message has traveled from the earth, since its date of tranmission.

From Yahoo News via Mobiledia.